Printer recommendation

Looking to try my hand at doing my own prints at home. Looking for printer recommendations. I want something worth the investment for trouble free operation. Go!

For high quality photo printing, I think Canon and Epson are the choices.

Have you done any research? Pigment ink? Need archival stability? How big do you want to print?

Epson is the market leader for high quality photographic printing. Canon is working hard to catch up.

The Epson 3880 has proven itself to be a workhorse and produces pigment prints with tested archival stability using appropriate media up to 17" wide. Small enough not to qualify as furniture. No longer in production but available used.

Of the moderate sized printers from Epson, we don't have as much track record. There has been a marginal improvement in print quality.

There are wider versions and versions which take rolls of paper. In a non production (high volume) environment, these tend to be a poor choice.

In general, you will have less trouble if you print a lot (to a point). Better printers tend to cost more up front and are lower per ml of ink to run. If you are not printing a regular volume, you waste ink in flushing the system more.

So it pays to think how much you will use it.

Jeff Schewe's book on printing is a good investment. I recommend you buy and read it first.

I think the book will be my first step thank you for the sound advice.

I use Walmart. I get higher quality prints than I can get at home, for less money. If a print isn't right, or if I just don't like it, they do it again, free. Try that at home. I have an account online. I prep and upload, then order what I want. I usually get them in 3 days, or less. They keep my files so I can just go back for reprints if I want. I believe they do up to 20"x30" posters.

Costco is another good alternative. Inexpensive, profiles available online, they will print with no corrections if you request it.

But printing on your own printer teaches you more faster and gives you access to more paper choices. I certainly learned a lot by doing my own printing.

If your goal is fine art printing, having a printer helps a lot.

There are also printing services which cost more and provide paper choices.

A Canon Pro-100 is easily obtainable for under $200 and is a great way to get into home printing.

Small-scale desktop printers, ones that handle 8.5x11 "letter-size" paper, seem to be a dime a dozen. If you can get one that has a decent reputation for smaller photo prints, well, grab it, it's good for that but also for a quick document or web page print.

Just note that we are talking "coffee table size" photo prints, nothing that you would typically use for framing/hanging presentations. Of course, you may be happy with small 8x10 images for "sharing", but they won't go over so well as on-the-wall hangings!

For the larger prints, well, that takes a whole other approach in analyzing your needs. The printers are larger, of course -- they could be convenient sizes handling 13x19 paper, or even larger. I myself was happy with a 13x19 printer that I could just keep under my work area and as needed print, say, a 12x16 or 12x18 photo, I had a paper cutter, and kept frames on hand for both of those sizes, so it was a quick process to print, trim, then frame and hang photos with good effect.

I still had my smaller desktop printer, and that was my go-to for miscellaneous print "tasks", my larger printer was dedicated to full-size photo/art prints.

Something to check out, though, is when it comes to photo prints, especially the larger framed prints, things like paper and ink quality are really important, and for both of these things cost can be a factor. I had no problem sticking with OEM papers and inks for my large photo framing print needs, because I wasn't interested in sub-quality and at least at the time the "after market" cheap papers and inks didn't have much of a reputation. I know things have improved over the years, but to me that would require some careful research. To me, it mattered as to what I wanted to frame and hang on my wall for others to see! For the smaller, day-to-day stuff, I would be happy with quick but decent quality, sure, handing over a 4x6 or 8x10 photo print for someone to look at, either a friend or as a "portfolio" print to go into an album, I'd want "good", but I'd "keep it simple" and, as much as practical, inexpensive!

Being in the UK, where we don't tend to see massive discounts/giveaways of printers it is far more cost effective to use a good quality lab for prints, than printing at home. The Canon Pro 100, which is often given away with cameras in the US and so often available NIB on the secondhand market for around $100 is a very good printer, that in the UK usually retails for around £370 which until recently would have been around $500, and it has the performance expected of a printer of that cost level. Even so given that you can get the printer very cheap, you would still need to wait for some of the very good paper/ink deals that are also available in the US, and buy in bulk to make printing at home cost around the same as sending out to a lab will. I actually like my photo prints to be on glossy paper, I guess I'm a bit of a traditionalist in that respect, and using my cheap Canon Pixma MG5150 printer I get very nice results up to A4 (letter) size. Using OEM ink and top quality photo papers it costs me around £2.50 to produce an A4 print at home. The lab that I use on the other hand charges £1.25 for a 16×12 print, and even using the basic £4.50 post option I usually get the prints delivered the next day, and since we still get Saturday postal deliveries in the UK that also means deliveries six days a week for no additional charge. The lab offer a service that allows you to literally treat the lab's photo printing machines to act like a simple remote printer, they do nothing to the file other than push it through the printer, so from a use point of view it is like having your own £35000 Fuji Frontier 7000 machine, with an expert to maintain it for you. I usually have a half dozen images ready and waiting to be printed, stuff that is not urgent, but would be nice to have so that when I need to have a print made I can have a decent sized order to ameliorate the postage. I would possibly consider photo printing at home, but only if I could get a printer, and consumables at the best US discount prices, at which point I would guess that it would cost about the same to make a single 16×12 print, as to order and have delivered a single print from the lab.

Alan

F2Bthere wrote in post #18212261
The Epson 3880 has proven itself to be a workhorse and produces pigment prints with tested archival stability using appropriate media up to 17" wide. Small enough not to qualify as furniture. No longer in production but available used.
.

The 3880 is still available new and is a great choice if you keep the print size down under 16" wide. Great for 16x20 or 16x24 prints. Excellent prints on multiple paper types.

For those that think the likes of Walmart and Costco can produce prints with the same quality as you can at home with a quality printer like the 3880 have no idea. It's like saying McDonalds burgers are the same quality as the burgers from the local pub down the road...not even close.

Yep going into Walmart and asking for a print on a cotton rag paper is going to confuse the begebbers out of the clerk. Go to a pro print person or do it at home.

Hogloff wrote in post #18212741
The 3880 is still available new and is a great choice if you keep the print size down under 16" wide. Great for 16x20 or 16x24 prints. Excellent prints on multiple paper types.

For those that think the likes of Walmart and Costco can produce prints with the same quality as you can at home with a quality printer like the 3880 have no idea. It's like saying McDonalds burgers are the same quality as the burgers from the local pub down the road...not even close.

The skill of the person doing the printing is the key factor.

I can't say anything useful about Walmart, one way or the other.

But Costco (at least around here) uses Epson printers and Epson inks for larger prints. I'm not sure if they will let you bring your own paper, but the Epson papers aren't bad papers. True, at home you have paper options. But if you use the Costco profiles and print "without corrections" you will have the same level of control over the printing process.

This brings the process at Costco to the skill of the person submitting the prints. I don't think the McDonalds comparison is quite fair.

At the point where you are choosing fine papers to print on, you will want to get a printer or work with a more specialized service, but you need to learn to print first and, as I said, the Epson papers are fine and perfectly capable of producing fine prints if you have the skills. If you don't have the skills, a home printer will do no better, no matter what paper you use .

Which is why Jeff Schewe's book is the starting point I suggested above.

Personally, I have made a few different workflow choices than he has, but he provides the best foundation I am aware of and gives you the information so you can make your own choices.

F2Bthere wrote in post #18213232
The skill of the person doing the printing is the key factor.

I can't say anything useful about Walmart, one way or the other.

But Costco (at least around here) uses Epson printers and Epson inks for larger prints. I'm not sure if they will let you bring your own paper, but the Epson papers aren't bad papers. True, at home you have paper options. But if you use the Costco profiles and print "without corrections" you will have the same level of control over the printing process.

This brings the process at Costco to the skill of the person submitting the prints. I don't think the McDonalds comparison is quite fair.

At the point where you are choosing fine papers to print on, you will want to get a printer or work with a more specialized service, but you need to learn to print first and, as I said, the Epson papers are fine and perfectly capable of producing fine prints if you have the skills. If you don't have the skills, a home printer will do no better, no matter what paper you use .

Which is why Jeff Schewe's book is the starting point I suggested above.

Personally, I have made a few different workflow choices than he has, but he provides the best foundation I am aware of and gives you the information so you can make your own choices.

There is nothing like the instant feedback of print at home. No matter how good of a colour managed environment you have, the output you see on the screen will not fully match the output you'll get in your print. Two totally different mediums...one active ( your monitor ) and one passive ( the print ).

Now how many trips to Costco will a person do to make fine adjustments to an image and reprint...I predict NONE...its not a fun experience. I typically make 3 or 4 test prints on smaller sized paper until I'm happy with the image before I print it large, and this with a fully calibrated and custom profiles for my printers / papers. I just cannot see anyone using an outside service getting this same quality...but maybe people don't need that quality.

I would seriously take a look at the Canon Pro 100 that FarmerTed recommended.
These come "less than free" often in some of the Canon bundled rebates in the US, and the paper is another thing that often (at east twice a year) goes on such a deep discount, Canon is almost paying you to take some home.

IMHO sending prints out is not remotely as satisfying as making prints on a nice printer at home.
It would be hard to find a better way to start than with the Pro 100.

There is a deal with a rebate right now that gets you the Pro 100 and a bunch of paper for $169.00 after the rebate;

https://www.huntsphoto​andvideo.com …28B002&mfg=Cano​n&show=yes

There are better/bigger rebates that include cameras too,

https://www.huntsphoto​andvideo.com …59C008&mfg=Cano​n&show=yes

That looks like a great deal thanks for the heads up. Before I pull the trigger and buy a printer I'm going the read up on the process a bit so I make the best discussion and have no regrets on the printer I choose. Who knows I my find sticking with a print house is best. As of now I think being able to make my own prints would be a fun experience...will see after some reading.