photo printing using inkjet printer

has anyone experienced printing on an inkjet printer? if so, please let me know the average cost per print and what dpi is good enough to maximize number of prints. for the sake of discussion I am using an epson r280 inkjet.

ralliart_04 wrote in post #9430537
has anyone experienced printing on an inkjet printer? if so, please let me know the average cost per print and what dpi is good enough to maximize number of prints. for the sake of discussion I am using an epson r280 inkjet.

Bunches of us here have inkjet printers. They are great for printing photos if you get one of the top three brands (Epson, HP, Canon), and Kodak is working hard to catch up, as long as you get the dedicated photo printers with the high quality inks and use the papers designed to work with the printer/ink combinations.

Price is a consideration, especially for smaller prints -- a 4x6 will often cost more to print on an inkjet than if you use a One Hour Photo type of place, so if you want to print a batch of 4x6 or 5x7 prints, you could probably get better pricing from a reliable local source, butif you print 8x10s (or larger) the price per print drops below the external sources.

Reasons for having your own photo printer are quick results and more control, as well as the fact that price per print aside, it's easier and quicker to run off a few prints at home than it is to go to the printer and wait the "hour" to get prints. Plus, when you print yourself, you know what kind of quality you will get every time.

The downside is that initially doing your own prints can be quite habit-forming. Instead of just occasionally having someone print an 8x10 for you of a special shot, you may find yourself printing a zillion 8x10s and full-bleed 8 1/2x11 shots because, well, you can and they look cool, and you may find these prints filling boxes over time. I'm not saying that I or anyone on this forum has fallen into that trap, but it's, well, possible, and that's where ink costs and paper costs soar. Or could, if one developed that kind of rare habit/condition.

If cost saving is a real consideration, you can get by with 720 dpi. Also third party inks and cheap paper can be used, but the color rendition will be unpredictable (and may void your warrantee). For high quality you will need Epson or equally pricey quality papers, Epson inks and a printer resolution of 1440 dpi. I have not found any significant increase in quality at more than 1440 dpi at normal viewing distances.

tzalman wrote in post #9431015
If cost saving is a real consideration, you can get by with 720 dpi. Also third party inks and cheap paper can be used, but the color rendition will be unpredictable (and may void your warrantee). For high quality you will need Epson or equally pricey quality papers, Epson inks and a printer resolution of 1440 dpi. I have not found any significant increase in quality at more than 1440 dpi at normal viewing distances.

Thanks for your replies.

Just a thought...720 dpi? do i read this right? most of my pictures are set at 300 dpi.

if im doing an onsite printing, i guess my epson r280 plus the ink and epson photo paper will work out fine? now one thing that i have to find out is the number of 4x6 prints per ink tank. anyone had any experiences or knowledge on this?

720 dpi in the printer driver. Nothing to do with the 300ppi setting in the images.

My Epson R2880 driver lets me choose between 720, 1440 and 5760dpi.

Ralliart_04,

"Just a thought...720 dpi? do i read this right? most of my pictures are set at 300 dpi".


300 is as far as I know what Canon and HP use, Epson uses 360. So the sums are 360 x the no of ink carts, which on the R2880 is 8 and bingo 2880. Wonder how they got the name?

I get the 8 oz refil kits and don't see a noticeable difference in color. Last a long time.

René Damkot wrote in post #9439422
720 dpi in the printer driver. Nothing to do with the 300ppi setting in the images.

My Epson R2880 driver lets me choose between 720, 1440 and 5760dpi.

I don't know wether it has a huge impact on the amount of ink laid down. Not been able to see a meaningful difference between the two highest settings.

Rene, I may have to look at my printer driver to see if I could set this as well. Thanks for the idea.

IUnknown wrote in post #9441095
I get the 8 oz refil kits and don't see a noticeable difference in color. Last a long time.

Hello IUnknown. in your "last a long time" statement, have you kept track of how many pictures that has been printed?

Hello,

In printer land here's a huge difference between dpi (dots-per-inch) and ppi (pixels-per-inch). Your pictures are set to 300 ppi, not dpi.

A "dot" is a single droplet of a single color of ink. The inkjet printers that I'm aware of use an ink cartridge set that includes four to twelve discrete colors. Each ink droplet ("dot") can only be one of these discrete colors. To produce a color other than those in the printers ink set, the printer prints a dithered pattern of these tiny discrete color dots that, to the unaided eye, optically blend together and create the desired color.

It's hard to measure a printer's ppi because some colors (like the ones represented directly by the ink in the printer) can be rendered with just a single "dot", while others require a complex pattern made up of dots from a number of the printer's inks. If you could print every color that a photo printer is cable of reproducing using the smallest dot clusters that the driver can use to render each, a printers worst-case ppi could be calculated by measuring the size of the largest dot cluster. This number will be very much lower in resolution than the printer manufacturer's stated dpi because it takes lots of dots to produce the most difficult to render color.

Is this making any sense?

So, if your 1440 dpi printer requires clusters of at most 24 ink dots to reproduce the full range of color in your image, the worst case resolution of your print will effectively be 1440/24 ppi or 60 ppi. Now you see why printer manufacturers prefer to use dots-per-inch in their specifications.

The shorter answer is, don't worry about ppi or dpi too much. Keep using 300 ppi for your images if that's convenient (has no impact on quality, just on rendering size) and use the quality setting in your printer's driver that meets your requirements for quality, speed, and ink usage.

Hope this helps.