Today's Ink Jet Printers Offer Longevity, Superior Color
And Convenience
Text & Photography By Ibarionex R. Perello
Over a decade ago,
if you wanted greater control over your images, you invested
in a black-and-white or color darkroom (if you had the funds
and the patience). Otherwise, if you required quality prints
from negatives or slides, you paid a pretty penny to the custom
photo lab.
Things indeed have changed. Today, in prices ranging from $150
to $700, printers offer more than just a good photograph. They
produce archival-quality prints with better contrast and tonality
than we’ve become accustomed to with a local color lab.
Instead of settling for the lab’s interpretation of what
looks best, the photographer maintains total control over his
or her vision, from the release of the shutter to final print.
If you’re a photographer who’s serious about the craft
of photography, you have a lot to be excited about. This is
especially the case with recent advances in inks and hardware
for inkjet photo printers.
It’s
In The Inks
Many inkjet printers utilize four inks: cyan, magenta, yellow
and black (CMYK). The first generation of photo printers, as
well as many current “affordable” printers, used these
inks. However, ink counts have increased to six and eight colors,
resulting in a wider color gamut and improved black-and-white
prints. In addition to CMYK, photo printers from Canon, Epson
and Hewlett-Packard include a light cyan and light magenta ink.
Such printers render subtle hue shifts and reproduce colors
that would otherwise fall outside of the printer’s gamut.
The Canon i9900 Photo Printer’s ChromaPLUS ink system adds
new red and green inks for a wider color gamut, which reproduces
improved green and orange hues. These two colors have been notoriously
difficult to re-create accurately in a print, so Canon’s
approach promises color not seen before in inkjet prints.
The Epson Stylus Photo R800 includes Photo Black and Matte Black
ink for improved black-and-white prints, and adds red and blue
inks for greater color accuracy. Like the Epson Stylus Photo
2200, this printer uses pigments rather than dye-based inks,
resulting in a lightfastness of up to 100 years and reduced
metamerism with monochrome prints. Metamerism is the effect
in which the ink in a print takes on a different hue or caste
when subject to different light sources, such as tungsten and
sunlight. Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart 7960 offers med-
ium gray and light gray inks for more neutral black-and-white
prints and better reproduction of black in color photos.
Except in the case of the Epson R800 and 2200, most of today’s
printers use dye-based inks as opposed to pigments. Pigments
offer better resistance to fading and color shifting, with archivability
ranging from 75 to 100 years (when under normal display conditions,
under glass). However, dyes have improved considerably, and
prints with the appropriate paper can offer a lightfastness
ranging from 35 to 75 years.
When Smaller Is Better
The resolution of inkjet printers has been steadily increasing,
but it shouldn’t be assumed that a higher number guarantees
a superior print. A resolution of 4800 dpi is an impressive
specification, but 1440 dpi is more than capable of producing
an excellent-quality photograph. Unless viewed under high magnification,
differences in a dpi above 1440 dpi aren’t readily apparent.
Rather, it’s the size of the individual ink droplets that
play a larger role in the quality of a print. Droplet sizes
of 3 to 4 picoliters, and now 1.5 (Epson R800) and 2 (Canon
i9900), produce prints where the individual dots of ink are
indiscernible. Such small droplet sizes produce a superior continuous-tone
print. The delivery system that deposits the ink to the paper
also has been improved, with more rugged and more precise paper
feeding.
Bigger, Faster And Borderless
Most inkjet printers produce prints as big as 8.5x11-inches.
For a large percentage of photographers, this is exactly the
size they need. However, for the advanced or professional photographer,
larger prints provide the flexibility to create poster-sized
prints at home.
Using precut papers, the Epson Stylus Pro 4000 creates a 17x22-inch
print, providing a mountable 16x20 image area. The HP Deskjet
9650 and Canon i9900 offer 13x19-inch prints. These bigger sizes
are perfectly suited for the gallery wall or as promotional
materials. The ability to produce such large prints within one’s
home office allows the photographer complete control even over
his or her largest reproduced images.
Before you question whether or not you’ll be waiting forever
to output prints larger than 8.5x11, think again. The output
speeds of the latest inkjet printers have improved due to advances
in the design and manufacturing of print heads and the overall
printing mechanism.
What’s amazing is that as the speed of these print heads
have been increased, their precision also has been improved.
The exact delivery of ink to the paper results in a quality
print, free of banding. Speedy computer interfaces, including
USB 2.0 and FireWire (IEEE 1394), also have enhanced the performance
speed of today’s printers.
Capable of transferring data at 400 Mbps (FireWire) or 480 Mbps
(USB 2.0), image data is being quickly transferred from your
computer to your printer. For example, the Canon i9900 printer,
which utilizes a USB 2.0 connection, produces an 8.5x11 photo-quality
print in less than 60 seconds—good news when you’re
short on time or need to output multiple prints.
In addition to having the ability to create larger prints, faster,
borderless prints also can be produced. Using standard-sized
paper, without perforation, today’s printers create prints
using the entire surface of the paper. This is a popular feature
that offers photographers the option of making prints with or
without a white border.
The Quick And Easy Print
Sometimes you want a print but don’t want to spend a lot
of time at the computer. Today’s printers have made it
easier to create quality prints from your digital camera without
a computer, due to built-in card readers, LCD displays and image-enhancement
technology, including PictBridge.
No matter what media your camera uses, printers now are designed
to accept memory cards directly. The printer reads the image
files so that individual photographs, as well as contact sheets,
can be produced at the touch of a button. Navigation of the
content of your memory card is made easier by the inclusion
of a color LCD that previews the image and includes a menu to
apply enhancements for color, contrast and sharpness.
Some models include an easily accessible USB port, which connects
the digital camera to the printer. You then can navigate and
select your images using the camera’s LCD.
PictBridge technology is finding its way into more and more
digital cameras and printers, and standardizes their performances
for the purpose of direct printing. More importantly, this allows
for cross-compatibility, meaning that a Canon camera can be
connected to an Epson printer and still produce excellent results.
Embedded in each file, data regarding exposure, contrast, color
and special features is used by the printer to make a photograph.
Enhancements are applied automatically.
Organizing Tool
A printer also can be a useful aid when it comes to organizing
your extensive collection of digital images. Along with creating
contact sheets of your photographs from the computer or directly
from removable media, several printers from Epson print on blank
CD-Rs. You now can personalize your archives or create slideshow
CDs with unique labels.
The Epson Stylus Photo R800 and R300 print directly on blank
discs. You can use photographs contained in the disc as the
illustration or use something more generic that represents you.
Add text, logos or other graphics and have a CD-R whose contents
are immediately identifiable.
Final Notes
Photographers have a wide range of choices today. Along with
performance and quality enhancements, inkjet printers are wonderful
tools for achieving your artistic vision. By using papers of
varying materials, surface texture and whiteness, we have the
ability to create prints that satisfy our individual aesthetic.
Today’s printers enhance, not limit, our imagination.
