Top myths about personal photo printers By Jay Dougherty

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Friday October 13, 2006

By Jay Dougherty, Washington- The allure of printing your own digital photographs is great. After all, printer makers advertise their colour photo printers using wonderfully-composed and exposed photographs, magnificently printed, and suggest that great results for you can be just a button- press away.

Sometimes things are that easy. But more often, they're not. When you embark on the often complex task of setting up your own home photo printing equipment, it pays to know the myths from the reality.

Myth: Printing your own digital photos is less expensive than having them printed at the store.

Fact: Printing your own photographs at home is not a value proposition. Despite the relatively low cost of inkjet photo printers, the cost of accessories will quickly add up to more than what you paid for the printer itself, and your per-print cost is likely to be about what it costs you to have an outside service make your prints for you.

You may not want to take into consideration the cost of your photo printer in calculating a per-print cost, but you surely can take into account the cost of consumables: paper, ink, and even your time.

Uninformed colour inkjet buyers soon learn a sobering truth about their printing investment: The cost of replacement ink cartridges can quickly amount to more than the entire purchase price of the printer itself.

It's not uncommon for a set of ink cartridges to run 80 to 100 dollars for today's inkjet colour photo printers, and paper can amount to a dollar a sheet, depending upon the quality you get.

If a set of ink cartridges generally gives you about 50 full-sheet printouts, then your full-page per-print cost is probably running you from 1 to 3 dollars. If you get four photos per page, you can divide those numbers by four.

A little math, though, will probably quickly show you that printing photos at home is likely costing you a bit more than it would to have your prints digital photos developed at a local store - and that's not taking into consideration the cost of your printer itself.

Myth: It's easy to get great colour from today's inkjet photo printers.

Fact: It's one thing to print photos at home, but trying to get your printed photos to match what you see on your computer monitor is often a very frustrating experience for newcomers.

That's because the acquisition of a colour photo printer, ink, and paper is just half the battle. Your printer typically must be profiled - by yourself or a colour expert - in order for you to be able to confidently expect to see the colour on your printouts that you see on your computer monitor.

Profiling is a process by which both your monitor and your printer are adjusted to conform to standard colour specifications. Several products are now on the market that make the job of profiling your equipment easy. Consistently rated among the best is Gretag Macbeth's EyeOne Photo - a package consisting of both hardware and software necessary to ensure that your monitor and printer are talking the same language when it comes to colour.

Here's the kicker, though: profiling is not cheap. A package such as Gretag Macbeth's can cost as much as 1,000 dollars. You can find cheaper solutions that profile only the monitor, for instance, but then you're tackling just half of the job.

Still, if you're serious about getting professional-quality photographic prints at home, the profiling is a must. And if you happen to have more than one printer, the cost of a profiling package may seem more reasonable. You can find good directions on using profiling equipment all around the Web, including at Sign Industry.com's "Printer Profiling" page (http://www.signindustry.com/computers/articles/2004-07-29-GIA-Printe rProfiling.php3).

Myth: Buying third-party ink refill cartridges is a great way to save money.

Fact: Lots of folks try to save money by buying cheap ink - drop- in replacements made not by the manufacturer of the printer but by a third party. While you can save a significant amount of money by purchasing less expensive ink, there are hidden costs involved in using such ink that may outweigh the short-term advantage.

First of all, no printer manufacturer will provide warranty service to a printer damaged through the use of third-party ink. Second, the colour characteristics of third-party inks are rarely identical to those of the inks from the printer manufacturer. That's where custom printer profiling equipment, as discussed above, can be crucial.

But even if you do get good colour profiles when using third-party inks, keep a close eye on printout irregularities that could signal trouble with printer head clogging that results from the use of such ink. Some photo printers, including those from Canon, have been known to develop problems with print heads resulting from the use of non- supported inks. Once your printer's print head gets clogged or damaged, it typically will need to be replaced.

Myth: Direct-print photo printers make printing easier.

Fact: Easy is only part of what users want. Quality is also part of the equation for satisfaction. The idea is great, though: plug in your camera or film card directly into the printer, see the pictures, and print them without going through a computer.

Direct-print printers, however, typically use a less sophisticated colour printing system, with fewer colours, than photo printers that you hook up to your computer. Plus you sacrifice many of the preprocessing controls found in software - or even in a larger photo kiosk found in retail photo stores.

In addition, using a tiny screen on the printer to sort through the photos on a film card and choose the ones that you'd like to print is anything but easy. It's time-consuming and difficult to guage just which photographs are nicely exposed, with good contrast and colour.

The bottom line is that consumers need to spend as much time researching and learning about the photo printing process as they do researching which digital camera to purchase. All the time and effort can pay off in a rewarding home photo printing experience, but the hassle of home printing is definitely not for everyone.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency