Photo printers buyers guide

Introduction

If you are looking for a printer to print your photos than inkjet is still the way to go. The basic principles of an inkjet printer are quite simple: three colours (cyan, magenta and yellow) are used to produce all possible colours, either by mixing the colours up or positioning small dots of ink very closely together. Next to these three basis colours most modern inkjet printers will also have a black cartridge, as this is the best way to produce a "proper" black colour. Black is also used to mix up darker colours.

More and more inkjet printers are being advertised as a proper "photo printer", however what does that term actually mean? With the four basic colours in a printer it should be possible to print every existing colour, but in practice it has proven difficult to actually achieve all different colours. Some manufacturers have solved this problem by adding two extra cartridges in photo printers, light-cyan and light-magenta. These two varieties are used to mix the smaller nuances in colour, which will make the end result look more realistic.

Next to adding these two lighter colours some manufacturers have taken the additional step of adding even more different colours to enhance realism. HP for instance has added two shades of grey to some models of printers, while Epson has added red and blue to the four basic colours. The red is used to enhance skin colour with these printers, and by adding an 8^th cartridge with "gloss optimizer", Epson promises realistic pictures. Canon competes by also placing 8 cartridges in their photo printers, and next to the four basic colours and the grey cartridges they have added a red and a green cartridge. The adding of different colours is a constant process, some will disappear and other added. Professional printers take it a step further and these come with up to 12 different cartridges, but on consumer models the maximum is eight.

Our test prove that even the cheaper printers without additional photo cartridges still make very decent photo prints. You will in fact not see any difference when not directly compared with a professional print. A proper "photo printer" is therefore only necessary if you want the absolute best, as the average vacation prints look good with any inkjet printer.