Question for all you techies/graphics people… My wife has a little business that involves printing photos and text. She wants a new printer, and I’d like to surprise her with one. I heard that laser printers are terrible at photos but that is about the extent of my knowledge. The photos and text need to be very high quality. I was looking at some HP printers but can’t seem to find a perfect match…does she really need two printers!!! Anybody have any suggestions for a high quality printer that can print both text and photos? I was looking at spending 5-$600.
No specific recommendation, but be careful with the consumables costs - sometimes the toner costs as much as the printer. The color laserjets can cost up to $1 to print a photo. Also, the same expensive toner used to print color is used to black and white.
If I could make one suggestion, it would be to get a decent laser printer for text and a nice inkjet for the occasional photo. Alternatively, if she is printing for a client, she can just print the color images to Kinkos, they typically have very high quality color printers that to a great job with photos. Kinkos supports printing over Internet, you send the job, pick it up at your convenience. The client is paying anyway, right?
I’ll answer this from a photographer’s perspective. In the opinion of many, the “Cervelo/QR” of photo printers is Epson, whereas HP is probably the “Trek” (ubiquitous, but not well dialed in to this market segment). In your price bracket, the Epson Photo R-1800 has excellent photo capability, and can print large format for fold-out brochures and other presentation material. It can also print directly onto CDs and DVDs, if you ever distribute content in that media. For premium photo inkjet paper, Kodak.
Is she printing photos and text on the same page? Or large text documents (b & w) and including high quality photos?
b & w laser printers are great for relatively high volume documents. HP, Epson, Lexmark all make decent photo printers, but they (the consumables) are expensive and slow, especially to do a lot b & w work.
Volume? How many pages? How many copies?
For very low volume work, a color inkjet is fine. If she is doing a fair amount of b & w text, a inexpensive laser will do. Once she is doing more volume, it’s probably cheaper to take it to Kinkos after proofing it at home. High quality, high volume color, or color photos are going to be expensive at home. (Color laser, etc.)