Photos on a printer

Story: Adventures in Digital Photography With Linux, part 3: PrintingTotal Replies: 9
Author Content
mdl

Aug 15, 2007
5:51 AM EDT
I use GIMP for all my post-processing needs. GIMP may not be Photoshop, but it meets my needs very well. When I finish cropping, adjusting levels, sharpening, etc., I upload them to a photo printing site and order them. A few days later they arrive in my mailbox.

The disadvantages of using your own printer are cost, convenience and quality.

1. Cost: The supplies (paper and ink) will cost a lot more than what you will pay online or even locally.

2. Convenience: Yes, it is somewhat convenient to be able to print your own photo and have it right away. However, photo printing is a slow process and one that you will quickly tire of, especially if you have large quantities.

3. Quality: It depends. Some photo enthusiasts spend a lot of money on high quality photo printers and get good results, at a high price. I have seen pretty poor results from some of the lower priced printers. They may be OK for snapshots, but not serious photography.

IMO, your best bet would be to pick a test image and try printing it on your printer. Then send the same image to several online printers and compare. Most online printers will give you x number of free prints to try them out. I have found that there are wide variations in quality. I won't mention names here, but send me a message if you want to know who I have used and my opinions.



dinotrac

Aug 15, 2007
6:48 AM EDT
mdl -

Lots depends on your use.

For example,. it's hard to beat the convenience of loading up the printer with 4*6 paper, hooking up your camera, and printing a few shots. No computer in the middle, no nothing.

The GIMP is quite nice for tweaking photos, but is overkill for most people. Heck, it's overkill for me when all I want to do is take out some red eye or crop a shot. There really is room for a simple click me once, click me twice, now your phots will look nice kind of app.

As to quality, high-end Epson printers have delivered great quality for some time thanks to the gimp-print (now Gutenprint) project. Those folks have done seriously great work.

My latest printer isn't even high-end -- a middling Epson with the new Claria dye-based inks, and it also does a great job.
Inhibit

Aug 15, 2007
11:14 AM EDT
Both price and quality wise I get better results from an on-line print shop. Borderless never works out right for me with a photo printer (Epson or HP) and the requisite manufacturer drivers (or CUPS native, for that matter).
tracyanne

Aug 15, 2007
1:39 PM EDT
There's one serious problem with printing your photo's on your inkjet printer - the photo's fade after a very short period of time, which makes them rather useless.
dinotrac

Aug 15, 2007
5:03 PM EDT
>There's one serious problem with printing your photo's on your inkjet printer - the photo's fade after a very short period of time, which makes them rather useless.

Depends on your printer/paper/ink combination. The high-end Epsons can turn out 200 year life spans under the right conditions. Even the moderately priced Claria ink versions can go for 100.

In real-world conditions, that means photos will look good enough long enough for just about any purpose, especially when you consider that you can keep the digital version lying around.
tracyanne

Aug 16, 2007
12:04 AM EDT
Well I've compared inkjet quality prints with Photo prints, and in as little as 6 months you can already see a significant difference. If you didn't have the photographic print, you might not notice, but once you've seen the two and compared then....
dinotrac

Aug 16, 2007
12:24 AM EDT
What inkjets and what inks.

It matters. They really are not all the same.

BTW -- photo shop prints fade, too. Grab some color shots your parent took when you were a kid.
tracyanne

Aug 16, 2007
1:11 AM EDT
Quoting:What inkjets and what inks.


Whatever the inks are that come with ink cartages for retail printers, the ones that home computer owners use.

Quoting:It matters. They really are not all the same.


Indeed it does, and indeed they are not

Quoting:BTW -- photo shop prints fade, too. Grab some color shots your parent took when you were a kid.


Indeed they do, but over much greater periods of time.
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 20, 2007
1:01 PM EDT
My Epson photo printer died, so I'm using a commercial source now, too. But before that, we never even hooked the thing up to the PC. I just used an SD card to transfer the pix and printed them from there.
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 20, 2007
1:06 PM EDT
And ... would HPLIP help in this endeavour?

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