Photo Color Printers
Check out this review of just one of the photo color printers on the market below. Then follow our links to find more information on the photo color printer that is just right for you. With the explosion of these printers on the market you can find exactly what you want at the price that is right for you.
Epson Photo 960 Is the best photo printer I've owned http://www.epinions.com/content_87760277124
With the right settings and paper, this printer will produce prints that are IMPOSSIBLE to tell from actual photos, and in some cases look better than scans of 35mm prints.
I've printed on plain paper and the prints come out pretty good, but you can tell that they're a print. However, if you use actual photo paper (and I've used both the Epson glossy photo and the Kodak Premium picture paper) the results are simply amazing.
It should be noted that you may have to fiddle with the settings because the inks react differently on different media. To get accurate skin tones, you have to specify "Epson Natural Color" in the driver otherwise the printer has a tendency to print too much magenta. Printing on the Kodak paper is much slower than the Epson paper because you have to tell the driver to print on Photographic Film. An 8x10 print on the Epson paper (at 720dpi) takes about 1 minute. On the Kodak paper (at 2880) it takes about 5 minutes.
It should also be noted that the prints actually look better on the Kodak paper than the epson paper (even if you print the epson paper at 2880). But you have to go into custom settings for the kodak paper and adjust the magenta level to -2 to get the colors out right.
But back to the printer itself. It has 7 cartridges - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta and 2 black cartridges (for faster black printing). It will let you print until one of the cartridges runs completely out of ink. The nice thing is that it warns you that a cartridge is getting low, and after each print, it'll estimate how many more prints like the last page you printed it has left. For example, after printing an 8x10 with about 2% left on the light Cyan cartridge, it said, "You can print 5 more pages like the one just printed before running out of ink." It makes it easy to figure out how long you have.
Speaking of how long you have, I probably printed well over 100 full 8x10 prints before needing to change any of the cartridges. You only change the ones that run out, and new cartridges retail for $11.95 each. I had a Lexmark z65n which would only print about 35 pages before going through a full color cartridge, so this is pretty worth it.
I use this printer mostly for photos, and I am completely satisfied with the results on photo paper. The plain paper printing is decent, but then again, not very many ink jet printers really do well on plain paper. The text printing speed is fair (probably about a max speed of 2-3ppm), but that's really not the point of this printer.
The printer has several different paper paths to accommodate a large variety of media. There is the normal slightly curved feed from the back, a roll paper feed for photo rolls (more on that in a moment) and you can also feed cardboard from the front for a completely straight paper path. Also, Epson just came out with a CD print kit for the printer which will allow you to print DIRECTLY on CD's and DVD's. It's a free kit for anyone who owns the printer, and it'll start showing up in boxes in March 2003.
The roll paper feeder is a neat gimmick, as you can print borderless 4x6 photos on the roll of 4" wide paper, and it'll cut them as they come through the printer (so you can print a full set of prints like a photo lab). The roll paper is expensive and seems to curl quite a bit, even after being left under books to flatten em out for days. That's why I refer to it as a gimmick.
All in all, it's an exceptional printer and i'm glad I own it. I've been unimpressed with most of the other printers out there, including the more expensive printers from HP. Everyone at work is completely amazed by the output from the printer, and if anything, it might make you buy a better digital camera because any imperfections in the photo from the camera will be obvious on the printout.
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