Photo Credit: Michel Tcherevkoff

Photographic printers are a technological miracle, enabling photographers to create museum-quality images on paper. While it’s difficult to make a device that sprays an ink pattern from a fast-moving nozzle with miniscule holes, resulting in a high-quality photograph, photographers have come to expect this from printer companies—at prices everyone can afford.

Going Pro

Since 2006, the professional photographic printer market has heated up considerably thanks to new printers from HP and Canon, major entries in the once Epson-dominated space. This is good news for those looking to purchase a printer, because it’s hard to go wrong with any of the professional models. Today’s printers feature more colors than previous models, built-in calibration and profiling, Photoshop print plug-ins and more.
    The most important thing to remember when purchasing a printer is that photographic output requires a pro-level device. While many consumer-priced printers can create good-looking images, they aren’t as accurate or as long-lasting as those built for pros. A bargain-priced printer at Staples might seem like a good idea, but if the images fade and the colors shift in a few months, the output is worthless.
    The three manufacturers mentioned above create pro-level printers and make a point of including plenty of marketing about that fact on the boxes. Each of the companies makes a variety of printers targeted at different levels, but you can identify the pro printers by looking at the model names. Look for the term “Professional” on Epson printers, “Pro” on models from HP and “Prograf” on Canon printers. We put each of the most recent professional printers from the major three companies to the test at PDN, judging each on image quality,
color accuracy, speed, ease of setup and more, and all of them came out with flying colors. (Read the complete article online.)

Basis for Comparison

When shopping for pro printers, the main considerations are size of output and the number of inks. Pro models are available from 13 inches maximum width to up to several feet across, but there’s no reason to buy a model that’s wider than the output you plan to produce. Several models, like the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 and the HP Photosmart Pro 9180 are desktop-sized, large-format printers, providing you’ve got a large desk.
    HP and Canon have responded to Epson’s printer offerings with models that sport more colors, with enhanced inks for printing reds, blues, greens and oranges. We’ve tested these devices, and they do create slightly broader reproduction of colors in the enhanced ranges, though often at the expense of other areas in the color range. Generally speaking, if you’re a photographer who shoots nothing but landscapes, a printer with specialized green inks would be one to consider. It’s also important to remember that the more inks a printer has, the more inks you will have to be replace. This isn’t a big concern for photographers who are making money off their prints, but it’s certainly something the hobbyist should keep in mind.
    While you will find a number of third-party ink sets targeted at photographers looking to cash in on their outputs, buying these inks isn’t such a great idea. In pro printers, manufacturers have spent a lot of time developing their ink sets in order to create superb output. In our tests at PDN, images printed with replacement inks—at least for the photographer looking primarily for permanence and color gamut—were lower in quality than those printed with the manufacturer’s ink sets.
    Of course, longevity is also an important factor. For those who enjoy a good comparison chart, the Wilhelm Imaging Research site lists longevity results for just about every printer and ink combination on the market. And the following buyer’s guide will show you some of the latest professional printers—models that promise to create stunning output that will last a lifetime.