What printer would be better and/or more economical on ink than a typical decent home printer? A3 seems like it could be worth investing in, but is there any sort of technology to look for? Is all inkjet much of a much?
Why not just use a print service?
Why not just use a print service?
This.
Guy I know uses The Print Space.
We have 3 A3 photo printers for our work. However, everything gets sent to the lab / printers. It's just a lot cheaper. The Inkjets are for emergency / quick turnaround jobs and the cost we charge reflects that.
The other problem with inkjets is that they aren't really suited to one-off occasional prints as they normally do a cleaning cycle when they start up that eats ink 🙁 . If you only do one or two prints a day you don't get much out of a cartridge.
I have had no problem with PhotoBox. I have seen some here questioning their colour accuracy, but I've not found a problem (and that's after a career in video and film post production including working for Technicolor as the nightshift facilities manager). I guess if you wanted to display prints at a venue where you can control the lighting and therefore the only variable is everyone's individual colour perception then colour fidelity might be an issue?
I highly recommend [url= http://www.digitalab.co.uk/ ]Digitalabs[/url]. Email them and ask for a colour card before exporting your images.
Why not just use a print service?
You tell me, I have no idea. Is it cheap?
As for colour accuracy - I doubt it's an issue.
http://www.proamimaging.com/pricelist.php
18 by 12 inch still £1.20 and the best quality print service I have ever used
You do have to do your own resive and convert to profile but that is in many ways a benefit
you get back what you sent
A good inkjet might do better quality but at a much higher price
As for colour accuracy - I doubt it's an issue.
Why not?
It'd be an issue if someone really wanted a picture to exactly match their curtains or something.
But a flower is still just as pretty even if the reds are slightly pinker than they looked on the computer.
Colour accuracy is an issue. That's why we have monitor calibration and icc profiles.
Maybe you're happy with your flower having a colour cast, but you might be less happy when the cast affects the background.
If you're concerned about printing costs, and want to print largish quantities, invest in a decent ciss system for a printer. Needs a bit of research though- there's a big variation in the quality of inks, and how well the printer can deal with them. Used to be that the majority, if not all the high quality setups used Epson printers.
White backgrounds are probably the most obvious issue. Blues and yellows creeping in can look weird.
If you're doing PP brightness is a problem too. It's easy to have your monitor brightness too high and dull prints.
Molgrips... are you anywhere near Cardiff? If so I can recommend Davies Printers, Splott. Very friendly bunch, will even give you a full lab tour showing all the different printers, papers and finishes. Good on cost too
EDIT slow to type this, hence the repetition of posts above
What about brightness, tone and contrast? I guess if you're using a 'true colour' monitor and know that your printer is using the same calibration, including perhaps most importantly WB, or if it just doesn't matter to you, then it's probably not an issue; but otherwise, if you have the chance to calibrate with your printer before using them, why wouldn't you?