Picking The Best Ink And Paper For Your Inkjet Printer

[acku]

The subject of printing has the potential to be super boring. But it's fun to break technologies down and explore how they work. If you're a true techie, you'll dig the tests we're performing to get the best quality out of our inks and printer paper.

Picking The Best Ink And Paper For Your Inkjet Printer : Read more

 

[mayankleoboy1]

the most interesting thing in this article was the B&W sunlight photo on the third page. awesome photo. can we have some more?

 

[cmcghee358]

I'm not gonna lie, I didn't read this. I read probably 90% of Toms articles because even though they are technical, they are still interesting. The title of this simply turned me off.

 

[kalidasa]

Thanks for telling me how I can find my own quality inks and paper for printing. Now I can spend hundreds of dollars testing out the "thousands", as you put it, of third-party suppliers of printing materials.

paraphrase of this article: We don't endorse buying first party, brand-name inks and paper; we're just here to tell you the extremes you can go through to find an alternative! p.s. HP is great!

 

[bennaye]

clearly someone was bored at Tom's...

 

[iam2thecrowe]

there is only one simple answer to "what is the best ink/paper for my printer". The answer is only the manufacturer of the printer makes the correct ink that and paper suitable for the printer that will yield consistantly good results for photos and prevent the head from getting clogged. The manufacturer pre-sets settings in the driver to deliver the right amount of a particular ink to a particular weight/absorbancy of paper. Use those presets with other paper/ink and you will get varied results. When you work fixing printers for a few years you will understand this is fact, not just manufacturers trying to sell overpriced ink. And you also have to remember that overpriced ink is there to make up for the losses they make on low end $50 printers.

 

[TonyJ]

No mention of Ilford paper and Hobbicolor ink. Very basic overview... Try the photo printing forums for better advice.

 

[Guest]

I switched from using vendor inks a long time ago due to the massive cost of a full set of 8 cartridges (approx £25 each) and as most of my printing is general documentation the extra cost cannot be justified. When the printer isn't used for a few weeks/months the heads do clog but this also happened with the vendor inks and wasting the expensive ink to run the cleaning program and the test page is just painful to watch, this is a fraction of the cost with the non-vendor inks.
Fade can be an issue on the photos that are left in direct sunlight (conservatory) but there is always the option to take the image to a kiosk for a better quality print, or simply print a different picture for the frame.
I don't keep large collections of printed photos in albums so I guess I might think differently if I did.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

i feel this article was just to fill the gap between something big thats coming up tomorrow or by monday.
could it be BD? you guys probably have a sample but it must be under NDA

 

[Arbie]

More than print quality, my biggest problem is that the cartidges go dry = empty all by themselves, just sitting there for a few weeks. This is in a Canon ip-4000 printer. Leakage of so much ink would be obvious, so it isn't that. It just disappears. I live in a dry climate, but all of the ink including pigment is gone so it doesn't seem to be evaporation. It's as if the cartridges had simply been used up, which I know hasn't been done since only I have access to the printer.

==> Does anyone else have this problem? Put in all new cartridges, print two or three pages, let it sit for several weeks and then find one or two cartridges almost empty? BTW I'm using cheap ebay cartridges, and don't plan to spend the money it would take to install a set of Canon units unless that's known to be the cure. I can't remember how the first set of (Canon) cartridges fared.

Thx - Arbie

 

[TonyJ]

[citation][nom]Arbie[/nom]...my biggest problem is that the cartidges go dry = empty all by themselves... - Arbie[/citation]

Make sure to turn your printer off when you aren't using it. If it cycles on and off with your computer, it will cycle through its cleaning process each time. That could be your problem...

 

[Guest]

As someone who print photos from my Canon Pro 9000 Mk 2 I enjoyed reading and being enlightened by this article.

I had used third party inks a long time ago with my Epson printer. Colours on the printouts faded after a few months and the ink clogged my inkjet heads until finally I cannot clear the clogs anymore with the cleaning cycle.

Now that I am using an expensive A3+ photo printer I am a bit wary about using 3rd party inks. I saw a brand that can be used with my Canon photo printer for half the price but I am very worried the ink with clog the heads and I end up scrapping my expensive printer or buy new ink heads.

Experimenting with photo papers is less risky. I have discovered a local brand of photo papers that gives very close results as original Canon photo papers and for half the price of Canon originals and they save me lots of money. As for the inks I stick to originals but I hunt for the cheapest in town.

 

[warezme]

Great article with good insight on what to look for when spending big bucks on paper and ink.

To those that don't get it, man, just don't read it. Not all articles have to be about high end CPU's and screaming SATA drives and this is coming from a guy who has high end CPU's, 590GTX Graphics, triple screen 23" Alienware 3D vision setup with more CPU firepower than most people I know. I also have a great interest in photography and like to shoot with both a 5dmkii and 40d and print my own stuff. It's all good. Keep up the good work Tom's and mixing things up.

 

[Arbie]

[citation][nom]TonyJ[/nom]Make sure to turn your printer off when you aren't using it. If it cycles on and off with your computer, it will cycle through its cleaning process each time. That could be your problem...[/citation]

Thanks for the idea TonyJ, but the printer is OFF all the time except when I am actually using it. It doesn't make a sound when it's OFF - no head movement or anything.

 

[jdamon113]

dumb artical

 

[zak_mckraken]

Computers get all of the glory, but everyone still owns a printer.

I laughed at that sentence! Interesting article though. I no longer print anything, but I'm always interested in the process.

 

[abdussamad]

I made a silly impulse purchase and bought an all-in-one printer. Now it's just sitting there taking up space. Unless you own an office what exactly are you going to print? Everything is digital these days and who wants more waste paper to clean up.

 

[spookyman]

One of the reasons for me favoring a Color Laser Printer.

 

[nastastic]

first image, top center, girl in red bikini top ... where can one get that picture?

 

[lp231]

Saw this printer that uses ink block that have actual cartridge. Once the ink is all used up, there is no cartridge to recycle or throw out. Less waste.

It's called solid ink

 

[gokanis]

[citation][nom]lp231[/nom]Saw this printer that uses ink block that have actual cartridge. Once the ink is all used up, there is no cartridge to recycle or throw out. Less waste.It's called solid ink[/citation]

We have a xerox phasar printer at work that uses the, for lack of a better term, waxy crayon blocks. You drop them in a slot, close the lid and boom. It prints nice. Makes the room smell like crayons, brings back the memory of the 64 count crayon boxes (with sharpener) we had when I was young.

 

[K33]

I hear Linux calling.

I am sure there is much good in the new Win platform... But like many these days they seem to think I want to play... I need to work with data and store it efficiently. Data might mean my photos and working with Photoshop.. and it might means spreadsheets... They almost forgot this with their ridiculous libraries in Win 7 along with the appalling 'Programs Menu'.

Glitz and eye candy does not equal good.

And no way am i going to reach across my desk all day to touch a screen... never mind type on it. (Are these morons serious?)

I hear Linux calling.

 

[Azn Cracker]

knockoff ink from ebay ftw!!

 

[lp231]

[citation][nom]gokanis[/nom]We have a xerox phasar printer at work that uses the, for lack of a better term, waxy crayon blocks. You drop them in a slot, close the lid and boom. It prints nice. Makes the room smell like crayons, brings back the memory of the 64 count crayon boxes (with sharpener) we had when I was young.[/citation]
Yeah, I had those 64 Crayon box too. Out of the Crayons, Markers, and Color Pencils. I like to use color pencils, let's me color in detail.

 

[Wish I Was Wealthy]

I've always used inkjet printers & I'll not consider lazer printers for now.