Printer questions (SB)

[Jackie H.]

I need your help!

Do any of you use a printer to print your digital photos?

I am interested in doing this, but I want to know the print quality will be good (excellent, actually) and long lasting. Are the printers on the market of the quality we would want for our scrapbooking pictures?

I don't want my photos slowing disappearing or anything over time.

Any and all advice is greatly appreicated!

Jackie

 

[Lainy67]

I do. We use a HP 970 Cse. However, it is not considered ARCHIVAL. The only major printer manufacturer that has a product with ink that is tested out to I believe 75 years lightfastedness, etc.. is Epson. The one I saw is the newer 2200 and it is $699. None of the other manufacturers will guarantee or promote their ink as archival in quality.

The other issue is the paper. There are many archival papers out there. CM has a line of them, for instance. However, I don't know the stats on the other papers as far as the acid, lignin and buffering go.

The other thing you want to make sure of is whether you need strictly a photo inkjet or a dual system. Ours (the HP 970) uses the same ink, prints to the same specs, etc... as the smaller HP Photo only system. The only difference is that we can't take a flash card and stick it into the printer and automatically print. Howefver, our feelings (geek that my hubby is) is who the heck would want to do that. We want to fiddle with the pic then print it. So we have a printer that we can use for other things and for photos.

I have seen some reviews out there, and quite frankly the Epson seems the nicest, but the price is steep. Epson has VERY nice reviews on the color, the lightfast, the contrast,etc... Canon has a model that claims 25 years if printed on specific papers, but that to me is not enough. HP is notoriously bad about talking about their lightfastness, but we bought this before printing pics became an issue, and can't see buying another one anytime soon since we do primarily film photos with only a few digital that we want in books.

Good Luck

 

[Beanie]

We use a HP PhotoSmart P1100 and love it! We have had our printer for about a year and a half now and I print all the pictures of the kids out on this! We use HP Premium Plus Glossy Photo Paper and I honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a "real" picture! LOL I can't even begin to think how much money I have saved on pictures by getting this printer! We also use a Kodak DC 290 Digital Camera to take the pictures, which works out great because you just take the Memory Disk out of the camera when you are done taking pictures and insert it into the Printer and download the pictures to your computer that way... So easy! LOL

As for Scrapbooking pictures, I have no idea if these are okay to use for that...I use them, but I also have all my pictures on Disks as well, so I will always have them there...

 

[DiznEeyore]

Dh and I were just discussing this! I read about a new Epson printer that is *awesome* for photographs and archival to 100+ years! It's the Stylus Photo 2200. It's just now becoming available. It retails for around $800 -- I saw one on ebay for $720 as a buy it now. Dh is a photography bug, and has agreed that we *need* this printer! LOL We're going to start saving for it.