After people have asked for my recommendation on cameras, in almost the next breath, I'm asked about the printer -- even when the people are 'only going to email them'. Again, in order to answer this question your going to need to understand a few things first.
- What are you going to print on?
- What size(s) are you going to want to print?
- What's your budget
Usually after dropping $500-600 on a digital camera people suddenly get cheap and forget that the printer is as important in the digital photography process as the camera is. If your camera takes crummy pictures there isnt much that the printer can do to save the outputed image. When you're taking good pictures you need a decent printer in order to print out a nice, quality image (in less than an hour).
Click here to see the types of photo printers that are available.
The greater majority of users will purchase inkjet style photo printers. Click here for the advantages/disadvantages of inkjet printers. Now, what is it that you should buy. When you purchased your camera, we were reviewing the needs and what you would be doing with the photos after you took them. The discussion relating to printing focused on printing out your enlargements (5x7 and 8x10) at resolutions of 300dpi. This should tell you that the 14 million dpi printers are probably not really necessary for you -- because you cant print out a photo better than it mathematically CAN be printed out.
If you are a snap-shot printer (3 1/2 x 5s or 4 x 6s), then you'll want to get a 'decent' printer. You can get a decent printer in the Under $200 price range and you honestly shouldnt spend more than that -- in all probability, you can get a good photo printer for around $100-125 street price (that means the price in the store). If you're going to enlarge your photos up to 8 x 10, then you may need to go a little more expensive, but possibly not. Your price range will be in the $150 to $300 range.
2 big factors in determining your printer are; how big do you want to print and what do you want to print ON. At the very least ALL of these printers should be able to print up to legal or letter sized paper and you'll want to be able to print on at least glossy photo paper. The paper size is because you probably want only 1 printer connected to your computer, if you can't print out letter size paper then you'll never print something out of Excel or Quicken because you wont be able to.
As for the type of paper that you're going to print on, this is a pretty important decision. For example, if you purchase an Epson printer, I recommend that you only purchase Epson supplies -- inks and paper. The reason for this is that I've found that when using my printer, the print quality on other papers is not very good -- the paper supplies provided by Epson are designed to outperform other manufacturers. Now, if you want to print onto t-shirt transfer paper you'll need to make sure that there are supplies available for your printer. There are a lot of paper manufacturers out there that provide a lot of different types of paper, we recommend that the papers that you print out photos that you want to save should be a Premium Glossy finish or a Heavyweight Matte finish.
