If it’s not on paper, it’s not a real photograph. You must’ve heard this sentence at least once in your photographic journey. For many, it rings true. The best way to appreciate our captures is to hold them on a physical paper. But how to best print at home? Which printer to get? How to use it?
Benefits Of Printing Yourself
Printing your work can have many reasons. Whether you’re showing off your work to potential clients, planning an exhibition, creating an archive, or covering the walls of your home with images you’re proud of it can be done two ways. You either pay a dedicated printing company to do it for you or you do it yourself. Both can be a great way to get your files on paper and depending on where you live, the amount of printing you want to do, and the image quality you want one can be much more cost-effective than the other.
Printing at home has a few benefits over using a third-party company. First and foremost, if you pick a decent printer with manageable ink costs and capacity, it will be cheaper in the long run if you plan on printing often. However, it will be an investment at the start. The next benefit would be absolute control over your process including proofs, time, or paper type. You won’t need to visit a dedicated showroom, deal with wait times for your order to be completed, or settle on the paper that is available at the vendor. You can print at your leisure, whenever you’ve got some free time, and choose from a plethora of papers available for purchase either online or at your local camera shop.
I’ve been printing on my own for many years now and while I agree using a third party can be comfortable, I don’t always get the desired result and have to often deal with delivery times, my availability, transfers, and occasionally damaged products. So now that you’ve decided to print at home what do you need to get? Well, of course, a printer would be a great start.
Which Printer Is Best For You?
While there are multiple different kinds of print technologies available at the moment we’re going to exclude thermal and Instax printing for now. The machines we’re going to have a look at are all going to be inkjets. Those can be split into two major camps. Tank and cartridge printers. The difference is the way ink is stored and sold. Both have their pros as well as cons.
Cartridge Printers
Up until recently, this was the most common way of filling up a printer. You bought dedicated cartridges that would be inserted into the machine, and once the ink was all used up, you replaced the entire cartridge. Now, you can unofficially refill and reprogram these containers to show up full at all times allowing you to save a considerable amount of money. The internet is full of guides on how to do so, but we will not be recommending doing so as it can both void your warranty and in the worst case, ruin your printer. Especially when you use third-party inks.
Nowadays cartridge printers more often than not get used for the more premium lineups which are aimed toward high-quality prints with more accurate color reproduction. This is achieved by using considerably more than your basic 4 CMYK colors. The printers we will be mentioning all use more than 8 separate colors. Their most notable downside is the capacity and cost of said cartridges though.
The best candidates to look for would be either the SureColor series from Epson or the imagePROGRAF series from Canon. Epson currently offers a decent lineup of home printers, but my recommendation is the SC-P700 or the SC-P900. Both run 10 individual colors to perfectly recreate your digital files including two separate black inks for either matte or gloss paper and two different shades of gray for beautiful monochromatic prints. The technology in these printers is identical to the more professional SC-P20000 made for gallery-quality prints, so you get the same benefits of long-lasting reproductions that are worthy of selling to clients.
The main difference between the SC-P700 and SC-P900 would not be the maximum paper size as the first look might give you. Yes, the 700 only does A3+, whilst the 900 does A2+, but the main difference is the cartridge capacity. Strangely even though they are physically the same size on the outside, the SC-P700 uses T46 cartridges with a capacity of 25ml, while the SC-P900 uses T47 50ml ones. The price difference at the moment does not correspond to getting twice as much ink. If you plan to print more, the larger SC-P900 makes a lot of sense in the long run. Both printers mentioned can also print using roll paper, which can save costs and allow for extreme panoramas. The smaller 700 already has a holder built-in, the larger 900 needs an extra accessory so keep that in mind.
Canon, on the other hand, only has one printer I’d recommend. The brilliant imagePROGRAF PRO-1000. With its load of 12 individual cartridges be ready to spend a bit more whenever you need a refill. Luckily, the cartridges are 85 milliliters so they should last a decent while. Some might say the PRO-300 might be a good option, but I disagree. While it can deliver beautiful prints, the ink capacity is so disappointingly small and needs replacing so often that you might as well just skip it. If only Canon released the same printer with usable-sized ink cartridges.
The main differences between the aforementioned Epson and Canon printers would be one, the print characteristics, and two, the maintenance. I’ve been printing on both systems for years now, and somehow the Epsons consistently get me better results in monochromatic/black-and-white. Color prints, however, do not show much difference except a slightly punchier contrast on the Canon while the Espon tends to look more true to life. The maintenance, on the other hand, tilts toward Canon. I’ve had jets dry up on the Epsons after forgetting a single two-week nozzle check on multiple occasions. This naturally costs a bit more ink to clean up and at the same time fills up the maintenance box a bit faster. On the other hand, I managed to get my hands on a Canon PRO-1000 after it hadn’t been touched for a year and the nozzle check came out perfect with no errors. In fact, I’ve never had a dry nozzle in the PRO-1000. Not sure how that happened but I’m not complaining at all.
Tank Printers
This kind of printer got its name from the tanks used to hold ink. Epson calls them EcoTank, Canon calls them MegaTank. You fill them by pouring ink in from a special bottle usually designed for your printer. The ink in these is considerably cheaper than the one in the cartridge printers and the tanks can usually hold a lot more of it. If you plan on printing many photographs, this is your best bet. Except if perfect color accuracy and/or longevity is what you’re after. Tank printers mainly go for your basic CMYK colors with an odd one or two extra colors added. But there is not much to work with when you need to recreate the exact same color on the paper as what your file holds. Make sure to look at what type of ink your printer uses as well. There is a large difference between dye-based ink and pigment-based one.
The lack of dedicated grey inks also means you’d be hard-pressed to get a true black-and-white print. More often than not, actually every single time, the monochromatic prints use a multitude of other colors than just black to achieve the correct tonality. This results in a photograph that never has true black-and-white. All of your images will have a slight tint to them. It’s usually ok if all you do is hang your photographs up on a wall under a warm light in your living room. But you wouldn’t show it in a gallery, and I definitely would not recommend selling those prints to serious clients.
For your regular home use the Canon G-series, like the G540 or the G640, isn’t half bad. But only for your classic hobby prints, family clicks, and/or if you just want your photos on paper and don’t care much for perfect reproduction. Their largest benefit is the cost of printing. A single fill can apparently get you up to 3.800 sheets of 6x4” photos. I’ve got one in my home office at the moment for my family clicks, and yeah, it’s tough trying to get it to empty.
For the more serious photographers out there who still don’t want to spend a ton on ink, the Epson L8180 (ET-8550) seems like a great value for money. This printer capable of papers up to A3+ carries six individual ink tanks, each holding 80ml of ink. Of the six inks, one is pigment-based for your documents and PDFs, the other five are dye-based for photography including grey ink for better black-and-white reproductions. Don’t be fooled though, it’s still not a perfect monochromatic print. You can still see an occasional tint in the midtones here and there. But it is a step in the right direction. Overall, the L8180 is a jack of all trades. Great for not just hobbyist/enthusiast-level photography but also for a home office thanks to the dedicated document ink, online capability with its own email address, four ways of feeding the printer, and a decent scanner. If you do not need to print on the large A3+, it has a smaller and cheaper brother called the L8160, which maxes out at A4.
ICC And Color Accuracy
There are many things to keep in mind if you want your photographs to come out exactly the way you’ve captured and edited them. The printer is incredibly important, that’s a given. But that is only the last piece of the puzzle. Of course, your file needs to contain the best amount of information so shooting raw before editing is key. On the other hand, resolution is not as important as many would make you believe. A 16-megapixel file can easily cover an A3. It’s only when you get into meters that you need to start thinking about increasing your resolution. Paper is very forgiving when it comes to detail and you usually do not zoom to 200% when looking at a paper photograph unlike on a screen.
Speaking of a screen, this is yet another important factor. If you are planning on printing on a tank printer with only a few inks at its disposal your laptop screen might be enough as you’re never really going to get perfectly accurate prints, but if you plan on using any of the aforementioned cartridge units, then a laptop screen is just not going to cut it anymore. Laptop screens today are mostly made to save battery power and perfect color accuracy comes not even in the second place. Getting a dedicated monitor capable of displaying 10 bits of color, being hardware-calibrated, and AdobeRGB-worthy will get you a long way. Monitors like the BenQ SW series or possibly the best on the market, the Eizo ColorEdge series, will get you a very good idea of what is going to come out of your printer. Getting the monitor is just a start though.
Getting your screen calibrated is key. If you use your computer roughly eight hours a day, five days a week, your colors can shift within a few months of use. A dedicated color probe like the ones from Datacolor or Calibrite will make sure your colors stay true. The Eizo CG monitors have a built-in probe that takes care of such an issue. Next is your backlight. Paper typically is not backlit. So when you edit your work on a 1000-nit MacBook Pro screen, thinking you’ve got plenty of detail in the shadows you might be in for a surprise. Once the paper comes out of the printer you might find all of your shadow detail to be gone or extremely hard to see. The best practice is to set your screen to somewhere between 80 and 100 nits to ensure you’re working with a similar brightness as an illuminated paper.
The color profile used for your screen depends on the paper and printer you intend to use. Whether you choose Permajet, Brilliant, Hahnemühle, or native Epson/Canon papers, make sure you choose the correctly corresponding ICC profile. Each paper has a different absorption rate, thickness, reflective capabilities, and color properties, and we need to make sure all of those features are shown on the screen during our soft proofing. Most paper suppliers will provide ICC profiles for their stock but not for all available printers. The process is tedious, takes a long time, and can cost quite a bit of money so the manufacturers concentrate on the high-end printers primarily.
Of course, using the correct or best software to print your work does affect your outcome just as well. Your basic PDF viewer or JPEG preview programs won’t cut it. Personally, for Epson machines, I’ve found that the best results I got were done using Epson Print Layout and for Canon printers, it’s Professional Print&Layout. Both let you select precise settings regarding your paper most importantly the ICC profile once it’s installed on your computer. If you want to be extra precise, get even more involved, and don’t mind spending a bit for your software Mirage is a great way to go. Of course, printing straight out of Photoshop or Lightroom is also a valid option with the right plugins.
Just Do It!
There’s this line in the 2017 movie Kodachrome where Ed Harris’ character Ben says, “People are taking more pictures now than ever before. Billions of ‘em. But, there are no slides, no prints. They’re just data, electronic dust. Years from now, when they dig us up, there won’t be any pictures to find. No record of who we were, how we lived.” We hoard thousands upon thousands of digital images on our drives, on our backups, in catalogs, and in Lightroom libraries but none of those truly let you appreciate your craft. Looking at photography in a physical space does something a screen never could. It makes your efforts tangible, it makes you proud of your work, and it makes you feel great. At least, that’s what printing images does to me. Do yourself and the world a favor and print your best work. And when you run out of your best, keep printing because even the lesser images look beautiful on paper.
I advocate for prints at any opportunity. As such, I’ve heard every objection under the sun. I call them printing myths, and these are my responses:
Myth #1. I’m a photographer… I’ll leave printing to the experts when someone wants to buy a print.
If you’re really a serious photographer, examine your work in the light of a print. Prints expose flaws in your photos in a way that viewing on a monitor generally does not. Printing will improve your photography.
Myth #2. Printing is too complicated.
Actually, hooking up a printer is very simple, as long as you can tell one end of a cable from another. Paper profiles and calibrated monitors are helpful, but not necessary for starting out. You can make nice prints without them. The printer itself will ask for you to tell it the broad category of paper… beyond that, we’re kind of splitting hairs.
Myth #3. Printing is too expensive.
Compared to what… a day trip skiing at Aspen with the family? The Canon Pixma Pro line of printers are great, starting at about US$ 500. Most photographers wouldn’t even blink at spending that much and more for a lens.
Myth #4. My kids would rather have digital images. Nobody keeps paper any more.
What if the kids find the equivalent of a 3.5” floppy disc in a desk drawer after you’re gone? Storage device technology changes constantly. In just 20 years, the storage device from today will probably be useless. Your old flash drive that they can't connect in 2050 will get tossed in the garbage along with your tie dye shirts and recliner sofa without a second thought. Paper is timeless. I have prints of my family that are a hundred years old.
Myth #5. I don’t have any more wall space for my prints.
Prints serve a greater purpose than just decorative wall art. Epson’s tagline is “Print Your Legacy.” You don’t need to keep the volume of picture binders that our families kept when we grew up in the 60s, but I have a few boxes of my favorite photographs that are special, and think my kids would appreciate. They represent my vision for the last two decades. It’s the work that represents how I’d like to be remembered. I also have a few large prints of my grandparents that are preserved in old Kodak paper boxes. They’re the first thing I’d grab if the house caught on fire. Clamshell boxes are perfect for storing prints.
Myth #6. Consuming paper is bad for the environment.
Most paper is made from trees grown on commercial farms with managed forests where new trees are continuously being replanted to replace harvested trees. Paper is the most recycled packaging material compared to glass, metal and plastic.
Myth #7. Printing is a pain in the rear end. I don’t like it… I’d rather go to the dentist.
Sorry, I have no answer for that. If the whole process and finished product doesn’t speak to you, then don’t do it. In many ways, it’s something that requires a bit of dedication to the craft. Making a print once every couple months doesn’t justify owning a photo printer.
That printer in your photo - how much did it cost? $5000? $10000? How many prints, at what sizes, justifies the cost for you?
This printer is eight years old so I don't remember the exact price ($4-5K as I recall). The newest Epson version of the 44" printer is about US$6,000 and has a disproportionate number of complaints in the B&H reviews. So I chose to replace this unit with a Canon Pro-4100 at about $3,000. Printers quite often have steep discounts and factory rebates, especially as newer units are being introduced... in this case the Canon Pro-4600.
You are correct regarding constant use and ink clogs, although that issue depends a lot on the type of printer. The pigment ink Epson printers are especially vulnerable, so I have to print at least something no more than four or five days apart to avoid wasting ink on head cleaning cycles. Some of that depends on the relative humidity in the house. And this printer is finicky enough that I can print something perfectly one minute and get a ruined print from a clogged head the next. This would all be true for your P700 as well. On the other hand, the Canon Pixma Pro 200 uses dye inks and a thermal print head, and can sit for weeks or even months without a print head clog.
As far as what amount of printing justifies the cost of owning a printer, the best answer I can give is that buying a print from a professional photo lab is typically about four times the cost of my cost of paper and ink. Obviously larger capacity ink cartridges lower your unit cost of ink. A WhiteWall Ultra HD 20 x 30 print is $52.95. My paper and ink cost (excluding waste, cleaning cycles, cost of printer) for that size print is about $10. So you can do the math for estimating the point at which it justifies the cost of buying the printer. As I said though in my original post, I want the pride and control over the printing process. Having the printer motivates me to sell my work.
I agree but as I've said. A nozzle check once every two weeks usually negates the clogging issue. The Pixma Pro-200 is almost as good as the Pro-300 (plus their print heads are user-replaceable) but they both suffer greatly from ridiculously tiny cartridges of just 12ml. I print two, maybe three colour A4 photographs and I get a notification that one of the inks is running low. It's an endless cycle with those two. The P700 at least has 25ml and the P900 has 50ml. I think the most reliable "affordable" home printer at the moment with the best ink capacity is the Pro-1000 albeit the cartridges themselves aren't cheap.
I think Pro 300 have 15 ml and price for ink is similar to P700. Maybe for light use that’s just fine.
Cool. I understand where you are coming from.
Personally, I find printers and printing costs are becoming a bit too high for my wallet. So called high end art papers, A3+ size, 25 sheets, are costing £150 and higher. Definitely in the near future, I simply cannot afford to pay for this hobby. Shame.
Every time something breaks, it seems to cost twice what I had expected. Photography and selling my prints is the best option I can think of to avoid real work. Besides, I truly love it.
I bought Epson P800 in 2016 and I only random us it. It’s been off for months at the time. Only once did I run cleaning program. So while the real pro Epson might need to run more or less daily, not so with the lower end models. I think it must be safe to get the P700 even if not in use all the time.
You state "You don’t need to keep the volume of picture binders that our families kept when we grew up in the 60s, but I have a few boxes of my favorite photographs that are special"
However, these printers need to be in constant use, otherwise the print heads may clog up.
So, either you have to print a lot, or you have to waste ink doing nozzle checks to keep the printer in working order.
They do need occasional print from each nozzle to avoid drying up or clogging up but all you need is a nozzle check once every two weeks, once a month at max. This uses barely any ink (just a few drops out of each nozzle) and ensures the nozzles stay fresh. It'd be great if the process could be automated for traveling people, but apart from that, it's barely a hassle.
But yeah, getting a printer is much more economical if you're actively printing and not just once every six months.
Very nice comment, Edward, thank you! Prints indeed are a crucial part of photography and without them, you're losing out on so much. Is that an SC-P9000 or newer in your photo? I used to print a lot on it back in my Wex Photo London days. Such a great machine.
It's an older P8000 printer that I purchased in 2016. It needs another print head replacement for $1200 so I opted to buy a new Canon Pro-4100 instead at a little over US$3000.
Oh damn! Nice to see someone taking printing seriously :)
Printing is a passion for me. As you introduced your article, a photo is not complete until I'm holding it in my hands. It's a hard feeling to describe to someone whose life is dominated by digital everything. Even if I never sold a print, I'd own a smaller printer, the most likely being the Canon 1000 that you mention.... 17x22 seems like the perfect size for personal use. I prefer larger margins/borders in my prints in order to fully appreciate the paper.
By the way, I've come to appreciate matte papers so much more. With all the hoopla surrounding metal and acrylic prints with their super saturation and bright shiny surfaces, for the most part I've come to prefer the calming effect of glare-free matte papers with a slight fiber texture. That realization affects the way I approach my photography, so I still maintain that printing your own photos has a huge influence on a person's photographic skills and style of work.
I agree on the matte papers. I really like Hahnemuhle Natural Line. That being said I still love a pearl/luster finish on a baryta paper.
I own a Epson P700. I think it is a mediocrely built machine. Rear paper feeder is poor, often does not grab thicker papers. Front loader tray will break down beacuse the spring open/close system is cheaply made. The paper pathway has very tight tolerances, if your paper has some curl, the paper edges will hit something, leaving dents.
This may be anecdotal. I am simply stating the problems I have faced.
I understand. No printer works without issues. I work with both the 900 and the 700 and neither is perfect. But it's a decent value for money. I wish they perfected feeding recognition so that it would align the paper perfectly. I often get a slight misalignment where the paper is tilted and that leaves me with uneven borders. It's not a rule with every print, but it happens. The larger the paper, the more obvious tilt. I guess that is why when you want to go borderless you need the machine to print outside of the paper.
Rear rollers not grabbing the paper, paper skew, paper curl and head strikes, pizza wheel marks, paper jam etc.
Personally, I do not like the design of printers with rollers. Too many things that could go wrong.
I think a flatbed type printer is a better design. Have a simple tray, no cogs, no springs. Pull out the tray. Place paper in tray, aligned in a corner, similar to a scanner. Push the tray back into the printer.
To stop headstrikes, place a frame around the edges to hold it down. This means no borderless prints, but I am fine with that. Or trim the paper afterwards to achieve a borderless print.
Finally, the print-head traverses over the paper.
Less parts equals less things that can go wrong. Lowers costs for manufacturers.
Yes, such a design is cumbersome. Cannot do multiple prints. Not compact. But I could live with it. YMMV.
Will such a thing become a reality? Doubt it.
I'd also point out, it you can't be bothered to print at home, just send your images to a printing house once or twice a year. It's cheaper than maintaining a home printer in many cases anyways since most of us don't need to print on demand
Of course that is a very valid option out there. I personally prefer to print myself but I understand it can be much easier and cheaper for anyone who's not printing in higher amounts. I for example really liked working with local print shops when I lived in London, but nowadays I enjoy the process and would miss it if I just sent my files to a print studio.
Ondřej, just to balance my other points - I too love the whole process of taking a photo, editing it and having a largish print in my hands. I too advocate printing. Just that there are some obstacles that people have to be aware of before diving into the world of home printing.
Your comments about laptop display gamut surprised me. Laptops from at Apple, Dell, Acer, Asus, and Microsoft currently offer displays capable of displaying 100% of the Adobe RGB color space. My current Dell Precision laptop, purchased three years ago, features such a display.
I routinely calibrate the Precision's display using the same i1 Display Pro colorimeter I use to calibrate my desktop's monitor.
Photos edited on my laptop don't need to be re-edited on my desktop to fix color issues.
I think this article places too much emphasis on ink or tank size and cost and not enough on the difference between dye based and pigment inks, and the risks of using 3rd party inks. Personally, I think using 3rd party in a pigmented ink printer is a stupid idea and can’t believe all the “serious” photographers on the internet that espouse doing so. Nobody took up photography to save money. If that’s your biggest concern, try knitting.
When our children were in preschool, they brought home photographs, which of course we hung on the wall. These prints, which weren’t even in direct sunlight, faded to almost completely pure white by the end of the school year. I grant you today’s dye-based printers are likely better, but ultimately, a dye based printer is a waste of time and money. The whole purpose of printing is longevity, this is your legacy.
A few years ago I ditched my perfectly serviceable Epson 7600 and 9600 printers because Epson decided to quit making the ink. While I understand it from an economic point of view, it was still pretty disappointing since there was nothing wrong with these printers. My feeling is you buy the printers for the inks, for the long term permanence they promise. I teach photography, and after seeing so many of my students with clogged Epson printheads, which aren’t serviceable, and hearing of Epson’s poor customer service, I happily said goodbye to Epson and purchased a Canon 4100. The build quality between Canon and Epson is incomparable: my Canon weighs about three times as much as the Espon did (and I love the magenta screws on the inside). Given that I print on canvas and stretch on frames I build and need to sacrifice 6 inches for the canvas wrap, and the Canon 4100 came with a thousand dollar more ink over the Canon 2100, the 4100 was the natural choice.
I've never had a head clogged, Canon customer support has been exceptional, and perhaps unironically, a small Epson desktop printer I have died last week after I had purchased more ink for it. A simple pop and it was dead. So much for Epsons… I replaced it with a used Canon Pro 10 I bought for $100 USD. I’ve been impressed with Canon products since my dad brought back a Canon Demi from Japan in 1967, and this printer proves that quality is one of their top priorities (and yes, I shoot with Nikon).
I tell my students it’s an image when it’s on your screen; it’s a photograph when you can hold it. Over the last few years, I’ve encouraged my students to get their images out of their computers and cell phones. Make prints, produce calendars, put them on towels and coffee cups. Just do something with them.
My experience with Epson has followed pretty much the same path as yours. Their customer service has always been pretty bad in my experience, although after a few days and multiple efforts to contact a human, the guy there admitted that the cost of repairing an eight year old P8000 printer might not be the best decision considering that replacement parts can be difficult to acquire after it hits the ten year life span. Purchasing the new 44" Epson P9570 was an option, but five of the eight reviews at B&H were one or two stars... the other three reviews being five stars. At least the Epson tech support guy owned up to the unresolved problems they're having with that unit. So I chose a Canon Pro-4100 as you did. I'm hoping for fewer clogged heads and wasted prints. The B&H rep did say though that the clogged heads had more to do with pigment vs dye ink, than the Canon vs Epson print head design. Missing ink nozzles can actually be more complicated than just some dried ink, but that's another issue. Some people claim that they have to run prints through their Canon pigment printers regularly (or have it perform automatic cleaning cycles) to avoid clogged heads. On the other hand, I also have a desktop Canon Pixma Pro-100 printer which uses dye inks that can be left without use for weeks or even months without having a clogged print head.
The Canon Pro-100 leads me to the subject of dye inks. If one accepts the argument that dye inks are far less likely to clog a print head and drive us nuts from so many wasted prints, then I see those printers as a reasonable consideration for the amateur photography enthusiast. I don't think I'd universally agree that the whole purpose of printing is longevity, especially if you define longevity as a period of time which outlives each of us. And, yes, dye ink chemistry has improved... as have all other facets of inkjet printer design. Obviously you can't place any type of an unprotected print, pigment or dye, on a wall in direct sunlight and expect it to last very long. But stored in a box, one can probably expect a dye print to last a hundred years or so... or so the experts claim. Even if they're overestimating by 70 years, it won't make any difference to me.
I agree about the value of printing and think all the pros and cons have been mentioned. I personally see more of the former than the latter.
I owned a Canon Pro-1000 for a few years and was extremely happy with it. I messed it up by buying third-party ink from 123inkt.nl here in the Netherlands. Sure, it was cheaper ink but after a while i had clogged heads and also noticed that the quality of the prints didn't match that delivered by the original inks.
Now I'm looking for a replacement printer that does A2 at a comparably small footprint. Perhaps it'll be the Pro-1000 again.
a very good article. I do see one issue in that the Canon Tank Printers use the Apple AirPrint drivers which are very basic and don’t allow for the use of ICC profiles.
You should be able to change that. After installing driver try install new and se if can find what you need. Or Google or get support somehow.