# Recomend me a good color printer!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recomend-me-a-good-color-printer/135623>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 6, 2002, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recomend-me-a-good-color-printer/135623 "2002-11-06T23:47:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2002, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recomend-me-a-good-color-printer/135623/21 "2002-11-08T15:44:03Z")

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Also consider file size. 2400x2400 dpi at 8"x10" is a really BIG file,  
5,760,000 dots per sq inch x 80 sq in= 460,800,000 dots to process (Right?)

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**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2002, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recomend-me-a-good-color-printer/135623/22 "2002-11-08T17:06:49Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \*
> 
> I am not sure what “lacking” entails, but consider these factors:
> 
> 1. Paper - photo prints look a lot better on special paper.

Check!

> [@](#):
>
> 1. RGB vs CMYK. Anything you see on the monitor uses the RGB (red - green - blue) model. Anything printed out uses the CMYK (cyan - magenta - yellow - black) model. So an image printed out on paper will be different from what you see on the monitor, unless you use sophisticated software to process the images into CMYK first.

Dunno about that. It was an Adobe program that came with the scanner.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. Even when your image is CMYK on the monitor, it will probably look somewhat different from a printout because of the difference in media.
> 
> 2. Printer - how well is it in mixing the primary colours? Sometimes you need to do calibration first.

Dunno about that. There was some fancy/schmancy Epson program with the printer that we ran periodically. Note this was about 2 years ago, so my memory of the instance is faded

> [@](#):
>
> 1. Ink - are you using original cartridges or generic replacements?

Genuine Epson

> [@](#):
>
> 1. Size - are you expanding small images into big ones? Don’t. Remember even on SVGA monitors (800 x 600), the resolution is a mere 96 dpi. So printed images will be a lot smaller than what you see on screen.

Gotcha. Actually, I was going smaller (8x10 photo down to 5x7).

> [@](#):
>
> 1. File format - jpeg images can come out blocky.

BMP. If memory serves, it was a big honkin’ file too.

I guess I am comparing our 800 color against my buddies printer (which I _believe_ was 2400x1200). There was a real noticable difference. On the 5x7 print from ours, you could tell (even after playing with the settings quite a bit, it did improve somwhat) that it was a print-out. The same file printed on his printer was far superior. Even blowing it back up to 8x10 and printing it on his, it was very, very good… better than the 5x7 on ours. I attributed it to his being a higher res printer, but I suppose that could have had nothing/little to do with it.

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