How many dots per inch is "photo quality?"

[JetBlack69]

I'm thinking of getting a good printer and I was wondering how many dots per inch is photo quality? I'm also thinking of getting a digital camera and start printing my own photos. I want to do this because I hate wasting film on bad pictures and paying for reprints. I also like to see the pictures before I print them. I want to make copies of the pictures to give to my friends. Any good recomendations (sp?) on either? Thanks.

[glc]

You cant really go by the DPI rating - there are too many other variables. You will get excellent results from any of the HP or Epson printers except the real cheapies.

[lil Jimmie]

I'm only a novice in this deptpartment, but I have a very low end ink jet that print up to 1200dpi with a 1mgpix digital cam and I can get photo's looking better than the local wal-mart. The key with my photos is the paper I have had real good luck using kodak photo paper.

[jessho]

It depends on what you want to use the photos for. If you plan on printing pictures to be photo-copied, such as for a brochure or newsletter, a laser printer is the best.

Whatever printer you decide on, look at a sample photo before you buy the printer. Examine it closely with a magnifying glass to examine the way the photo is placed on the paper. Look for clear definition of the dots. The better the definition, the better the photo.

[JetBlack69]

Thanks for the replies. I'm thinking of getting a HP Deskjet 952c. It is USB and prints 1200x2400 dpi. It also has a little 4"x6" tray for regular size pictures. All for about $250 USD before taxes. What do you think?

[bailey]

sounds great, get one for me too.

[bdunn]

The media is also important not just printer. If you must print photos on plain white paper I had an ALPS-MD1000 in my last office. It is slow as anything but printed the best quality photos on plain paper.

[Sandgroper]

Digi Cams are coming on leaps and bounds lately. Just get the biggest number of pixels you can afford. Personally got an Olympus 2500. Colour is best I have seen and if you can understand it, the manual and semi auto settings can produce some stunning results. It is also SLR, very useful for macro work. Also go for the biggest memory card you can afford. Batteries are the biggest problem. The Olympus gets around 250-300 shots (3 x 64MB compact flash fulls) at 1712 x 1326, on one charge of metal hydrides. Nikon Coolpix is good camera but eats batteries (around 25-30 shots per charge)because you have to use the video screen to compose your shots. Use review screen sparingly. Get a USB card reader for down loading, otherwise downloading is the same speed as slow modem. I use a Canon BJC 7000 printer and it produces photo quality repros upto A4 but any of the leading brand printers are good, if you go top of the range. Colour laser if you can run to it, is best. Use good quality gloss photo paper, like Polarid or Kodak as this can make a mediocre printer good. I use Ulead PhotoImpact V6 software, I find it more user friendly than most and is good value. Paintshop Pro is good but you need good plugins and is not as intuitive. Photoshop is just not good value, in my opinion.
Visit me at http://www.kaistech.iinet.net.au

[JetBlack69]

Thanks for the reply. Now, For about $45 more, I could get the printer that hooks up directly to a digital camera and prints from there. Is there any quality loss by going through the computer and then the printer? Would it be worth the extra $45? It looks like you could put the memory cards in it printer itself, but it won't work with the sony memory sticks. It is an HP PhotoSmart P1000. Thanks.

[Sandgroper]

I have only had experience of one direct to printer device and the drawbacks were. When viewing the small camera screen you cannot see detail, say if a picture is in full focus or not, until printed. There was a splitter cable attachment, to allow big screen viewing as well but a pain to set up. So I finished up down loading to the computer and picking the shots to print directly from camera. You may just as well down load and print from computer. The flash card reader is the way to go here, it becomes an extra "hard drive". I have even heard of burning directly to a CD! Anyway you will find that you will need the flexiblity that your software can give at sometime. I have never had a problem with image degradation when transfering files, even when using the old floppy disc. The Sony Mavica range used floppies instead of memory cards and the images were good for the quality of the rest of the camera. Main problem with moving digital images is the compression format. Camera makers have tried different formats over time some have had more success than others. JPG is pretty much the standard camera format and is quite good for most uses but it is a compression format and very often the software default is 75% compression on saving to disc. It can make enlargement a problem, so be careful. A good camera shop will take or have sample shots for you to inspect. Ask them to take a standard format picture and down load to floppy, take it home and see what you can make of it before buying.

[Felix]

My 2¢: just some general thoughts about digital and conventional photos.

<b>Conventional photos</b> are unbeatable in terms of quality and possibilites. I.e. think of making a poster from your favourite holiday picture or something similar, or even the unbeatable easy handling to get your holiday pictures. In addition, color durability over the years is proven these days.

<b>Digital photos</b> are unbeatable if you need your pictures instantly, or if you plan to edit / publish them digitally. I.e. you have a complete color lab in your computer if you have the right tools and you can get a quite good picture even from a useless shot. Think of sharpening tools and color saturation and such. I use Photoshop 4 for all my stuff and I do sharpening and tone value correction on every single picture. IMHO printing a picture without the basic adjustments is wasting expensive photo paper.

To print them I would suggest a good ink jet printer. Stay away from a color laser printer! They are not good for printing photos except the really expensive ones ($5000.- and more).

<b>This leads to the question</b> what will you do? If you want to experiment, you need pictures in your computer. This can be done also with a scanner. If you need speed then a digicam is the solution. If you want to make family or holiday pictures then there is no way but the good old conventional camera. Or do you want to buy a notebook or a lot of memory cards to store the pictures taken during a holiday trip? :)

<b>and don't forget:</b> A drilling machine doesn't make a carpenter. Maybe it's a good idea to join a photography class. Learn to look like a camera. The camera looks quite honest. It sees what is really there but not what we like to see. Another good hand rule is, if you focus an object and think "well, now it's good", go one step closer before pushing the trigger. Most people have too much margin and too few object on their pictures.

BTW my solution to avoid bad pictures was to buy a new camera. The old one (some autofocus thingy for about $200) made most pictures bad, so I went and bought the Canon EOS 300 for about $450. Its autofocus is really fast and you see what you get before you push the trigger. Since I have the Canon most pictures are really good, contrary to before. :)

I don't want to "take away" your digicam. It just depends on what you are doing - like always. Hope this helped a bit.

And finally: Check out the <a href="http://www.adobe.com/misc/training.html">various tutorials</a>, including <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/tips/photoshop.html">photoshop</a>, from adobe. It's great free stuff!

[Edited by Felix on 10-05-2000 at 08:29 PM]

[JetBlack69]

Hopefully, I'm going to the University of Madison Wisconsin for college. I want to be able to e-mail my parents and friends here (Minnesota) pictures of me. I also want to be able to have prints instantly and I would also edit them with Microsoft PhotoDraw. I will also put them up on my website. I plan to get a good printer now, I'm not geting the printer that you can plug the memory cards into because I will edit the pictures, and save about $500 on a digital camera when I graduate high school, June 2001. Sound good?

[slipe]

I too like film. We love to get the prints and pass them around. I seldom take a bad picture and it is just too expensive to print them all on the printer, even considering I refill my ink cartridges. Unless I am in the shower or swimming I have my little 6 oz 38-80 point and shoot with me. If I go somewhere I know I am likely to take pictures I take one of the SLRs with me.

Instead of a digicam I bought a 2400 DPI film scanner. At maximum resolution I get a 20 Mg uncompressed TIFF from a 35mm negative that can’t be touched by any digicam on the market. In the past I made the argument that I could even get a better image from my usual 5 X 7 prints scanned in a flatbed, but I have to admit the 3 megapixel cameras at best quality match those. The digicams will eventually better the film scanner, but they aren't there yet.

I have used Photoshop for five years and don’t know anything else and have no intention of changing. If I had to make the economic choice between using Photoshop with a mouse or Paint Shop Pro with a graphics tablet, I would keep the tablet and learn a new graphics program. Nine on a ten scale of dumb to me is paying big bucks for Photoshop and then running it with a mouse. It’s like buying a new Ferrari and then hooking up a horse to pull it around.

HP and Epson have the most reliable printers with the highest customer satisfaction. A little sidebar in this month’s Consumer Reports reported on fade testing images printed at photo quality on photo paper. They said the HPs were best with the Epsons right up there with them. All the others faded very quickly. Epson inks are more waterproof than HP, but only in their photo models that use 6 colors rather than 4.

I couldn’t imagine printing an image that I had not at least looked at full size in Photoshop. I seldom print anything without a little bit of tweaking or enhancing. You will find that printing on premium photo paper is too expensive to just throw it to the printer and see how it comes out. I wouldn’t pay extra for the feature unless you are not very demanding.

A real bargain in photo quality printers is the HP 930. It has the same 1200 X 2400 heads and RET III technology as the more expensive HP printers including the photo models. If you decide on the 930 make sure you download the new driver from HP as the original over saturates the colors. There is no way I have found to select the very best inkjet for photo printing. Last month’s Consumer Reports rated the top of the line HP and Lexmark better at photos than the Photo Epson but the Epson better for graphics. Several online reviews think the HP has the best plain paper graphics but the 6 color Epsons edge HP out for photos. In the store you can print out a test page on most printers, but that is plain paper and the scene it prints has been carefully saturated and tweaked to best show the strengths of that printer. The little photo paper demos hanging beside the printers all look great for the same reason. The only feature that stands out to me is the water resistance of the Epsons with 6 ink colors. A drop of water on a normal inkjet print will ruin it.

The best bargains for photo printing are the HP 930, which is slower than the 950 but equal in quality, and the Epson Photo 870 with the waterproof 6 color ink. It also has quality equivalent to their best photo printers. The Epson Photo 870 is about the same price as the HP 952 you are considering. The Epson 900 has smaller dots than the 870 but does not do photos as well, nor does it have the water-resistant ink. I have a HP 930 and have to say the premium photo paper prints are spectacular. I don’t have an Epson to compare it to however. One thing I do like about the HP is the fact that it does its thing with only four colors which allows me to stock fewer colors of ink for refills. You won’t be disappointed with the HP 952 you are considering, but protect your prints from spills. The 952 also has an auto calibration that the 930 lacks, but it only takes a minute and two sheets of paper to calibrate the 930 when you add a new print cartridge. BTW the 2 at the end of a HP printer designation (952 vrs 950) means it has the home user software package.

[Sandgroper]

Go for it Jetblack. At your age you can do anything...... and probably will :D

Best of luck at college

[JetBlack69]

Thanks everybody. I decided on the DeskJet 952C and all I have to say is WOW! I printed a picture on photo quality paper and my dad didn't believe me that it was from the printer. Very cool printer. Once again, thanks.