Inspiring ways to improve your photos
Inspiring ways to improve your photos
Photo Review tips section
Although home-based inkjet printing is far more efficient and cost-effective than the silver halide-based darkroom systems used by photographers in the past, many photo enthusiasts still complain about the high costs of printing their photographs. Fortunately, there are ways of reducing many of these costs and getting more ‘bang for your buck’ from your printer. In this feature we outline some of the strategies you can adopt.
Optical brighteners – also known as ‘optical brightening agents’ (OBAs) or UV brighteners are white or colourless compounds that are added to the printing surfaces of many inkjet papers. Their purpose is to make the papers appear whiter and brighter than they actually are.
You don’t need to pay top dollars for a printer that can make black and white (B&W) prints. It’s easy to make acceptable monochrome prints from a low-priced printer – as long as you understand how the printer driver works. By ‘acceptable’ we don’t mean ‘exceptional’. Exceptional monochrome prints require an advanced driver and three levels of black ink density. Such printers cost more than $1000. But even a $100 photo printer can make B&W prints that look better than many prints from photolabs if you go about it the right way.
We’ve covered one cost-effective printing strategy in printing multiple images on a single sheet of paper. But this isn’t the only way to keep your printing costs low.
It’s easy to produce your own greeting cards and a very satisfying way to share your photos with family and friends. All you need is a suitable software application, an inkjet printer and the right kind of paper and inks. (We’re focusing on ‘hard copy’ cards in this feature because there’s no shortage of online templates and services for creating e-cards.)
To get the best results when printing digital photos, you should know what the standard printing terms mean. In this Insider, we’ll examine some of them, with the aim of clarifying printing issues that create uncertainty.
The choice of ink is dictated by the printer you buy because each printer is designed for a specific ink set. Each printer manufacturer formulates inks to meet the needs of the print heads in printers in their range. In some cases there is a different set of inks for each individual printer; in others, one ink set can be used with several models in the range.
Inkjet printing is one of the technological success stories of the last decade. Even over the last five years, inkjet printers have gone from producing barely adequate output the marketers would define somewhat optimistically as ‘near photo quality’, to prints which in many cases are better than what’s possible on conventional photographic paper.
From Photo Review Issue 45
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