Print

[Treefox]

Am back with another technical equipment question: I have been without a printer for many years now and I didn't really miss or need it. But now that I am starting to do more digital coloring, I really would like to print out my pics, just to have something physical in my hands.   I have never owned a color laser printer and have no idea which one I should buy. Has any of you any experience? Your tips last time really helped me a big deal!

[Razzle]

I would recommend that you get one with as flat as possible a space for the paper to come out once it's been printed, rather than one that curves the paper a whole bunch as it goes through, just so the pages stay flat. Aside from that... the cheapest one? *sweatdrop* I'm afraid I've never bothered buying a more expensive printer. I don't happen to think, though, that the wuality will go up unless your price goes up a lot. (For example: the ones that are 10, 20, 40 dollars more than the cheapest... are probably the same basic machine.)

[Treefox]

Thanks! Yes, I guess that is a good point. Cheap one would do for me. But I have to wait for my salary to come in, anyway. ;-)

[Afke]

Things I wanted in a printer were; I wanted the ink cartridges to be seperated, so I never have prints with fading colors; and I wanted the ink to be (Copic) marker compatible.
I ended up with a Canon (pixma ip 3600 to be precise, but another number would've been fine too, this was the cheapest they had at that moment of the pixma's).
I'm not sure if it's excellent for printing digital art though, 'cause I hardly use it for that. But it is actually meant as a photo printer I believe, so it should do well on that subject too. I also print on blanco postcards.

[Eregyrn]

I admit, I'm reading this thread with interest; although I don't know that I want to buy a color printer for myself.  I do own a small b&w laser printer, which does what I want it to.

At work, I have a really big HP color laserjet, which I imagine is impractical for a personal purchase.  Also, I'm not sure about the color fidelity.  What it prints out looks nice... but seldom matches what I see on my screen, and that drives me nuts.  And I'm not educated enough about digital color to be able to address it.

The only maybe-useful thing I'll say is this (and maybe you know it already): the paper you print out on matters a lot.  So look for a color printer that can handle heavier papers, and also look at what papers the manufacturer makes for the printer, if they do.  For example, HP makes heavyweight (52 lb., 8 mil) paper for printing photos on; they make it in both matte and glossy finish.  Even if you're printing out art rather than photos, you may want to get some photo paper to print on, as it will probably optimize the way the colors look.

(I use the HP heavy photo matte paper to do all my Copic coloring on.  I b&w laser-print the linework onto it.)

[Treefox]

I absolutely appreciate all the great advice that I am given here! Thank you!
The Canon pixma is reasonably priced and also ink cartridges seem to be moderately priced. So this is one printer I'll definitely consider!
Eregyrn, we also use a big HP printer here at work. It is fast and the ink lasts long, but I', also rarely happy with the result. Usually we print stuff like presentations, so color fidelity doesn't really matter, but for private use I wish for a better result.
As you have mentioned paper quality makes a big difference. Even with my old, old ink jet printer print on a higher quality paper would make me surprised that my printer was actually capable of printing such a neat picture.
I have not really considered yet to paint or clean up something on the PC, print it and color it afterwards, but it actually sounds like something that would very much fit my drawing style (I have got quite a big problem with posing my characters on the page or make what I want to draw fit the page. That is a problem I did not have before, but lately I'm not able to layout my drawings properly. Have no idea why that happened...)

[Afke]

Yeah, paper matters too. When printing color pictures I usually go for a matte photopaper. It's a lot thicker than normal printer paper (normal paper I use for copics, I like the slight bleeding the ink does). But with my canon I've also printed on thicker pastel paper, so it can do that as well.

[Saree]

At the moment I am looking for a printer which includes a scanner (and a copying function), because I would like to have both at home instread only at work. Do you think the quality of both scanner and printer would be less good because it is in one machine? I am not sure about it. Does anyone of you already uses such a printer/scanner?

Something else: Have you ever printed on really thick (>150 g/qm) and/or rough paper, like aquarell paper? Do you think the ink would survive water coloring?

[Frozenleaves]

I have an Epson Stylus DX5000 all-in-one printer (scanner, printer). It's already 4 years old, but I'm still happy with it. I can remember that I paid 70 GP (70 Euro) for it. The scan software is o.k. and really good in combination with a graphical software like PaintShop or Photoshop.
I think the successor model is the Epson Stylus SX218 (80 Euros) and a cartridge set (all 4 colors) together is about 40 Euros.
Another very good funktion is the possibility to copy pages without a computer.

I printed on 170g/qm thick paper, used watercolors and the ink was o.k. But just try it to find out if it works or not. My experience is that the ink of a ink-jet printer is even better than the one of a laser jet printer.

[Afke]

Markerproof yes, but in my experience no ink managed to stay waterproof. You might have luck with the ones that need toner in stead of ink, but I'm afraid those are much more expensive.

[Obi-Rak Kaeliri]

Now, as it happens, this is something I know something about.

Afke's point should perhaps be rephrased a little: no dye-based printer ink is waterproof, but both pigment-based ink and laser toner can be waterproof. You can read about the difference between dye-based and pigment-based inks here.

In general most (all?) low-cost printers use dye-based inks because it's easy to produce vivid dye-based inks. These inks tend to be water-soluble and will lose their color fairly quickly, but they're cheap to make. Pigment-based inks can be vivid as well, but they're harder to make that way. Pigment inks also tend to be aimed at the high-end color reproduction crowd, so they tend to emphasize factors such as color fastness over long period of time -- all of which adds to the cost of the ink. Some pigment inks, on appropriate paper, are so water-resistant that you can leave them under a running faucet, rub them, and otherwise abuse them with no ill effect.

I do not know whether you'd be actually able to apply watercolor onto these prints though, because they are really water-resistant. You might be; I just haven't tried it. It probably depends more on the paper than the type of pigment-ink a particular printer uses.

Lasers work a little different: they deposit a layer of plastic onto a sheet of paper. If you look at a print from a laser printer closely at an oblique angle, you can probably see how the printed part protrudes from the paper ever so slightly. This layer of plastic fuses to the paper quite thoroughly, and will probably withstand water just fine. Long-term color fastness is anyone's guess, but if water-resistance is your concern lasers will probably do depending on how well your particular printer fuses the plastic to the paper.

Epson is the grandaddy of the pigment ink semi-professional printers, but other manufacturers are nowadays producing high quality pigment ink printers as well: companies like HP seem to have decently-priced (!) pigment-ink based models in the letter/A4 size. Some of these models seem to be all-in-ones with scanners and whatnot. I can't attest to the quality of their prints because I've mostly delved into the semi-professional large-format printers and their inks, but I'd hazard a guess that their print quality is at least comparable to other similar-priced models.

Background: a while ago I chose HP's Photosmart Pro B9180 for my printing needs, mostly on account of its highly consistent color reproduction, self-color-calibration capabilities, and the archival quality of this particular series' pigment inks; an Epson pigment-ink printer would also have been a viable option, but the self-calibration functionality was the deciding factor because I do not yet have a proper spectrophotometer for producing printer color profiles on my own. The prints from this printer simply do not fade in normal use, and the printed colors match exactly what's on the monitor screen thanks to the fully color-managed workflow. Since this particular model is a couple of years old, I'd expect the same ink technology to have trickled down to their lower-cost pigment-ink models by now.

[Saree]

Thanks to all for sharing their experience with printer/scanner combinations and waterproofed printer ink.

@Silberschweif: hehe, you described exactly the printer I was interested in.

@Obi-Rak Kaeliri:   You work in the printing field somehow, don`t you? Never learned so much about printer ink in such a short time. Thanks to you I know now what to look for... not sure if I can afford it, but we will see.

I will post a note as soon as I tried some watercoloring on printed pages.

[Obi-Rak Kaeliri]

Here's by the way a video of someone playing with the water resistance of HP's pigment ink prints. That particular model, OfficeJet Pro 8500a Plus, seems a little pricey at $180, but they probably have similar inks in cheaper models too.

And nah, I don't work in the printing field; I'm 100% amateur here

Everything I know about all things graphical I've learned in the course of making Jungle Fire: publishing software and workflow, computer monitors, the black body art of color management, and... printers. Printers for both comic book printing and for printing ultra-long-lasting, visually striking large-format posters with Jungle Fire pretties in 'em. There's a lot that goes into even a half-serious attempts at paper comic publishing.

[Pyreite]

If you're going to buy a printer be very careful.  Laserjets actually bake the 'ink' into the page, rather than just spraying it over the top like a desk-jet or ink-jet printer will if you're buying the ordinary retail versions. 

Neither are waterproof since paper isn't by default waterproof, but the laser-jet ones, especially mono-lasers, that print only in black won't fade out for a very long time. 

Deskjets spray the ink onto the page, they aren't waterproof generally, and will smear if you either touch the page before the ink is dry, or get it wet.  It'll run like masqara. 

My best suggestion if you want to print and waterproof a sketch or printed piece of coloured art from the PC (such as digitally coloured) than print it out on either a mono-laser jet, colour laserjet, or inkjet printer, wait for it to cool, and then get the thing laminated.  The paper will be 'sealed' in a plastic sleeve and it'll essentially be waterproof since the sides of that laminated plastic cover are heat sealed on all sides.

Plastic sleeves can be cheap to expensive dependent on size, laminator's too provided that you can find one for an inexpensive retail price.

Inkjet printers are relatively cheap, but avoid HP models, they're generally fraught with technical faults.  It's more to do with the brand than the tech they make, or made, I did hear that HP was getting out of manufacturing PCs since they couldn't compete effectively with other similar brands.  Not sure right now though.

If you want a printer/scanner, and you don't have an old scanner that still works, pick up a printer-scanner combo.  I use a PIXMA 280 combined printer and scanner.  I don't use the printer very much, since I only brought it for the scanner to scan piccies into.  It's handy if you have a photo-editing program on hand on your PC too, especially if you want to resize, save in various formats, paint and whatnot digitally if you scan in an inked or pencil sketched piece.

I do both, although, if you want to 'scan into' the PC, you're best going for below 400 DPI, about 300 DPI will do, since anything above 500 DPI is going to have your image with a file size of a couple megabytes.  It's really up to the artist. 

Also if you buy a new printer be aware of the technical specifications in terms of what it needs to run on your PC.  You'll need to check that your RAM memory size, hard drive, and operating system (XP, Linux, Windows 7, Vista etc) is supported by the printer, if it's not you won't be able to install it, or the drivers to run the thing. 

Believe me I have plenty of experience in installing tech, hunting round for system drivers, and getting frustrated over a piece of computer glitchyness.  It's a proverbial pain in the keister. 

Secondly be mindful that although a deskjet printer is cheap the inks, especially black and coloured can be very expensive as a duo pack or individually.  I'm talking between 40 to ninety dollars for one ink pack not both and that depends on the size of the ink catridges that a deskjet/inkjet printer will take.  You can get refillable ones, usually EPSON I think but you must realize that you have to be able to purchase the ink refills.  It's not good having refillable catridges if you can't buy the inks to refill them.  Other deskjets like HP or Canon or various brands will sell unrefillable ink catridges either in dual packs with a coloured one and a black ink or as single ones. 

They're not cheap and you will repay the cost of your deskjet/inkjet printer twice over with the first spare ink catridges that you buy.  Secondly the catridges only usually hold between 9 to 25 ml of ink, either black or coloured, in an ordinary home-use, retail deskjet/inkjet printer.

It's not much and you'll likely get between 25 to 100 pages printed from the catridges black and coloured at most, especially if you print alot. 

I only use my deskjet printer sparingly if I want to print out the coloured versions of any digitally coloured artwork.  Otherwise I use a mono-laser that has a drum and toner catridge in black, to print anything else either text or plain uncoloured art.  You'll get about 1000 to 2500 printed pages out of a laserjet Canon printer, dependent on the size of the toner catridge.  The toners go for between 100 to 125 bucks a toner, but they'll last for three to six months dependent on the frequency of your printing, even up to a year if you don't print much. 

A deskjet/inkjet catridge, dependent on how much you printer might last you a week to a month, maybe two if you stretch out the printing and only print what you need too. 

Canon and laserjet printers, you will eventually need to replace the drum unit, they can last a toner catridge for around 15000 to 25000 printed pages.  When that happens, just buy another mono-laser jet, it'll be cheaper than replacing the drum, and you'll get an updated printer, new drum, and catridge in one.

Be economical when you're looking to buy a printer, especially since you should really consider what you're budget is, and what you'll be using the printer for overall.

~ Pyre