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| Understanding Printers… |
Printers are an essential part
of any home or office, but with so many different models on the market, it can
be tough to know which one is right for you. This time in my blog, we’ll
discuss the multitude of things that you need to consider when choosing a
printer, as well as provide some practical tips for printing, selecting a
printer, setting it up and maintaining it. Oh, and we also come to the
conclusion that mostly, all printers suck.
It’s time we revisited
printers, firstly, because we haven’t looked at them in a while, and secondly,
because printers really do suck. Whether you are a binge printer or
recreational printer, these bottomless money pits should come with a warning
label that they do nothing to assist your positive mental wellbeing. Yesterday,
a 3 minute print job took almost 3-hours out of my already chaotic day.
From ink stains on the carpet
to random settings, sticky touch screens and endless reams of paper strewn
across the floor, those are just a few of the problems that printers bring into
a household and none of this is because your kids decided to print something,
it’s generally what happens after the self-update process has done its thing.
Printers cannot be trusted, they constantly need adult supervision.
Family use aside, if you are a
professional artist who regularly uses a printer to produce commercial quality
prints, there are things you really need to know before committing to any
particular model or brand, but more than that, you need to be able to resolve
any issues that will pop up frequently, because from experience I can
categorically say that printers are designed to make your life as difficult as
possible and I genuinely think that’s the bar that printer manufacturers aspire
to meet.
Forget the implementation of
artificial intelligence, it would be fantastic to find a printer with any level
of intelligence. Over the years I’ve not had a great experience with more than
a few of them as you can probably tell.
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| Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor |
I’ve been using a printer at
home since the early 1980s, my first printer used a roll of thermal paper and
when they discontinued the printer that I had been so impressed with on my
shiny new-fangled 8-bit home computer, I bought up the entire local stock of
thermal rolls. I still have two unopened in a shrink-wrapped box in the attic
but the printer has sadly long gone. I did see one pop up on eBay last week and
had to show restraint because I know I have a problem with collecting old
stuff.
For less than fifty bucks and
with no need to ever buy ink, that little thermal printer was the best computer-y
thing I ever owned. The print quality was awful, it was really slow, it made
about the same level of noise that a jet engine would make on take off, and it
only printed across the four inches of the thermal roll and yet, it was still
the greatest printer I have ever had the joy of using because mostly, it just
worked and I have never to this day found another one that worked quite so
well.
It only had two settings,
either on or off and they operated by taking out the mains plug or inserting it.
There were no complicated buttons, just one about the size of a finger nail
used to feed the new roll of paper and it all plugged directly into a port at
the back of the computer via a ribbon cable.
The connection was precarious,
it would disconnect if you wobbled the table but nothing more than a blob of
Blue Tack was required to stabilise it. Sure it had it’s nuances, but if you
gave me a printer today and told me that all I would need to do to make it work
how I want it to work, would be to add a blob of the sticky blue office supply,
well I think I would bite your hand off.
Today, I use multiple
printers, dye-sublimation, laser, I even own a dot matrix because it’s the
cheapest way of printing out that casual everyday stuff that doesn’t need a
high DPI count or even colour, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much I
spend on consumables each year, but let’s say it’s roughly about the GDP of a
country according to my bank balance.
I still use a thermal printer
today, it’s nowhere near as as good as the one I owned back in the 1980s, even
if I do look back through rose tinted glasses but it is fantastic at printing
address labels and receipts. I can print out exactly 200 receipts from one
cheap roll of thermal paper after working out the math that gave me the optimum
font size to page yield. It’s 11 point if you’re wondering. The downside, they
haven’t figured out networking for that either, it uses Bluetooth so that’s
just fun, please read fun, with the sarcasm it deserves.
Each of the printers I use
today has to meet the standard of having the ability to produce commercial
quality archival prints or serve another purpose that means that I’m not over
paying for anything I print out. The printers range from shelf friendly, entry
level, all the way up to it didn’t look quite
as big in the pictures. But here’s the thing, they all suck, and some more than
others.
I probably need to explain why
that is, it’s certainly not the quality of the prints they produce, even the
dot matrix produces pin sharp high contrast text that looks like it could have
come off a laser printer. The cheap inkjet I use to print off those e-tickets
or to send a good old fashioned complaint letter to the council, who never read
emails, even that is a quantum leap forward from a high-end printer I owned
about a decade ago. I’m regularly impressed at the range of materials I can
throw at them, except the dot matrix which is a bit fussy, but they all suck
for one reason alone, they’re junky money pits that only work when they feel
like it and you can find them.
Connect them to Wi-Fi and it’s
a game of where’s Waldo when attempting to find them on the network but the
print quality, I have no complaints in that department. The issue is that to
get them to print anything from anything that’s not physically and directly
connected, is quite frankly, painful at times. No printer found, no printer
found, oh, there it is.
There’s something else too,
they insist on telling me that they’re out of ink when there’s still half a
tank remaining, so I pretend to change the ink cartridges by taking them out
and putting them back in, and the faded lines are once again complete and the
tanks continue to work for about the same number of prints that the first half
of the tank yielded.
I only knew for certain to do
this when I had to install a clear plastic third party ink tank when global
supplies of original ink cartridges were delayed during the pandemic. The
original tanks are never clear so you have no way of knowing how much ink is
left because you rely on an on screen infographic that always lets you know
that you are about to run out of Cyan.
Just to be clear, using the
third party ink was eye opening in that it told me something that I had been
convinced was happening for many years yet could never prove, which was that
the ink remaining indicator on that tiny screen, lies. In fact it lies so much
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hiding classified documents in the print
queue and demanding a mistrial when I complain.
I was surprised, as I often am
when things look like a bargain and work, at just how good the yield was from
the third-party ink cartridges and the text was nice and crisp. These were
certainly better than the alternative brand ones I had used before, they were
recognised by the printer and the colours were actually brighter than the
originals, although I hadn’t opted for the cheapest they were still 60% less expensive
than original tanks.
My choice to use an
alternative was a one off in a supply crisis. I have to guarantee the print
quality of my work so I tend to stick to original inks, and this really makes
sense when you are using high-end premium papers, but the results from the
replacements were really good and would be more than good enough if I were just
printing text or using the printer for regular things.
I wouldn’t necessarily trust
third-party inks inside my wide format printers when longevity of the print
along with vibrancy and resolution is imperative, and especially when the cost
of a wide format printer means that it’s not easy to just replace. There’s also
little point in using a wide format printer for general documents, that would
be throwing away money needlessly and they’re much slower at printing in any
case.
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| Sakura Serenity by Mark Taylor |
For day to day stuff like
printing out any emails that you need to keep a paper copy of, I just use a
budget printer that costs about the same as the inks that go inside it. It
makes more sense to go with third-party ink for this kind of thing because if
the printer does fail, it’s still cheaper overall even when it fails.
Fail it will eventually. Sadly,
there is no such thing as a cheap printer that will last and arguably, there’s
no such thing as an expensive printer that lasts either, but this really does
drill home the message that cheap printers are disposable, and that together
with the cost of inks, I think this is their greatest problem.
Now I’m sure someone will
point out the pitfalls of using a third-party ink and I think I’m well aware of
the arguments. They can potentially
damage the printer, reduce its overall life, put extra strain on the print
head, consume more ink, produce washed out prints, you could print out an
entire list of negatives with 3rd party ink depending on who you
speak to.
In my experience sticking to
original ink is something to consider if you use an expensive printer
especially if it’s still under warranty, but a sub-hundred buck printer used
for printing letters, labels, and emails, it’s never made any difference even
when I compare the results with my more expensive printers. Some of these
alternatives do promise similar levels of longevity of prints to those offered
by the original manufacturer, but can you trust them with commercial work, I’m
still on the fence about that.
You can buy premium
third-party inks that are genuinely better than the original versions, usually
these are for specialist use and in some cases these can cost more than the
originals. These might be better than the original inks for certain jobs but
it’s always best to carry out some research, I do use some of these for some of
my special edition works, and I have a printer that is solely used for printing
with food grade edible ink, and everything used for producing food grade prints
is kept separate to my other kit.
I did say that there was one
reason that printers were junky money pits but that’s unfair. There are plenty
of reasons that contribute to their reputation for being generally bad. Printer
manufacturers spend a lot of money on research and development, but clearly
nowhere near enough when it comes to making sure their printers connect to a Wi-Fi
network.
Printers almost always have a
limited life, and support for the drivers needed for the computer to operate
the printer generally goes away when new printer models arrive, and when the
drivers are produced they’re rarely updated.
Most modern printers include a
touch screen but it’s not clear from the picture on the box how small your
fingers need to be to actually touch it, let alone how great your eyes need to
be to view the user interface that won an interface of the year award in 1986.
But hey, it’s smart enough to also allow me to print out colouring pages but
for some reason it still needs a cyan tank installed even though it’s only
printing in black. What is it with cyan ink.
For those who really know the
ultimate test for any electrical device is whether or not it runs Doom. I can
confirm that in some cases you can run Doom on a printer screen but it’s not as
good as Doom running on say, a banana because a banana has better controls.
When it comes to customer
support, well, they all mostly fail in this area too. In all my years of
printing I have come across one manufacturer who has excelled in providing a
really bad customer experience, but I have found plenty of others who have come
really close. I used to spend a lot of money with this manufacturer, buying
consumables, even some of the other technologies they sold, you could say I was
even a fan, but the phrase, ‘ I used to’ might give you an idea where I’m
heading with this.
When I had the misfortune to
think that customer service meant that there was at least some level of support
on the end of the phone, I was corrected by a really cheerful support desk operator
who explained very abruptly and rather dismissively that the £1000 (UK) printer
I purchased 12-months and one day ago was no longer in warranty and my best
course of action would be to buy a new one. No serviceable parts, or certainly
none we’re telling you about, but here’s a link to our new product range. At
least the operator was a human and not a bot telling me the bad news I guess.
You would expect service desk support to get better as you level up and pay
more, but that’s not my experience.
On balance, my experience with
some other manufacturers has been like chalk and cheese, a 3-year old out of
warranty printer from another manufacturer was replaced with a refurbished
model for the cost of postage which was so much better than simply throwing the
old one away, and they even provided me with a new set of test inks.
Of course your individual
milage with any printer manufacturer will vary, some people might have better
luck than I did with the company who epically wronged me, but I won’t be going
back to them anytime soon which is a shame because the print quality was really
good. Apparently, Cannon say they can, experience tells me they can’t.
At the lower end of the
printer market, we can forgive some of these issues with modern-day printers.
Mostly, the manufacturers are selling the devices as loss leaders making any
profit in the future from the continuous sale of original inks.
If you think about the
complexity of something that is asked to faithfully print out a photograph by
firing lots of dots of ink at the paper in the right place and with the right
colour, and to make sure that device works across a range of devices that might
all be configured differently, it shouldn’t be possible for any device to be
able to do this at under fifty bucks, yet visit any number of box stores and
there will be rows upon rows of sub fifty and sub one hundred buck printers,
all capable of creating photographs and printing out school projects or even
fulfilling the printing needs of a small business and they all mostly work
across almost every computer or mobile format.
At the higher end of the printer
eco-system, we begin to see the real bells and whistles that originated through
all of that R&D the manufacturers tell us is so expensive for them to do.
Better screens, more features, more responsive to accepting different paper
types, more expensive ink tanks is usually a commonly shared downside, but no
matter how much you pay, printer manufacturers still need to figure out
networking if you have anything more than a laptop connected to your router.
The higher end printers do
cost more but generally they will produce much better results. Most will almost
always yield more pages per refill, and most of them will handle most of the
jobs and paper types that we throw at them without too many major complaints,
they will all of course complain about anything to do with wireless networks.
That said, the price you pay is no guarantee that the printer will consistently
do what it says on the box, these are printers after all and well, printers
suck however much you pay.
At the budget friendly end of
the market, we should probably start thinking of them not as printers, but as
live services, a bit like the cable box or streaming device. We shouldn’t be
overly concerned by the device so long as it produces what you need, it’s the
overlaid service that we pay for.
Live Services, the two dreaded
words that have become synonymous with voluntarily signing up to hand our money
over to the cyber-highwayman of the modern day. No matter how often we say we dislike
live services and subscriptions, we always seem to be at the ready when it
comes to signing up to them.
The manufacturers offer a
subscription for ink that usually includes the printer communicating with the
manufacturer and reporting back on the number of print jobs carried out, along
with a bunch of other metrics that might or might not be identified in the end
user licence agreement that none of us read. I find it funny how the printers
internet connection works just fine when it comes to reporting back and taking
money off us.
The device itself is almost
irrelevant at the lower end of the market, it’s a subsidised machine that is
little more than a gateway to handing over a regular supply of cash. The
benefit we get from this is that it will print out most of the things an
average family might send its way together with the promise of new inks being
delivered just in time for the last page of the current tank to be printed out.
It’s almost always exactly the 50th page on an average 50 page per month
plan.
You pay for these dreadful
‘live services’ depending on the number of pages you need to print over the course
of a month, yet my suspicion is that regardless of the money you pay, you will
get the same volume of ink as someone paying slightly more, you just won’t be
able to use it.
I recently took an allegedly
empty subscription ink tank apart and there was still plenty of ink inside, so
my theory is that the remaining ink which will usually be thrown away is locked
behind a paywall and the cartridge stops working once you have used up your
pre-paid metered dose of ink or reached the monthly page count. If that is the
norm, from both a cost of living perspective and from an environmental
perspective, I can’t say that I would be happy about that if I was a subscriber.
To be fair, it’s not just printers, car manufacturers have been known to lock
the built in heated seat behind a pay wall.
I think what we can take away
from this is that the printer industry is rapidly moving towards becoming a
live service industry as users transition away from printing in general. Whichever
way they go, I would expect customers to be more attuned to environmental
issues, and cost is always a consideration. Mostly, I think people just want
economy and for the devices not to suck quite so much as they do.
I think we can forget ever
finding the unicorn that is the perfect printer, it doesn’t exist today and I’m
not convinced it will exist tomorrow. For me, I would rather pay more upfront
for a quality printer that delivers quality results that still gives me the
choice between using original inks and third party tanks. Oh, and I would love
it to connect to my Wi-Fi network without it delivering a message of impending
doom, telling me to install yet another cyan tank in order to proceed or that
the printer couldn’t be found on the network.
The current model of printer
monetisation seems to be working for the manufacturers for now so I’m guessing there’s
no urgency for the industry to really shake things up, but it does need shaking
up. Some manufacturers such as Epson are putting their weight behind refillable
eco-tanks, and I have to say that this is possibly the best thing we have seen
from the print industry for years.
We need to see more innovation
like this, and less innovation around the bells and whistles that can be
alternatively provided through an app on our smartphone. I’m not interested in
a printer that can print colouring pages directly from the smart screen, I need
it to connect and print whatever I send to it, and if it could do it a little
more quietly, that would be a welcome bonus.
Those are the features that
really matter. I would love to see the real numbers behind the add-on services
that connect you online just to give you access to quick templates. I have
never had a cause to use any of these extra services that come packaged within
the printers settings, if there is a way to turn them off, that’s something I
always do and I think most people are the same, we just don’t need the extra bloat
within an already difficult to use user interface.
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| Oh Crop by Mark Taylor |
It’s easier than ever to buy a
printer today, assuming you can find the one you want in stock. I remember a
time when a printer was specific to the device you were using it on back in the
days of 8-bit home computers, but the development of standards such as USB and
Wi-Fi mean that we no longer have to rely on additional interfaces or being
reliant on having a specific port available on the computer and if we can’t
find the exact printer we would like, we can choose another in the knowledge
that at least on some level, it will work.
The challenge we have today is
that we have no way of knowing what the printers are really capable of or how
they will perform until we take them home and plug them in. At that point you
might already be committed to paying an ongoing subscription for ink with no
possibility of returning the unit unless it develops a fault in the warranty
period.
If you visit a physical brick
and mortar store the printers will usually be stacked in boxes on shelves with
at best, a demo unit on display that’s not connected to anything. It might not
even have any components inside, the display units are often only a visual
queue that shows you what you are buying but they rarely demonstrate what they’re
capable of.
In the past year or so I have
only ever stumbled across one retailer who had working units on display, and
one more that had sample prints in a folder next to each printer. That should
at least be a thing that becomes the minimum standard we should expect when
making the kind of commitment that buying a printer needs. I’m sure that would
drive more people back to physical stores rather than buying online, although
pricing would need to be comparable which I guess could be an issue.
Other than reading online
reviews which in this day and age aren’t something you should really be hanging
your coattails from, there are very few reliable sources of truth that beat a
path through the hype from the manufacturers. If you are served by a sales
person working for commission, there’s really no single source of independent
and completely unbiased truth that you can rely on and the industry is awash
with affiliate marketers who get paid if you click on the links from reviews or
YouTube videos.
There are thankfully, some
good sources of information to be found online, some of the industry websites
that focus on graphic design carry reviews that are often much more honest than
the sites with some level of manufacturer sponsorship or link. A search through
Twitter will usually highlight people who are reaching out to the manufacturers
for support but what you are likely to find when you find these messages is
that the manufacturers hide any responses. Probably another good indication
that you should avoid that particular manufacturer.
There are specialist printer
retailers although many of them have migrated to online only businesses over
the past few years but these tend to be much better at signposting you someway towards
the right device but often, these retailers are tied to specific brands and the
costs tend to be much closer to retail than some of the discounted models you
will find elsewhere online.
If you buy a printer online,
you need to be careful that you are not buying last years model, or a model that
was manufactured even longer ago than that. While I was looking through Amazon
this week I found nine out of ten models on sale had now been superseded with
newer models, and the discounts didn’t really take this into account, two cost
more than the manufacturers recommended retail price. I had better luck finding
the latest models directly from the manufacturers websites, but finding
somewhere with stock is another challenge and some were only available on a
waiting list.
Out of all of the printers I
looked at my choices dwindled down to a couple of older models for the same
price as the latest versions, or heavily discounted printers that had long
since become unsupported by the manufacturers and looking through online forums
and discussions, it seemed as if all of them had some kind of hot topic
discussion point which would make you nervous about making a commitment.
There were a couple of new
models that were in stock but they were at the higher end of what I would think
would be most regular people’s budget, although there were a few services
offering rentals, inevitably the overall cost of those devices was higher than
buying outright.
Rentals might be more cost
effective once you factor in depreciation, service and future replacement costs
but the ongoing cost might be prohibitive if you just need an occasional print
or you’re not using it in a commercial environment. I rented a huge dye-sublimation printer for
6-months several years ago when I placed some of my work with a retail chain,
and that worked out much cheaper than outsourcing the work.
Today, I tend to outsource
most of my print jobs other than special editions and local sales because printing
does take up a lot of time which could be spent doing higher value things like
creating work or completing commissions. Generally when you print your own
creations, buyers will expect a framing and matting service which makes for a nice
upsell opportunity but again, the time needed to do this has to be taken into
account.
During the same, not very
scientific research, I also checked the stock at a local supermarket who had
been advertising a deal for an everyday, all in one inkjet printer, but once
again, the printer is now old stock and a newer model is available, if you can
find it in stock. I had a dye-sublimation printer on back order for over 12
months during the pandemic, in the end the company reached out to cancel the
order because they couldn’t guarantee the supply chain.
The supermarket were offering
a steep discount over the original recommended retail price but I was able to
find the same printer from other retailers for a similar price, albeit some
retailers also added on the cost of shipping, there were others who were
offering an extra set of inks.
It’s also worth bearing in
mind that at these very low price points, there will be nothing available that
could do anything more than light duties, and you would need something at a
much higher price point to consider using it to produce commercial quality art
prints. Ideally it would need to also be a wide format printer too, preferably
one that uses dye-sublimation, two features which you are unlikely to find in
the middle aisle of Aldi next to the discounted arc welder.
Buying a printer is very much
a case of buyer beware. That sub fifty buck printer is almost certainly not
going to provide you with the commercial grade prints that you might want the
printer for, and it will devour ink by the barrel if you use it for anything
other than light duties compared to some of the more premium offerings.
Remember, at really low price
levels it’s a reasonable assumption to make that the manufacturer is only
charging you for the components and the logistics of shipping it. Ink and live
services are where it’s at, that’s how printer manufacturers make their money.
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| Two Way Pager by Mark Taylor |
There are some manufacturers
who promise greater page yields while focussing on low running costs but you do
have to compare these running costs against what you might actually use the
printer for. Mostly, their yields per set of inks are based on a relatively
small percentage of the paper being covered when compared to real life use, in
tests the coverage is around 5% of the paper. The yields are calculated in a
lab in ideal conditions, and the images will have been curated specifically for
the test using special test patterns but it appears in some cases that
something might be slightly off with the final reports.
There have been some alleged
cases of manufacturers cheating the ISO requirements when manufacturing and
testing printers. In one study, researchers found that some manufacturers were
using different test pages and settings than had been specified in the ISO
standard (International Organization for Standardization). This resulted in the
printers appearing to meet the requirements when they were actually nowhere
close.
The ISO has taken steps to
address the problem of cheating. In 2017, they updated the ISO 12646 standard
to make it more difficult for manufacturers to cheat. However, there is still
some research based evidence that cheating continues to occur.
While there are standards that
printer manufacturers should meet, the results might not be anywhere near
indicative of real world use. This could potentially be another situation
that’s more familiar to diesel car drivers where vehicle manufacturers had been
found and admitted to using cheat devices to bypass the emissions test.
So, whilst research has
demonstrated that printer manufacturers have been allegedly doing something
similar, we haven’t seen much, if anything around legal actions against an
industry that signs up to what is essentially a voluntary set of standards.
This makes it really hard to
make a balanced decision because some tests might show lower yields yet still
be more economical. I can just imagine the class action adverts that might
spring up in the future, did you or anyone you know own a printer between 1989 and
2023, you might be owed millions for overpaying on ink.
Selling hardware in the IT
industry isn’t the sole source of income resellers will be relying on, their
overhead is often high as is the cost of storing unsold kit, and the profit
margins for hardware are often very low. The IT industry tends to make any
profit they do make from offering warranties and service wraps, and live
services offered directly by the printer manufacturers will be diminishing the
IT retailers profits even further making it less profitable for them to keep a
stock of the most up to date printers or carry a full range of inks.
So the answer is to figure out
exactly what you want to do with the printer before you begin to start
shopping. It could very well be a false economy to pay so little for the
printer if you then need to feed it with ink constantly, but it may be overkill
to pay premium prices if all you need the printer for is the occasional print where
you might be happy to pay only a few pounds/dollars each month.
Maybe, and more importantly in
the first instance is working out your budget, both now and by taking into
account how much you will be paying for consumables. The pay to print model
which we know is little more than a subscription to a live service, can sometimes
feel like a shakedown that would make the mafia proud despite the offers
presented at first glance.
Most manufacturers will have a
range of subscription options from light use to heavy duty printing but you
need to consider the options carefully, especially when page yields advertised
are often only representative of covering a small surface area of the paper.
This can make a subscription
seem like great value, but in real terms use, you could run out of ink very
quickly and end up reordering your next supply early if your plan is geared to
general home or light office printing and you are using it instead to create
prints of your work.
If you stop buying the ink or
subscribing to the service, in some cases the printer will refuse to work, just
as we used to see with mobile phones which had been locked to a single cell
carrier. In the UK and EU, the practice of locking down phones to a single
operator was outlawed some time ago and any contract phone today has to be
supplied unlocked. The same is not true for printer manufacturers, they can
hold you to ransom if you pick the wrong scheme. Remember, you’re really buying
a service rather than a printer in this instance.
You also need to consider how
much you care for your time. As I said earlier, some manufacturers are better
at updating firmware and drivers, Brother are excellent and my six year old
Brother which I use for everyday stuff is still being updated, almost too often.
Others that I have owned even for a
short time have stopped receiving updates to either the drivers, printer
software or firmware, rendering them pretty much redundant and certainly not
secure enough to sit on my network.
If new drivers are released and
firmware is updated, the theory is that it is supposed to be a hassle free
experience, but it’s usually not. Brother is the exception here, but others
often require me to go and search for updates and manually install them.
There are a few manufacturers
who do keep everything updated for extended periods but you are only likely to
find out if they do when you start using the printer over an extended period or
you do some research and take a look online at any complaints people have. I
usually find Reddit a great source of information, if there’s a sub-reddit for
the printer, it’s usually because people have an opinion. That said, Reddit are
slightly going off track at the moment in what I am calling their Elon moment
of monetising the source of a lot of their traffic. That’s maybe another blog
for another time.
If you do find yourself
scouring the internet for new firmware and drivers, there’s a risk that printer
manufacturers websites could be spoofed and the firmware could contain malware
and viruses, so you have to be particularly vigilant when checking websites to
validate the authenticity of both the site and the files you are asked to
download.
In my experience, printer
security isn’t generally at the top of everyone’s mind when updating a printer,
but if you imagine all of the information that you are likely to send through
to the printer, it’s fair to say that there could be a lot of very personal
information such as bank accounts, scans of passports, even lists of accounts
and passwords, so the last thing you need is a malicious driver update
capturing any of that information and sending it across the internet
unencrypted or someone using the wireless functionality of your printer to jump
on to your wireless network.
 |
| Laser Disc by Mark Taylor |
In my professional experience,
printer drivers and printer Wi-Fi encryption are almost never a dominant
thought that will sway a buyer away from one printer to another. I think for
the most part, the public don’t really pay that much attention to the issue and
if they are aware of it, the reality of someone hijacking your print queue is
usually met with something along the lines of, who else would want to see my
kids homework print outs. It’s not the prints that are the target, it’s the
network that the printer has joined.
Although rare, it is also
possible for wireless printers to become a stepping stone for bad player to
gain unauthorised access to the rest of your wireless network and the devices
on it. Here’s a quick run through of what you should be mindful of when setting
up wireless printing.
1.
Change the default settings that come shipped
with the printer, most of them will share a default username and password, it’s
imperative that both of these are changed from the outset and if you can change
the username, change it to something that doesn’t indicate the model of the
printer, even better, change it to something that doesn’t identify as a
particular device. You should do this with everything that sits on your
network.
2.
Never leave any electronic equipment,
especially wireless routers in a position where they can be seen from the
outside. I walk past one particular house everyday and can see the home owners
wireless router on the windowsill, complete with all of the details that I
would need to access the network if I were a bad player and because it’s in
such a prominent position, that wireless signal is delivering a much better
signal across the street than it’s delivering in the lounge!
3.
If there is a firmware update, don’t put off
installing it. These are generally issued to address the most recent security
vulnerabilities and they often make the printing experience better and in some
cases more efficient.
4.
Make sure your Wi-Fi network is using
appropriate security, use a strong unique password and good encryption such as
WPA2 or WPA3.
5.
Use a firewall, this can either be a software
firewall such as those that usually come with your anti-virus package, or it
can be a hardware firewall although those will be more likely on corporate
enterprise grade networks.
6.
You might have purchased the printer for its
bells and whistles, consider turning off any of the bundled services that you
don’t use as each one widens the attack surface for bad players to target and
third-party services available on your printer could be harvesting data.
7.
If your printer offers encryption or other
security features, use them.
8.
Consider placing your printer on a different
network. This might make it more problematic to print from mobile devices but
you could look into the possibility of adding in a second router in Bridge mode
and setting up a separate wireless network that has no sensitive devices on it.
Setting a separate network up in the first place will require some networking
knowledge but there are plenty of online tutorials if you think that this is
something that you want to do.
As I said earlier, bad players
attacking a network via the wireless printer is rare, but that doesn’t mean
that it can’t or won’t happen. It’s more likely in a corporate setting and it’s
worth being pragmatic about these things. You need to be aware of the risks but
equally, a hacker isn’t going to see your network pop up on some screen the
second its powered on.
Hackers will usually be reliant
on the hooky copy of Photoshop you downloaded from a dodgy website or the hooky
copy of Office that contains malware, or you clicking on a link in an phishing
email. If your computer hygiene is generally good and you avoid such things
your risk is exponentially lowered although it never goes away. The internet is
still the wild west in the way it was when it first came out, today it’s a lot
more violent. Be careful out there.
Cost is going to be one of the
biggest considerations regardless of what purpose you use the printer for. As I
said earlier, the payback for manufacturers is from selling ink, hopefully via
a subscription which you are less likely to avoid paying for FOMO (Fear of
missing out).
If you just need a printer for
text, you don’t have to spend big, and you don’t necessarily need to buy
original replacement inks if there are compatibles available. Of course in some
cases the compatibles are going to be of a poorer quality than the originals,
but from experience that’s not always the case. There are some compatible
cartridges that cost more than the originals purporting to be a much better
quality product with a higher page yield, but again, we are usually at the
mercy of online reviews in the absence of a print lab where we can carry out
independent testing.
My experience with
non-originals has varied over the years, but I have found a few that have
genuinely worked better than the originals but you do need to do your research
and you need to consider what you are printing. A third-party ink might not
have the pigment that the original inks contain and might fade much faster, or
they might even bring a range of issues and clog up the print heads which
sometimes means a replacement printer is going to be more economical than
replacing the print head. There are also inks that will definitely be far
superior to anything the original manufacturer provides and some of these also
come with a guarantee that your printer won’t break down through using them.
If you are in the market for
something that will produce quality prints, this usually means looking at
devices at the other end of the price scale, but there are intermediate level
devices that can produce exceptional prints, although most will produce them at
a higher base price than a more expensive printer can manage, there are some
economies of scale with printing and larger devices with larger ink tanks can
be more economical.
You also need to consider
whether or not you need an all in one device that has the ability to scan,
print and copy, but bear in mind that these devices with few exceptions tend to
not be exceptionally good in any single area, they’re built for general use and
printer output is usually on a par with a lower priced stand-alone printers.
Already, breaking this down to
exactly what you need the device to do should provide you with a much clearer
steer about which way you need to go. But there are so many factors to consider
and so many different use cases that you might have, so I think there is often
some merit in considering whether it is just a single device that you really
need.
If you are an artist, relying
on an all in one device for the scanner might be a false economy, the scanners
tend to be slow and the resolutions and quality of the scans can be poor if you
are planning to use them to scan artworks professionally. You might need a drum
scanner to get the best results but the cost of these is usually prohibitive
for most people, in which case it might be that you outsource professional
scanning rather than taking it on yourself.
I mentioned earlier that I
have a number of printers, that’s because each have their own strengths for the
wide range of jobs that come through the studio doors, but it also makes it
more cost effective overall. There’s no real benefit printing text on an
expensive dye-sublimation printer when the dot matrix can handle drafts for a
fraction of the cost. Equally, I might need something that looks a little
better than the dot matrix output or I will need to include graphics, so a low
cost ink jet will be more suited to a particular task even if the cost per print
is a little more expensive.
It’s not unusual to work with
a range of printers when you are creating prints that will be sold
commercially, but to get the best value it comes down to using the devices
strategically and thinking about any wear and tear. Having printers that suit
specific needs means that you’re not putting any of the devices under a heap of
stress, but good housekeeping is something that will pay dividends.
The types of printers you are
likely to find in most retailers generally fall into three main types, but this
might limit you or lead you to the wrong decision. There are printers that can
be used for specific tasks which will make it more cost effective than assuming
that a laser jet or ink jet are the only viable options. Those are the two
technologies that most retailers will stock because they tend to be the most
popular technologies, but for some jobs, even a low cost ink jet might be akin
to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Inkjet is a technology that
covers a broad range of uses and an even broader range of printers. Inkjet
printers are popular for home and small office use because they’re often
inexpensive and easy to set up. They work by propelling tiny droplets of ink
onto the paper and they can be found at all price points from a simple office
inkjet right the way up to a commercial inkjet capable of producing top quality
prints on multiple surfaces.
Laser printers are more likely
to be found in offices but if you plan on printing mono text based documents at
home, it’s worth considering them for home use too. They’re much less expensive
than they once were and despite the toner cartridges costing more than a set of
inkjet inks, the page yields are often considerably higher, making them much
more cost effective. Toner is generally available through third-parties and
there is less risk around using third-party toners, they all tend to work in
exactly the same way and produce the same kind of results.
Colour laser printers are a
more complex proposition and they will have higher initial and ongoing running
costs, but the overall page yields almost always make them more economical than
regular inkjets. Print quality is usually great with these printers but there
may be better alternatives depending on what you want to print and the medium
you want to print on.
Whichever way you go with
lasers, they’re mostly built for large volume printing and this is where they
really begin to make sense financially. The downside is in the range of print
mediums that the smaller laser jets can handle but most will be able to handle
paper and card stock, many will print on transparent film but heavy duty papers
are often more of a problem.
Sometimes referred to as MFDs,
or Multi-Function-Devices, they usually come with a heap of added benefits that
make them a great choice for the home or office user. They also come in
different sizes, some can take up the footprint of a laptop, others are floor
standing and capable of printing thousands of pages each day. The downside is
that they’re not particularly strong in any area, print, scan or copy, when
compared to the output from individual devices.
The upside is cost, it’s much
cheaper to buy an all in one and they take up so much less space than
individual components, but if quality printing is important and you need it for
commercial art prints, they’re unlikely to fulfil that need entirely. That said,
there are some that come close to perfect printing, but they will more than
likely use regular ink tanks which means that the prints will fade in time,
they can be fussy about paper type and they’re generally more suited to
everyday printing. Point to note, some still come with a fax capability as a
throwback from decades past, you need to consider how often you think about
sending a fax today.
Faxes are still sent today but
phone lines have evolved over the past few years, and that’s if you still have a
landline that can be used with them. Most Fax components of MFDs will also be
incompatible with technologies such as digital voice. It’s so much easier to
send an email!
It’s an old almost antiquated
technology that is still in use and there are printer manufacturers who still
make them. Dot Matrix printers are great if you only ever need to print text,
not so much if you need to print graphics.
The print head uses pins to
strike an inked ribbon which can usually be re-inked a number of times. Despite
their antique nature, most of them are pure bred work horses that also despite
their mechanical nature are relatively easy to repair. I still use one for
printing drafts and code listings, and it is the same one I have been using for
the past decade.
Modern Dot Matrix printers are
usually connected via USB but the range of devices that they work with is
limited. If you just need something for invoices or things that only you need
to read, and you want a printer that won’t break the bank when replacing ink,
they’re certainly an option. Newer ones tend to be more expensive than lower
cost inkjets initially, and their output is limited.
Some retailers might tell you that there’s
little difference between inkjet and dye sublimation printers, if they’re
trying to sell you an inkjet, most likely because there are inkjet printers
that have rich feature sets and almost perfect printing. If you ask a retailer
who specialises in dye-sublimation, they will point out the limitations of
regular inkjets and also point out that it’s worth paying a premium for the
better technology.
If you ask me, it depends on
what you want to print. If it’s photographs that can be reprinted in the future
or you are using it for anything other than commercial work, dye-sublimation
printers might be an expense that you can avoid. If you care about the
longevity of your print output or the range of mediums you can print on, then
going all in on a dye sublimation printer is the way to go and if you need to
make prints of your artwork, then a wide format dye sublimation printer is a
must have.
Dye-sublimation printers use a
heat transfer process to create prints. They utilise a special type of ink
called dye sublimation ink, which is typically in the form of solid dye panels
or cartridges. The ink is heated, turning it into a gas without passing through
a liquid state. The gas then permeates the surface of the specially coated
paper, where it solidifies and becomes fused with the paper fibres. This
results in continuous-tone prints with smooth gradients and vibrant colours.
Inkjet printers, on the other
hand, use liquid ink that is sprayed onto the paper in the form of tiny
droplets. The ink is delivered through microscopic nozzles in the print head,
propelled by thermal or piezoelectric mechanisms. Inkjet printers can produce
prints by either depositing ink directly onto the paper (known as the
“drop-on-demand” method) or by utilising an intermediate mechanism
such as a print head that transfers the ink onto the paper (known as the
“continuous ink system” method).
Aside from the longevity of
the prints that can be produced on a dye sublimation printer, you might also
want to consider the other benefits. You will get better colour accuracy, (as
long as you apply the correct colour profiles), you will almost certainly find
that the finish of the print is indistinguishable from commercially produced
photo and art prints.
These are available through a
range of the above technologies and are also known as large-format printers.
These are capable of printing on larger paper sizes than standard printers and
are commonly used for producing banners, posters, architectural plans, and
other oversized documents. Wide-format printers can utilise various printing
technologies such as inkjet, laser, or even UV-curable inks.
If you are a professional
artist, graphic designer or photographer, a wide format dye sublimation printer
is almost a complete business in a box and there are some that also provide a
cutting ability similar to the ability that Cricut machines have so that
stickers and shaped works can printed out. The downside to these is the expense
with most commercial dye-sub or laser printer/cutters costing upwards of five
figures.
My first printer in the 1980s
was a thermal printer and despite its small size, it was a useful addition to
my shiny new home computer, especially when I was typing out BASIC programs.
One of my first commercial digital artworks was sold as a thermal print, a
black image on metallic silver paper that was around four inches wide.
Today, thermal printers are
still manufactured and can be purchased for less than a hundred bucks. They’re
extremely useful for printing shipping labels, most will come with software or
an app that has templates which can be used with online sellers such as eBay
and Amazon, generating the relevant product bar codes, assuming you have a
barcode that has been assigned under a standard such as GS1.
There are two types of thermal
printer, direct thermal with uses a heat-sensitive paper and thermal transfer
which uses a ribbon to transfer ink to the paper. The downside is that colour
thermal printers are still in their infancy and not widely regarded as being
useful for anything other than limited colour printing.
Plotters are capable of
producing extremely high resolution prints and are useful for technical
drawings and architecture. They use markers to provide the print layer and are
generally much more expensive to purchase than other types of printer. For most
people, a plotter will be mostly redundant in that they are suited for a very
specific task and their footprint would make it impractical for anything other
than specialist use.
Slightly different to the dot
matrix printer which is also an impact printing technology, impact printers are
mostly used in certain manufacturing industries for specialist processes.
Portable printers can be
useful, although not entirely practical for all of your print needs. Most of
them will have a built in rechargeable battery and they can be a fun way to
share photographs if you’re meeting up with friends and family.
They can be extremely useful
for printing out receipts, especially if you are exhibiting at shows and
events, and they typically connect over wireless to your device. There’s no
absolute reliance to have a Wi-Fi connection, although they connect via Wi-Fi
to your device, this is typically through the printers own hot spot. Many of
the portable thermal printers work this way too.
You can find pocket sized
printers which are more suited to printing out snapshots and receipts, but if
you are commuting and need access to a printer that will print out business
documents, there are larger format sizes available, although don’t expect
sizing above the standard letter size or A4.
Almost from the same stable,
portable document scanners work in a similar way but my advice is to steer
clear of these as the results won’t always be any better than the scanning
feature that is integrated into modern cell phone operating systems which
utilise the phone camera with a much higher resolution than a portable document
scanner will offer.
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| I Want My MP3 by Mark Taylor |
I’m often blown away by the
ever increasing resolutions offered by various printer manufacturers. Printers
just keep getting better and they always seem to have ever burgeoning numbers
printed on the boxes lined up in retail stores.
High numbers are usually a
good sign that a printer will perform, but they’re not the best and only
indicator that you should consider before parting with your cash. A printer
capable of extremely high resolution prints might not perform as well as the
printer with a slightly lower resolution.
The high resolutions offered
from new printers means on paper (excuse the pun), the biggest numbers should
produce the sharpest detail because the number of dots per inch is higher. This
should also mean that there is far more detail in the print image but that’s
not the only consideration. A high
resolution print that is overly saturated will look less sharp than a lower
resolution print that is perfectly balanced. You will likely be printing at 300
dots per inch (dpi) for commercial work, so ideally anything above 600 dpi is
going to be useful, the overall resolution will then determine the detail but
bear in mind that unless you are using a wide format printer, larger
resolutions aren’t necessarily the be all and end all.
Resolution is a measure of
pixel density, not the overall size of the print. If you place a business card
next to a bill board, it’s likely that the bill board was printed at a much
lower resolution, although both look pin sharp. That’s because a billboard is
viewed at a distance so you won’t necessarily see that it is made up of lots of
dots, a business card is seen much closer and if you applied 72 dots rather
than 300 the image would be lacking any level of detail, this is because the
human eye resolves the larger lower resolution print when viewed from a
distance.
However, much of the detail
won’t come as a result of the quality of the resolution, it will come from the
medium being used, the settings that you choose, the application that you are
using to print the image from, and more importantly, whether or not you are
using the correct colour profile. I have managed to get some great results from
the cheapest inkjets by changing the settings, the paper and setting a colour
profile.
That’s something else that you
need to consider when buying a printer, will it support the colour profiles
used by your application, your monitor, or the colour profile of the paper as
provided by the paper manufacturer. Profiles for specific media need to be
applied to every device in your creative process so that the colour you print
is the same as the colour you see on screen.
The ink that you use will also
have a bearing on the final results, if you are using third-party inks, the
printer might not be optimised for the pigment or dye that the cartridges
contain and this can often lead to over or under saturated prints that appear
to be blurry, but bear in mind that some third-party tanks will be infinitely
better than the originals, so it’s not an easy space to navigate.
The medium that you print on
is another huge consideration, if you use low quality paper stock, it will
impact the overall quality of the print and again, this could be another
culprit for over and under saturation but loose fibres in cheaper paper stock
can clog up the print head. Good quality paper stock is usually more expensive,
but the paper tends to be slightly heavier and the manufacturer might have a
specific colour profile that can be used with that specific paper. The
brightness of the paper tends to make a difference to the colour of the print,
brighter papers will usually provide more vibrant colour.
Canson papers are generally
excellent and come with profile support, but I have found with many of the
premium papers that cheaper printers can sometimes struggle with their weight
or texture. Some glossy or lightweight papers can slip on the print rollers
meaning the printer will either jam or the print will be at an angle leaving an
inky mess inside the printer.
Getting the correct paper
weight is usually trial and error. Some printer manufacturers will state that
their printers are compatible with mediums up to a specific weight, but that
doesn’t always mean that particular weight will work, it depends on the quality
of the paper or other print medium. Papers and print mediums that are too thin,
too slippy, too thick, are all going to present an issue at some level, and
even the coating on some papers can make some printers struggle or can mean
that the ink doesn’t adhere properly to the paper.
I look at supported paper specifications
touted by manufacturers with some scepticism, from experience not all papers
are equal even if they’re the same weight. One thing you really need to know
before deciding on a printer is what kind of material you will be using, so to
give you a better idea, here’s a rough guide to figuring that part of the
equation out.
300 GSM+ Good
quality business card or heavy card media
180-250 GSM Mid-Market quality
magazine cover
130-170 GSM Promotional
Posters and Flyers
80 GSM Regular everyday matte
white office paper
35 GSM – 55GSM A regular
newspaper
I tend not to make any
compromises on paper, I only ever use acid-free mediums and wherever I can, I
always buy paper that’s made as close to home as possible. The environmental
impact of buying incredibly cheap paper through online marketplaces should be
something that needs to be better controlled and monitored.
The wood pulp could originate from
trees that might have been illegally felled or logged from regions where
environmental controls are not enforced, and the impact of shipping it from
somewhere like China isn’t something I can get behind. I do purchase some
papers from Italy, but those are usually very specialist and I will only use
those papers when I need an absolute guarantee of quality. I only buy recycled
paper if it carries a trustworthy certification
An ICC profile is a file that
describes the colour gamut and colour rendering intent of a device. There is a
difference between the intent and the gamut, a colour gamut is the range of
colours that a device can reproduce whereas a colour rendering intent is a set
of rules that describe how colours should be translated from one device to
another.
ICC profiles are used to
ensure that colours are reproduced accurately when they are transferred from
one device to another. For example, an ICC profile for a printer can be used to
ensure that the colours on a monitor are reproduced accurately when they are
printed so that you print exactly what you see.
ICC profiles are typically
created by device manufacturers and in some cases, paper manufacturers. They
can also be created by third-party companies that specialise in colour
management. An ICC profile is a complex algorithm that can take many years to
refine and develop.
ICC profiles are used by a
variety of software applications, to use one, you need to install it in the
software application that you are using. Once the ICC profile is installed, the
software application will use it to ensure that colours are reproduced
accurately.
ICC profiles can help to
ensure that colours are reproduced accurately when they are transferred from
one device to another. This can be helpful for businesses that need to ensure
that their marketing materials look the same across different devices, such as
printers, monitors, and mobile devices and they are essential for professional
printing of artworks and photographs.
ICC profiles can also help to
improve your overall workflow by reducing the need to manually adjust colour
settings. This is one of the things that can save you a heap of time and
frustration and it means that what you print will be consistent. Never
underestimate the power of an ICC profile to contribute to having either a
positive effect on your bottom line, and when used frequently, they also have a
massive time saving benefit too.
Most failed prints usually
come about as a result of the wrong settings being applied or the wrong type of
paper, or print sizing being set incorrectly. It’s frustrating when this
happens even when printing everyday print jobs, when you print commercially,
every print has a defined monetary value and it becomes critical to your bottom
line. If you are using a $30 sheet of paper the last thing you want to see is a
misaligned or mis-sized print.
Checking the printer driver is
also something that can affect your print output, it’s not just about the
security an up to date driver offers, things like page yield can be affected
too. Using generic drivers can be a particular problem when you use plug and
play through Windows. Plug and play is designed to automate the installation of
a driver but if Windows cannot find the original driver it will often revert to
a generic one.
If you are missing useful
features on your printer and they’re showing as not available in your
application, it could be because a generic driver has been installed. The
problem with generic drivers is that they’re just that, generic and need to
work with many products. This means that the features of your printer might not
be accessible or the print quality might not be optimal. Generic drivers should
only be a temporary replacement for the authentic driver specific to your
printer, mostly because generic drivers are updated less frequently.
They can also be responsible
for introducing compatibility issues with other applications, and especially
when working with colour profiles, that’s another good reason to take some time
researching printers and consider the manufacturers history of providing
updates. It’s another subject that often appears in so many online
conversations and looking through a few posts on Reddit recently, printer
owners are generally an unhappy bunch of users regardless of their allegiance
to any particular manufacturer, once again reaffirming the notion that mostly,
all printers suck!
Setting the print quality incorrectly
is another cause of failed prints, many printers will allow you to set a
default printing profile and then we forget and print out a letter in the best
resolution and we will print out art prints using the draft mode on really
expensive paper stock. Setting up paper sizes and margins can cause similar
issues, and leaving paper margins at the default offered by programs such as
Microsoft Word can mean you spend even more on consumables.
Decreasing the page margins
especially on drafts and print outs that very few other people will read can
make a huge difference to your consumables bill. If you are a regular user of
applications such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Pages, make sure you set up
your own templates with reduced margins so that you can fit more on to each
page, and I would go so far as to say that creating templates will always bring
better results than relying on the printer manufacturers software applications.
If you could judge a printer
based solely on the functionality of its software and print features, that
would certainly simplify the selection. Some of the print manufacturers have
brilliant companion applications that allow you to layout your page so that
what you see in the print preview is exactly what will be printed out, really
useful for printing multiple labels on a single sheet or when you want a
selection of images on the same page, but not all printer software is equal and
some of it that gets bundled with a printer is supplied by a third-party
outside of the printer manufacturer usually in the form of a lite version.
In the past when comparing two
printers side by side, I have been known to download the software before making
a commitment to the printer to give it the once over and a general kick of the
tyres. The software can often tell you more about what you are about to buy
than you can read on the box. Sometimes the manufacturer provides a mobile app
as well, and these are usually worth a download so you can at least compare the
user interfaces which are mostly more reminiscent of the Windows XP era. It is
worth checking out how often these support applications are updated too.
 |
| A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor |
There are some things that we
never realise will make a difference to the printer output beyond the usual
suspects of brand, paper stock quality and making sure the settings are
correct. Making sure that your print rollers are cleaned with isopropyl alcohol
means that there is less chance of paper fibres and inks building up and
leaving behind a residue that makes the paper slip, jam, or stick.
Purging your print queue can
speed up the printing process, sometimes print jobs fail to spool properly while
the printer is still attempting to resolve previous print jobs. A clogged up
queue means that your printer either fails to print or takes a lot longer than
it should. Cancelling previous print jobs that haven’t cleared should resolve
this issue.
If you are connecting via USB,
make sure that you are using a high speed USB cable, ideally USB 3.0. Not all
printers will support USB 3, neither will all computers, but using a high
quality cable does make a difference to the speed of the print job when
printing over a cabled connection. Remember that Wi-Fi printing will always be
slower than printing via a cable, that’s due to other network traffic using the
same bandwidth, you might also see more issues with unfinished print jobs
sitting in the print queue on a wireless network.
If you can, give your printer
a static IP address on your Wi-Fi network, there are plenty of online guides
that will take you through doing this step by step, but you may have to also
consult the documentation from the manufacturer or supplier of your Wi-Fi
router. Some routers will even allow you to plug the printer into a USB port on
them so that any device accessing your Wi-Fi can then print without any issues
with your device showing an error that says it can’t find a printer on your
network. If you set this up on a PC, make sure that you also set the printer so
that it can be shared and found across other devices on your network.
Whenever possible, I would
always suggest connecting the printer to either the router via USB or even
better, through a network cable, although not all printers have network
capability and not all routers will support a printer, or at least very well.
If you are able to do this, it
will exponentially increase the speed of printing, but one thing I would also
point out is that when you are printing, ignore the promised page per minute
speeds from the manufacturers, the results are usually collected in ideal
conditions and the printer and network will have been optimised for the test by
people who really do have a better grip on this kind of stuff than most regular
folk will have.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned
about slightly slower speeds between printers, the fastest printer on a poorly
configured network will only work at the speed that the network allows. Mostly,
it is what it is and the fastest speeds published by manufacturers will likely
be predicated on printing at the very lowest quality setting.
Some applications have their
own support for some printers and it is often better than the software provided
by the printer manufacturer, although it is usually dependant on you having an
official printer driver installed so that the application can talk to the
printer and is able to understand what the printer is capable of.
When it comes to borderless
printing you might think that this is the best output which will provide the
best results, but that very much depends on the paper or other medium that you
are using. Not all papers are suitable for borderless printing.
Regular inkjet papers are too
thin for photo prints and generally won’t work with borderless printing, the
ink will completely saturate the paper and the paper is unlikely to remain flat.
If you select a borderless setting and set the paper to regular inkjet, most
printer software will prevent you from doing this because you might have to
clean up an incredible inky mess but some printers will allow you to press print
and it rarely ends well.
Quality photo paper,
especially if it’s glossy doesn’t always play nicely with borderless printing
either. You need to make sure you are using a paper that specifically
identifies it as being suitable for borderless printing otherwise the ink could
struggle to adhere to the border and begin to separate from the paper.
You also need to be mindful of
colour bleed around the edges with borderless printing, if any of your other
settings are not consistent with the paper type that you are using a borderless
print can lose detail around the edges and detract from the quality of the
overall print.
Printer calibration is important because it ensures that the colours you see on
your monitor are accurately reproduced on your printer. I mentioned using ICC
profiles earlier but calibration can be done in a number of different ways.
Calibration will greatly improve
the quality of your prints. When a printer is calibrated, it can produce
more accurate and vibrant colours. This can make your prints look better, but
maybe as importantly, it will save a heap of reprints and a lot of time and
frustration. Good quality paper, the correct settings, an ICC profile, and a
calibrated printer are considered the magical ingredients to produce a great
print, even from budget friendly printers.
Calibration is the best way to
save money. If you are not happy with the quality of your prints, you might
reprint them after tweaking the settings, and it might take two or three prints
before you’re closer to happy. Calibrating your printer can help you avoid this
by ensuring that your prints are accurate the first time, and it means you
won’t be using excessive ink by overcompensating on some of the settings.
There are a number of ways to
calibrate your printer. You can use a software-based calibration tool, or you
can use a hardware-based calibration device. Software-based calibration tools
are less expensive, but they may not be as accurate as hardware-based calibration
devices.
No matter what method you
choose, it is important to calibrate your printer regularly. This is because
printers can drift over time, which can cause the colours to become inaccurate.
Calibrating your printer once a month or every two months can help you maintain
the printers colour accuracy.
Most printers will have some
form of calibration function, the problem tends to be that it’s rarely repeated
by the user after the initial set up, unless lines start appearing in your prints.
Calibration will use ink and I suspect this is what puts people off doing it,
but it also saves ink in the long run, it really is swings and roundabouts with
this stuff but calibrating the printer regularly will give you consistent
output and it will contribute to extending your printers life.
Print heads and nozzles
shouldn’t need to be manually cleaned all that often if you use the printer
frequently, but they will need cleaning regularly if you don’t use the printer
for a period of time. Many printers have a self-cleaning routine, you’re more
likely to see this on printers that have a built in screen or are able to be
set up via a software application initially and it’s not a setting that you
should turn off.
The best advice I can give you
is to schedule any self-cleaning routines to a suitable time. The last thing
you need is the printer to start churning away and doing its thing during a
Teams meeting, and if you have more than one printer, set the cleaning activity
at different times. I learnt this the hard way when four of my printers all
fired up at the same time, not only did I nearly fall off my chair, the noise
of four printers doing their own thing is like being subjected to noise levels
that would usually mean wearing ear defenders.
You also need to make sure you
have at least some paper in the printer so that the cleaning routine can take
place, although it may not be needed with your specific printer, it’s better to
be prepared. I regularly find the odd page on the floor from some random
activity taking place.
When it comes to how often you
should use the printer, each printer technology will be different but any kind
of inkjet system or dye-sublimation technology needs to be regularly fed with a
print job. As a minimum, I try to make sure that inkjets print out at least two
or three times a week because this is one of the best ways to keep the nozzles
clean and longer term it reduces the amount of ink used and wasted through drying
out.
You also need to clean any
moving parts and rollers, I tend to use a cotton bud or Q-Tip with isopropyl
alcohol, or a long handled paintbrush to keep the rollers clean, it’s
surprising just how much paper dust settles on those rollers and an excess
build up will make any paper eventually slip and jam and if there’s enough of
it there could be a chance that you begin ingesting it and that’s probably not
so good.
If you keep on top of general
printer housekeeping they can mostly continue to do a good job for a while. I’m
yet to find the perfect modern day printer that provides me with everything I
need in a single device, but from experience, having a couple of printers and
sending specific print jobs to the right printer is a lot like having tools in
the toolbox. Just as we wouldn’t rely on a hammer to do the work of a screwdriver,
printers are really no different.
They’re all designed and
manufactured with a specific function or range of functions in mind, the real
issues show up when we creep outside of the printers technical scope and ask it
to do what it wasn’t designed to do, or as we know from our experiences, we try
to find the printer on a wireless network.
We really have only scraped
the surface of what we need to consider when thinking about purchasing a
printer, although I think to some extent, any modern printer will generally
give you exceptional print quality, especially if you think back and make a
comparison to printers of a decade ago. In terms of output, I’ve yet to find a
modern day printer that produces results poorer than they could produce a
decade ago.
If there were a handful of
important takeaways to think about, I would certainly think about what you need
the printer for, the budget you have, and whether that budget can stretch to
either a better model or having access to a second cheap and cheerful printer
for the more regular light duty things you ask of it and keep the best printer
for the highest paying jobs.
I would be less inclined to
worry about resolutions if the print output size is the size you need, and I
think I would put as much of the budget as I can into a printer only model
rather than a multi-functional device. If you already have an MFD and the
scanner works, sure you will have an extra few steps to take when photocopying,
but that non-MFD is going to give you way better results and you can buy a mint
pre-used scanner from eBay these days for very little, even professional
scanners can be affordable if they’re pre-used.
From my own experience, rental
can work but I did find some distinctive triggers that separate when you should
buy, when you should rent and when you should buy again. You need enough work
to make rentals economical, and then you need to recognise when you reach a
critical point that might make an outright purchase a better longer term fit
for the purse strings.
Bear in mind that there’s
often some level of equipment cost versus use calculation that needs to be
considered, and take into account any depreciation and replacement costs as any
combination of these things could affect the amount of tax that you pay or even
claim back because these things can be tax deductible in some regions.
The overall cost of the
printer should be thought about, there’s little value in renting a domestic
level printer that’s maybe a bit more robust than others, it’s still a domestic
printer. If you are in the market for a wide format printer that’s likely to
cost in the region of a five figure sum, rental and a service wrap might be
much more practical.
When you hit printer costs at
five figures, it’s unlikely you will be using them to only print out the
occasional piece of work, they’re more likely to be heavily used and abused and
having them professionally serviced and calibrated makes a lot of sense.
When my work is rotated into one
of my retailers, usually during the summer months, I might need to supply
anywhere between 300 and 400 prints, all of them are signed so it makes much
more sense for me to either outsource the work or to take a week off from everything
else to focus on printing. It is really horses for courses, there will be a for
and an against for anything you do but in the end it comes down to how much
difference the decision will make to your bottom line.
 |
| Circuit by Mark Taylor |
I use a Cricut cutting machine
which is superb, especially when working with intricate cuts and vinyl. Matched
with a dye-sublimation printer, there’s not too many jobs that come through the
studio doors that I need to fully outsource.
I don’t routinely offer any
printing services but plenty of artists do, it’s an ideal second gate to your
business that can be a useful service to other artists in your area. If you
only have a limited number of print jobs from your own work, offering to rent
out the printer or provide a service to other artists can make it more
affordable to go for a better printer.
I also use a dye-sublimation
heat press for mugs. Most of the time a client will order a mug through one of
my print on demand stores but depending on the customers location, it’s not
always economical for them to then have to pay import duties or excessive
postage. With a stock of sublimation ready mugs I can still offer the same
product, but I can also offer bespoke designs for clients. Right now I’m
processing an order for 100 mugs with retro-inspired designs, so it also
benefits my bottom line by being able to offer both design and printing without
the need for a third party. The downside is finding the time to commit to
production so you do have to consider whether this is something you can afford.
The point is that even if you
don’t have quite enough throughput to justify the printer that will make your
art prints pop, you can get creative by offering additional services. I view
high end printers as an extension to the business rather than looking at them
solely as devices that I can only use for printing my own work.
If you need the highest
quality printing but don’t have the volume to get the most value from a
printer, outsourcing your print jobs with a specialist local printer or using
print on demand is probably going to be the direction that you will initially
travel in, but an over-reliance on print on demand will mean that you lose that
all-important connection to your client base. You essentially do all of the
work to bring the clients to someone else’s website, where they then take the
relationship over and provide the print and you receive a fee. It’s a good
model but it should never replace that direct client relationship.
Print on demand takes the
transaction headache away but there are solutions to overcome that by using a
service such as Shopify. That said, you are then responsible for every order so
there’s the friction, either lose the relationship or retain it and work a
little harder.
If you are looking to own your
own printer, the question is around how much volume you intend to put through
it and if there’s not enough volume, the happy compromise would be to outsource
to a local printer. There are pitfalls here though.
Bear in mind that not all
local printers will be familiar with the standards needed when delivering fine
art prints. With this in mind, some of your printer purchase decisions will
come down to knowing your audience. If they are happy to pay a premium, they
absolutely need to receive the best possible premium quality. If they’re more
budget conscious, you have to find the middle ground, there’s always going to
be compromise involved in doing this.
The only other thing to add
today is not to underestimate the added burden and responsibility that home or
studio printing will add to your art practice. I outsource quite a bit of work,
operate via print on demand and then print special editions in the studio or
through a specialist print service that deals with fine art prints and has
access to the mediums I need from them.
Despite this, the time I spend
printing in the studio still equates to anywhere between six and eight hours
each week which is just like adding another day’s work to a nine to five job so
you do have to make some additional commitments. Creating the work with a brush
or whatever your medium of choice is, is only ever 20% of the job.
 |
| New England Fall by Mark Taylor |
Hopefully, my musings today
will help you reach the right decision when it comes to selecting a printer. I’m
brutally aware that you may have even more questions now than you had when you
thought you just wanted a printer, but think of it this way. The print that the
printer creates is, for artists, a constant shop window. You need something
that will print with enough vibrancy, clarity, and crispness so that it shows
your work in the best light possible, The end result is what people will
develop a feeling for.
Whether you outsource the
work, do it yourself, set up a collective group of artists who share the
equipment and the costs is less relevant, the ultimate test is whether the
output is good enough to hand over or sell to those who care enough about your
work to want to own a print of it. Clients mostly don’t care that you have the
greatest printer with all of the functionality of the Starship Enterprise, they
care about how the end result looks and what it costs, and occasionally that
focus might lean more on one side than the other.
Owning a farm of printers is
more akin to collecting pets, they all need feeding and looking after, each
printer will also have its own set of complicated emotions that you will need
to work with, and that has to be reflected in some way through what you charge.
Buying big and expensive might
ultimately be more cost-effective than buying cheap and cheerful, but either
way, there will be a learning curve to understand what the device is capable of
so that you produce consistency at every step. For me, answering the questions
where the answers didn’t appear on the box the printer arrived in was way more
useful when selecting the printer.
Good luck with your search and
if I ever do find the unicorn that is the perfect printer, I’ll revisit this
topic and let you know what it is. In the meantime, as always, stay creative,
look after each other and try not to spill ink on the carpet!
Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology and is also known
for his landscape works and the occasional abstract! He lives in Staffordshire,
England. He has been creating professional digital work since the 1980s.
You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s
portfolio website at https://beechhousemedia.com
Join the conversation on
Facebook at: https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia
connect on Twitter @beechhouseart or waste hours on Pinterest right here: https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia
