High-end color printers give more vibrancy to your creation

Graphic designers never had it so good before. In the past, they would have to go to a professional printing service to get just a few sample prints of their work, which they would then show to their clients. It was a very expensive and tedious chore. If the clients did not like the color or the stock photos used in the dummy, they had to do it all over again. They had to go back and forth to the printer until the clients were satisfied with what they saw.

Today, color printers are everywhere. You have inkjet printers that do not cost a fortune but still deliver excellent color prints. They use different technologies, too. You have high- quality color laser printers with prices that continue to slide. And you still have a few solid ink printers that deliver consistent and more photo-like colors, such as Xerox Phaser 8200CP.

Printer makers have long fought with each other over the proper way to indicate the quality of prints their products are capable of producing. What should they use as a standard for benchmarking their products? One of the indicators is the number of dots per inch, or DPI. The more dots a printer is able to print within an area of a square inch, the higher the resolution and supposedly the better the reproduction of the printed image.

Epson is perhaps the leader in the competition for the highest DPI number, with its high-end printers able to achieve 2880 by 1440 DPI. Today, another indicator for the capability of the printers is how fine the ink droplet that they can place on the paper is. Thus, we now see the term picoliter being used more and more in the spec sheet of new printers. A picoliter is a million of a million of a liter, so you can imagine how complex it is to apply a drop of ink in 3 or 4 picoliters. A high-end inkjet printer has the intelligence to place dots with variable sizes in picoliters.

If you prefer a color laser printer, the new Lexmark Optra C710N is reportedly one of the printers that can produce the best color graphic printouts on the market today. There are certainly a few other alternatives from HP, Minolta and Xerox-just to mention a few.

Epson Stylus Color C80 gives you 2880 by 720 DPI and costs around Rp 2 million. Photo hobbyists may want Epson Stylus Photo 2100 instead. It uses seven instead of four or six colors, and can print at the 2880 by 1440 resolution.

Canon, the leader in inkjet color printers in Indonesia, also has great color printers. Take a look at Canon S820, which can print with a resolution of 2400 by 1200 DPI. Or, if you print on a larger size, you should check out Canon BJC 8500 (US$ 1,525).

It can give you 1200 by 1200 DPI resolution using six colors. If you want a printer that can print very good color but can also do a lot of other things except tap dancing, the new US$920 HP Business Inkjet C2250TN will fit the bill. It can send fax, scan, copy and print documents. In fact, HP has just launched a number of great new printers in Indonesia.

What to look for when buying a high-end color printer? Certainly speed is not the overriding concern, although you do not want to have to wait for 30 minutes for your artwork to get printed. So, unlike a workgroup or office printer, you are not looking for a speed demon. But you do have to look at other features such as the size of paper that it can print. Preferably, choose the one that can print larger than the actual paper size, such as the A3+ or A4+. This will allow you to print all the way to the edges of the paper.

Connection is also important. If you are still using your old PC, you will need a printer that still has the parallel port. Remember that most of the latest printers are only equipped with the USB port. And, as usual, ask for a demo and compare the print results, because print quality can be very subjective.

-- Zatni Arbi