The key to inexpensive inkjet printing is *not to do it*! Printer ink is like Polaroid film was... They gave away the camera to get you to use the film! (Gillette was the razor company that gave you a razor so they could sell blades, and marketers world-wide copied them.)

That said, for most people, a cheap inkjet printer *for photos* is really a good professional color lab. There are dozens of them all over the USA. No printer to buy, no ink to go bad... for small print quantities, they are a good option. Just calibrate and profile your monitor, and get the lab's printer profile installed in your system.

If inkjet printing of photos isn't cheap, what's it good for?

Privacy
Permanence
Immediacy and Convenience
Color accuracy (if you understand color correction and color management)
Choice of print surfaces (TONS more choices than a lab can offer)
Control over the process

There is a HUGE difference between PHOTO inkjet printers and general purpose SOHO (small office/home office) inkjet printers and multifunction scanner/printer/copier/fax units. Photo inkjet printers use more than four inks, usually six or more, supplied in individual cartridges. When one runs out, you change just that one.

There are dye ink printers and pigment ink printers. Dye inks tend to be capable of greater mid-tone and highlight subtlety, but pigment inks last at least twice as long. (Properly made PHOTO inkjet prints last two to five times longer than conventional silver halide wet process prints made by traditional photo labs.) Smaller photo printers are inexpensive to buy, but more expensive to operate. Larger inkjet printers feature larger ink cartridges. The cartridges cost a lot, but the cost per print is much lower.

SOHO printers come in several flavors. The cheap ones are the most expensive to run if you need any quantity of prints. They use a black cartridge and a separate 3-color (YMC) cartridge. Better ones use four *individual* ink cartridges. Epson makes some EcoTank printers that refill from much larger bottles. They are very economical office printers for documents. Photos are cheap, too, but only so-so quality.

A great bargain in photo printers is the Canon Pro-100. Lots of UHH users have them and swear by them. You can usually find them on sale at ridiculous prices, often bundled with paper or a camera. They print with photo quality dye inks up to 13" by 19". Epson makes pigment photo printers that cost more, but if you want the ultimate print longevity, they are my pick.

You can mitigate the cost of inkjet printing by using third party consumables. HOWEVER, caveat emptor! (Buyer beware.) Some third party inks fade rapidly upon exposure to light, heat, or airborne pollutants. I won't use them, as I've clogged too many printers with them to risk it. Third party inks tend to produce off-color photos, too, so you need custom ICC profiles to work with them.

OEM inks are made for your printer. Epson and Canon and HP all use different print head technologies, so it's important to use ink made for your brand of printer. Some UHH users have had better experiences with certain brand combinations, however.

Third party papers ARE generally a good deal. There are some great papers from Moab, Red River, Harmon Galerie, Hahnemuhle, and others. The key to getting great results with your printer, OEM ink, and a third party paper is to download and install the appropriate ICC profile for THAT exact combination of printer model and paper.

One very important key to getting great prints is to use a hardware/software kit from Datacolor or X-Rite to calibrate your printer and make a custom ICC profile for it. Do that right, and your prints will match your monitor quite closely. THAT makes color adjustment with post-processing software an efficient process! It saves time, ink, paper, and allows you to get what you see.

I think you need to decide what you must have and would like to have in a printer. If your primary goal is great photos, but you need an occasional document, a photo printer will work best. If your primary goal is printing Word documents, and you only print photos on special occasions, get a multi-function unit.

Choose Epson or Canon... But where's HP in all this? I haven't used an HP printer I liked since the late 1990s. That doesn't mean they don't make some good ones, just that I haven't had a good recent history with them.

Good luck!

The key to inexpensive inkjet printing is *not to do it*! Printer ink is like Polaroid film was... They gave away the camera to get you to use the film! (Gillette was the razor company that gave you a razor so they could sell blades, and marketers world-wide copied them.)

That said, for most people, a cheap inkjet printer *for photos* is really a good professional color lab. There are dozens of them all over the USA. No printer to buy, no ink to go bad... for small print quantities, they are a good option. Just calibrate and profile your monitor, and get the lab's printer profile installed in your system.

If inkjet printing of photos isn't cheap, what's it good for?

Privacy
Permanence
Immediacy and Convenience
Color accuracy (if you understand color correction and color management)
Choice of print surfaces (TONS more choices than a lab can offer)
Control over the process

There is a HUGE difference between PHOTO inkjet printers and general purpose SOHO (small office/home office) inkjet printers and multifunction scanner/printer/copier/fax units. Photo inkjet printers use more than four inks, usually six or more, supplied in individual cartridges. When one runs out, you change just that one.

There are dye ink printers and pigment ink printers. Dye inks tend to be capable of greater mid-tone and highlight subtlety, but pigment inks last at least twice as long. (Properly made PHOTO inkjet prints last two to five times longer than conventional silver halide wet process prints made by traditional photo labs.) Smaller photo printers are inexpensive to buy, but more expensive to operate. Larger inkjet printers feature larger ink cartridges. The cartridges cost a lot, but the cost per print is much lower.

SOHO printers come in several flavors. The cheap ones are the most expensive to run if you need any quantity of prints. They use a black cartridge and a separate 3-color (YMC) cartridge. Better ones use four *individual* ink cartridges. Epson makes some EcoTank printers that refill from much larger bottles. They are very economical office printers for documents. Photos are cheap, too, but only so-so quality.

A great bargain in photo printers is the Canon Pro-100. Lots of UHH users have them and swear by them. You can usually find them on sale at ridiculous prices, often bundled with paper or a camera. They print with photo quality dye inks up to 13" by 19". Epson makes pigment photo printers that cost more, but if you want the ultimate print longevity, they are my pick.

You can mitigate the cost of inkjet printing by using third party consumables. HOWEVER, caveat emptor! (Buyer beware.) Some third party inks fade rapidly upon exposure to light, heat, or airborne pollutants. I won't use them, as I've clogged too many printers with them to risk it. Third party inks tend to produce off-color photos, too, so you need custom ICC profiles to work with them.

OEM inks are made for your printer. Epson and Canon and HP all use different print head technologies, so it's important to use ink made for your brand of printer. Some UHH users have had better experiences with certain brand combinations, however.

Third party papers ARE generally a good deal. There are some great papers from Moab, Red River, Harmon Galerie, Hahnemuhle, and others. The key to getting great results with your printer, OEM ink, and a third party paper is to download and install the appropriate ICC profile for THAT exact combination of printer model and paper.

One very important key to getting great prints is to use a hardware/software kit from Datacolor or X-Rite to calibrate your printer and make a custom ICC profile for it. Do that right, and your prints will match your monitor quite closely. THAT makes color adjustment with post-processing software an efficient process! It saves time, ink, paper, and allows you to get what you see.

I think you need to decide what you must have and would like to have in a printer. If your primary goal is great photos, but you need an occasional document, a photo printer will work best. If your primary goal is printing Word documents, and you only print photos on special occasions, get a multi-function unit.

Choose Epson or Canon... But where's HP in all this? I haven't used an HP printer I liked since the late 1990s. That doesn't mean they don't make some good ones, just that I haven't had a good recent history with them.

Good luck!

All good information there.

Did you see what I wrote about HP? "I gave up on HP products years ago. Their Printers and PCs crap out.
In ancient times they made good stuff like HP 10c, 11c, 12c, 15c pocket calculators (1980s) and HP LaserJet 4 (something) printers (~1994)."

To each his own with no judgements from me. I personally use a lab for prints larger than 13" x 19", but for some prints, I just don't want to give up control over the process and I love to see the result of my labors in print immediately after PP. Both my monitor and printer are calibrated using an X-rite i1 Studio and have verified with a spectrophotometer that the prints off my Epson XP-15000, a lower priced 6 cartridge photo printer, are more accurate than what comes back from the well respected lab I use. I know it's not all that important because my prints and the lab prints are close to each other and virtually all my images are for pleasing color, not precise matches, but I have spent a lot of money on high end bodies and glass and want to carry that quality through to my prints.