Printer best for photographs?

March 25, 2024 6:29 AM

What's your advice for buying a decent printer for printing out photographs? I've had some interest from people in buying prints of some of my travel / architecture photos but know nothing about printers and what's involved. What should I be looking for and what costs are expected in the long run. I mostly take pictures of buildings and nature (self links). Never really people. I'm on a Mac / iPhone. I already have a b&w laser printer for non-photographs so it won't need to fill that job.
posted by dobbs to Technology (7 answers total)

Take this as anecdotal ... but I sell hi-res framed prints of my cartoons to people. I print them using a HP Color Laserjet Pro M254dw printer. I print them on high quality glossy photo paper. They turn out quite nice and I'm very happy with the quality, especially behind glass. I've sold hundreds and hundreds of these and not a single customer has complained or asked for a refund. And I have samples from over five years ago and there appears to be no fading. Also, the printer has functioned perfectly for me, albeit not under particularly heavy use. Now, these are cartoons, not photographs so I don't know if that changes anything. And the ink is a little pricey; but what ink isn't these days. And the printer basically prints letter and legal-size paper only. But that's what I use. Hope that helps.
posted by lpsguy at 6:52 AM on March 25

I strongly advise you outsource your fine art printing to a fulfillment house or someplace like Costco that can produce prints for not much more than cost. Producing quality printed photos is a commodity service dominated by people who run very high quality printers full time in competition with others, driving the price down to cost plus bare margin levels. If you think a printing service costs "a lot," please know that price reflects the reality of the business.

I used to be one of those people. If you want to produce sale quality photo reproductions, you have to have the technical skill and studio space, time and aptitude to devote significant effort to learning how to do this, purchasing, operating and maintaining the equipment. It is not a pushbutton affair.

tl;dr: If you just want to take pictures and sell photos, don't buy a photo printer. Pay someone to make printed photos for you. Deadly serious here.

(Note re first comment: drawings/cartoons are usually fine off a laser printer. I sold tens thousands of greeting cards to artists for resale, all run off on a laser. They were happy with them. But photos are another story. Photos you'd like to sell to people are not acceptable printed by a laser.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:05 AM on March 25 [21 favorites]

>I've had some interest from people in buying prints of some of my travel / architecture photos

Echoing what seanmpuckett said - outsource it. At least, outsource it until you're established enough that purchasing/running/maintaining all the equipment will make economical sense.

Once people find out how much quality prints cost, and for you that cost is a factor of needing to break even (at the least) on the outsourcing, they might change their minds. So, outsourcing is lowest risk. My ratio is currently:

* 1000 visits to my online shop, yields:
* 100 visits to particular products, yields:
* 10 "added to cart" outcomes, yields:
* 1 sale

Yikes, and I don't think my sale prices are that high.

I blogged about purchasing a printer in late 2022, and then the sales and costs after the first year. I was kind of forced into this after my trusted print shop closed, but was at a point I figured I would break even on the investment after a couple of years. That's on track, so far.
posted by lawrencium at 7:45 AM on March 25 [4 favorites]

seanmpuckett has the right answer. It isn’t quite as expensive as you’d think either, considering what it costs to keep a printer fed with ink and the right paper stock.
posted by azpenguin at 8:03 AM on March 25 [1 favorite]

I tend to agree with the outsourcing comments, if you forget to print something every week or so on your inkjet printer, you'll end up running a few cleaning cycles to unclog things and then all of a sudden those four prints cost you a couple of $20+ inkjet cartridges. I use Printique for a lot of things. And, as an aside, when you do pick a company that you like to print your work, pick three representative pictures from your photography, and get all three of them printed at 5x7 in every paper that the company sells, so you have a little library to pick what paper will work best with what piece you're thinking of printing.

All that being said I do have an Epson XP-15000 (one of the cheaper 13x19" printers), which I've been happy with the output from both in terms of photographic quality and longevity. Mostly though I have it so that I can print on things that commercial printers won't do, negatives/positives for cyanotype/screenprint/etc, recycled tyvek, small pieces of bookcloth, etc etc.
posted by gregr at 8:11 AM on March 25 [6 favorites]

Agree with seanmcpuckett, though in addition, if you're looking for something on-the-go for some samples, of all the portables, the least mini and portable of them (in comparison), the Canon Selphy is still the best since the cartridge tech is the same as in photolabs.
posted by cendawanita at 9:36 AM on March 25

Seconding gregr's recommendation of Printique (formerly known as AdoramaPix). I've used them to print numerous photos, and photo-based artworks, over the years.

I'm happy not to mess around with color printing at home any more. It's a waste of time and money.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:13 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]