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| Pretty
proofer: HP's
newest six-color inkjet printer ($1,495
list price for model shown) is a fast, quiet,
and stylishly designed; delivers impressive
output on up to 13x19-inch paper. |
If
you're looking for a photo-quality printer that
can handle just about any image, text, or complicated
layout up to 13x19 inches in size while maintaining
high-color accuracy, there are several out there
in the sub-$1,000 price range that will do the
trick. But Hewlett Packard claims that members
of its newest six-color Designjet printer family,
including the 10ps (suggested list: $849), the
20ps ($1,495), and the 50ps ($2,995), not only
produce great photos, but also take you one step
closer to producing proofs that nearly match the
output from commercial book, magazine, and brochure
printing processes. Why would you need such a
printer, and can it really do double duty as a
high-quality photo printer? We tested the Designjet
20ps to find out.
Before
you even consider dropping $800-$3,000 for an
inkjet printer, you should take a closer look
at your printing requirements and some of the
lower-priced alternatives. There are at least
four performance levels in the desktop-printer
arena. The entry level, now designated by a
price below $100, is dominated by four-color
inkjet printers that are great for text documents
and deliver close-to-photographic-quality prints.
The next level ($100-$300) contains a wide assortment
of four- and six-color printers with faster
speeds and photo-quality output, but most of
these can only handle up to eight inch-wide
paper. The third level ($300-$800) contains
printers that feature six-color ink, dye-sublimation,
or even pigment-based print engines that can
produce enlargements that rival silver-halide
prints from a lab. Some also handle larger and
thicker papers up to 13x19 inches (A3/B size),
or roll media up to 13x44 inches, have fast
USB connectors speeds, produce archival prints,
and can be connected to a computer network.
But if you're a pro photographer (or plan to
be) targeting advertising, catalog, brochure,
or photo book publishers, you'll find that most
inkjet printers can't match the colors that
appear in the final commercially printed pages.
In most cases, inkjet printer drivers choke
on any complex page layout that includes a variety
of fonts, illustrations, and photos.
These
types of jobs require a proofing-level printer
that includes an Adobe Postscript RIP (raster
image processor) to convert the fonts, graphics,
and page elements into the dots that make up
the printed page. While RIPs ship with many
inkjet printers in the $500 range, proofing
printers are also designed to more closely match
the CMYK colors found in the world of commercial
printing presses, including Pantone colors.
Most photo-quality printers are optimized for
the wider color gamut of RGB images (produced
by most digital cameras and scanners). Their
highly saturated colors look great in a print,
but work against them for proofing.
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