I Have 2 Printers Set Up, Which One Is Better For Printing Color Photos ?

[jimbo123]

Q for those photo experts out there

i have 2 printers set up, which one is better for printing color photos and why ?

one is a photo printer the other is a office all in one printer, below are the spec pages

MP830 - office all in one printer (7 yrs old)
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/suppo...on/pixma_mp_series/pixma_mp830#Specifications

MP980 - photo all in one printer (4 yrs old)
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/suppo...on/pixma_mp_series/pixma_mp980#Specifications

sorry no new printers here.....

specs show differences in nozzles, picoliters, 1 grey cart, etc but the prints look the same to me. i'd imagine the photo printer is better, but would like to understand why.

thoughts ?

J

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• Printers: Canon MP830, IP4500, MX700, MX860, MX870, MP980
• Method: German Durchstich Method
• Ink: Hobbicolors and OCP
• Misc: Squeeze bottles - so much easier than syringes

 

[ghwellsjr]

It used to be the absence of a pigment black cartridge and possibly additional dye colors beyond the basic four that identified a printer as "photo" but obviously that doesn't hold true for these two printers. Maybe the lack of an auto sheet feeder is what makes the difference.

 

[PeterBJ]

I think the reason the MP890 is categorized as a photo printer is the addition of the grey cartridge. This should improve not only B/W photos, but colour photos as well.

But the print engine in the MP830 is the iP5200, which also is a very good photo printer even if it doesn't have the grey cartridge. I think both printers are good photo printers.

 

[pharmacist]

Actually you can get photo quality with so-called office printers like my Epson WF-7525. The secret is forcing the printer to use the CMYK mode with the apropriate inks (dye for superior gloss). The standard CMY-mode when selecting Epson premium glossy paper setting is suboptimal in terms of contrast and vividness due to the fact "black" is composed by mixing cyan,yellow and magenta together to get something very dark/muddy. Not only the print quality is not optimal, but the CMY-printing mode also uses considerably more ink compared to the CMYK-mode. Photo printers always have that necessary photo black. HP, Canon and Epson use this necessary photo black in all their photo quality printers.

 

[thanhhuy123]

I'm HP. With HP printers, the difference is HP Officejet now use all pigmented ink for CMYK, since HP assume you don't print and demand high quality photo on glossy paper! HP Deskjet and Photosmart use CMY dye and K pigmented <-- I prefer this way most since I can print good office documents as well as good photo! (Assume I only need B/W docs!)

 

[turbguy]

In general, the more colors available to print with, the better the color output will be. A wider gaumet should be available to print with.

In practice, the inks used seems to make more difference to me. Using non-OEM inks requires some degree of profiling to get optimum results.

Both printers should be acceptable...and that backs up your observations.

Wayne

 

[mikling]

Using OEM inks, the 980 using 5 inks actually has a larger gamut than the Pro9000 using 8 inks. This is what more advanced color dyes can produce.

The problem will be that there is very limited OEM matched aftermarket inks for the generation of printers following the CLI-8. The reason is that from 980 (221) generation forward, canon has upped the game on dyes. So the use of ICC profiles will be recommended when printing photos.

If you are prepared to use color management, you can obtain superior results with the 980. The grey ink is not used solely for B&W. It actually improves the color output.....

If you do not want to use color management and or don't have the requisite color managed software and ICCs and have closer matched OEM CLI-8 colors, you will probably find the 830 to give better results.