recommendations?

[christo]

Can anyone recommend a good (if possible inexpensive) color printer that can produce photo quality prints (or close to it) for a Mac running OS 10.2.8?

[xvvvz]

Budget? Size requirements? Planned uses for the prints? More information is needed before anyone here can provide a targeted recommendation.

Doug

[Kraellin]

christo,

for a long while, Epson and Hewlett Packard were the best choices, with Epson maybe beating out HP by a small margin in quality. however, Canon, Lexmark and even Brother are all reportedly making pretty good low end printers these days and i was particularly impressed with a recent Canon printer that was using c, m, y, k, r, g, b ink cartridges. in fact, i think it had 9 cartridges (one was a gray and another was a different blue or cyan, i think).

the best thing to do is to take a cd or flash card with the images you want to print to a store like Staples or Office Depot and ask the salesperson to print out your images on various printers. i asked about this at Staples once and they were more than happy to do so. it's the best way to find out for sure.

there are a lot of variables when it comes to printing and they arent all in the printer itself. a little research on printers, color spaces, gamut, profiles and all of that sort of thing can go a long ways.

craig

[duwayne]

For personal use (not professional) I have been using the Epson R300 for about 2 1/2 years. Paid $150 USD. They also have a R200 (or R220) that has the same print engine but not all the camera ports and preview display for around $89 USD. I am very satisfied with the results. One thing I really like is the six colors with a separate cartridge for each color. Certain colors are used about six time more than others so you only have to buy the ink you’re out of.

One of the nice features is that it can print a photo and/or text directly on the surface or the CD. My car has a six-disk in-dash CD changer and putting CD's in it with label can cause real BIG problems. So now I just print the table of contents and maybe an artist photo on the surface. Sure is much neater the using a sharpie.

Here’s the link to Epson’s site
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/c...p?oid=58654761

[christo]

Doug,
Budget is very limited. The max size printing would be 8x10. I am primarily interested in producing greeting cards, with images that have been retouched in PhotoShop.

[skydog]

Personally, I feel you are better off using a good professional lab. Professional labs provide an excellent product (color/paper). I find color ink replacement to be very expensive. The only thing you give up is convienience. I can provide you a list if you are interested.