Photo Printer Ink Types

Necessarily, the cost of the ink is going to be higher than for a normal inkjet printer. If you print out a lot of photos, prepare to pay heavily for cartridges.

One of the bigger differences between photo printers and standard inkjets is that the former employs a wider range of printing inks to improve reproduction. Whereas standard printers use the basic CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta and black) inks, photo printers employ additional colors (light magenta and light cyan being common choices) to iron out impurities.

Color fidelity is another critical factor. It doesn't matter how vibrant the colors produced by the printer are if they don't match those previewed on your monitor or digital camera viewer.

Consistent color across compatible input and output devices is much easier now that Windows incorporates a built-in color management utility, ICM (image color management). Look for a printer that includes ICM or ICC (International Consortium of Color) color profiles that your image-editing application can use to ensure color fidelity.