Photo Printer

Two quite different machines share this name. One uses a dye ribbon and heat, the other uses six or more liquid inks. Both aim at the same target, a print whose color and tone survive being looked at closely, which an office printer never attempts. Choosing between them comes down to print size and to how often you print.

Dye sublimation heats a ribbon until the dye turns to gas, which diffuses into a coated sheet, then lays a clear overcoat that seals the surface against fingerprints and damp. Paper and ribbon are sold as a matched kit. A print has a fixed known cost, usually 25 to 40 cents for a 4 by 6. Nothing inside can clog. The limits are hard: photographs only, and most units stop at 4 by 6 or 6 by 8 inches.

The other family is a wide-gamut pigment inkjet carrying 6 to 12 inks, including one or two grays and separate photo and matte blacks, on bodies that take 13 or 17 inch paper. Those extra inks are what remove banding from a gradient sky and green casts from shadows. Pigment prints kept behind glass and out of direct sun hold their color for decades, which dye-based ink does not.

A Cartridge Inkjet Printer with four inks produces a pleasant snapshot and will not match either of these on skin tones or skies. A Color Laser Printer is not in the conversation, since toner cannot make continuous tone. Neither photo machine is a sensible choice for text documents, so most people keep one alongside a general printer rather than instead of one.

Before buying an ink-based model, find the stated ink use for head maintenance and whether it swaps photo and matte black automatically, because some purge ink on every switch. For the ribbon type, check that paper and ribbon kits are still in production for that model, since a discontinued kit ends the machine.