You know, everyone doesn’t buy a printer to print text. There are actually people out there who go for a printer on the basis of how good its image printing is. For instance, it is absolutely critical for photographers to have a printer that can print images just the way that a professional photography lab can.
While a lot of printer owners in the world complain about the cost of replacing ink cartridges, the majority of them don’t even use their printers to print images. The frequency with which text printing people have to replace their cartridges is about 30 percent lower than how often image printers have to replace theirs.
What this boils down to is the fact that if people who print text a lot complain about expensive inkjet printer cartridges, then image printers must be pulling their hair out. Since you’re here, you most probably print images regularly and possibly laugh every time someone complains about the high price of ink cartridges.
Not only do you have to replace your colour ink cartridges more often but you also have to cope with extra costs because colour ink cartridges are inherently more expensive than black ink cartridges. So, it’s not that surprising that you’re looking to learn how to save ink when printing pictures.
Why Print Images At Home or Work?
If you’re looking to learn how to save ink when printing pictures now, then it’s highly likely that you’ve asked yourself this question in the past. After all, if colour ink cartridges are so expensive and printing photos makes you replace them so often, then why are you even bothering to print images at home or office in the first place.
The answer to this question is actually in black and white. You’re most probably printing images at home or work because it’s a major part of your lifestyle or profession. As expensive as printing images yourself is, it is always going to be cheaper than going to a professional photo lab to do it for you.
In the long run, if you print a thousand pictures yourself, it will turn out to be cheaper than having thousand pictures printed by a professional. After all, won’t the professionals add their profit margins to the initial cost?
This is why you can’t avoid printing images yourself and why you need to save ink when printing pictures. So as to help you along, here are six tips that will help you save ink when printing pictures.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #1: Pick the Photos You Want To Print Carefully
The most basic and fundamental tip we can give with regard to saving ink when printing pictures is to avoid waste. A single photograph or image reprinted can cost you a ton of money because it image prints consume a lot of ink.
This may seem like common sense to you but there are actually people who print their albums and then discard the images that they don’t want. A better option would be to sort through images before printing them.
Professionally, a lot of people print images only to realise that they need to edit something in or out of the image. The result is a reprint that could’ve been avoided. If you wish to see how a picture will turn out on paper, then we recommend the following.
- Reduce the size of the image and do a sample print,
- Print in draft mode first, and
- Print a contact strip to see multiple images at one go.
Another form of wastage occurs when people get impatient with their printed images. Handling a high quality image right after it has been printed is a recipe for disaster because the ink may still be susceptible to smudging.
Therefore, it’s recommended that you wait for the ink on the prints to dry before stacking them on top of each other or even handling them.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #2: Reduce Colour Saturation in Your Photos
This is something that any photography or design expert will be able to tell you. If you reduce the colour saturation in your images, you’ll use less ink. Colour saturation is basically how much colour is there in the image with regard to its background.
Needless to say, if the colour saturation is high, then your printer will put more ink onto the paper. Using this technique is useful if you don’t need your picture prints to be exhibition quality.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #3: Print Your Images in Grayscale
What would happen if you reduce colour saturation in your images to zero? Your images would go into monochrome or grayscale format.
There’s no better way to save ink when printing pictures. However, you need to be careful about one thing.
Many printers tend to use colour ink even while printing monochrome so as to make black ‘richer’.
So if you can print images in grayscale, then you need to make sure that the settings that tell your printer to use colour ink are turned off.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #4: Reduce the DPI Parameters
DPI stands for Dots per Inch. As is obvious, the more dots there are in one inch, the better the resolution will be of the final print. However, the higher the resolution, the more ink you’ll be using.
Many times, settings for resolution can be found in the printer’s settings menu. However, in situations where it isn’t present, you’ll need to use a third party photo editing software program to make changes to the resolution of the image you’re trying to print.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #5: Go for Specialised Photo Ink Cartridges
Just like there are special types of paper for printing pictures, there are also special types of ink cartridges. These ink cartridges are designed primarily to provide sharper and richer images on paper.
However, at the same time, they are formulated with the sole purpose of image printing. This means that they tend to be more efficient than general colour ink cartridges. As a result, they can help you save some amount of money.
Save Ink When Printing Pictures Tip #6: Use Compatible Ink Cartridges
It’s no secret that colour prints require more ink than monochrome prints. In fact, most estimates say that colour printing requires about 30 percent more ink than monochrome prints.
If you can’t do without printing colour images, then this means that you’ll be spending about a third more than what you would’ve spent had you gone monochrome. While specialised photo ink cartridges tend to save you a little money over general colour ink cartridges, the reduction is never as big as what you can get by getting compatible ink cartridges.
Compatible ink cartridges are almost always significantly cheaper than genuine ink cartridges. Moreover, as technology has advanced, there are now branded compatible ink cartridges which perform just as well as genuine ink cartridges.
More importantly, this same level of quality is available at much lower prices because third party manufacturers don’t have to make up for the losses they made by selling printers at throwaway prices. This means that compatible ink cartridges are considerably cheaper.
A prime example of this is that at Inkjet Wholesale, compatible ink cartridges are sometimes half the price of genuine ink cartridges. Thus, using compatible ink cartridges can save ink when printing pictures.
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