The Best Photo Printer

Many photo printers, including the portable printers, connect directly to your digital camera, so you don't even need a computer to print your photographs. Some of the printers have slots for digital media cards, so you can easily remove them from your camera and pop them exactly into the printer.

The photo printers’ prices start at $150, but if you need a professional digital photo printer, you should look for printers that start at $300.

Most photo printers are basically inkjet printers with six-color cartridges - light cyan, light magenta, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black – instead of the usual four-color cartridges.

There are also some photo printers that use a thermal dye technology, also known as dye sublimation, which basically melts ink "crayons" onto the pages. Such printers can provide high-quality color, but are not actually suitable for anything but photo printing.

If you are interested in what additional costs come with photo printers, you should know that the cost of the ink will be higher than for an ordinary inkjet printer. So if you are going to print a lot of photos, be ready to pay a lot for cartridges.

The Pros and Cons of Photo Printers

Photo printers, like any other types of printers, have their own advantages and disadvantages a buyer should be aware of. To start with the advantages, these are the following:

• Premium quality color
• A digital photo printer connects directly to camera or takes digital media cards
• You can take portable printers with you
• You can get immediate photos

And here are some disadvantages you can expect from your photo printer:

• Photo printers are more expensive than normal inkjet printers
• The speed of printing is slower
• They are likely not to print normal text properly