Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Most inkjets have a high-speed option that changes the printer from unidirectional printing
to bi-directional; the head or heads now print in both directions. (Unidirectional printing
with Epsons is always from the parked-head position out toward the center of the
printer.) This effectively doubles the print speed, but at a slight loss in quality, although
careful use of the head alignment utility can minimize this quality drop.
For the photo-desktop category, the speed champ is clearly Canon. The i9900 Photo
Printer has a rated 8 × 10 speed of approximately 50 seconds, with a 4 × 6 borderless print
at 38 seconds. By comparison, the same-size 13 × 19 printer from Epson (2200) lists an
8 × 10 at either 2 minutes 6 seconds or 3 minutes 51 seconds, depending on the paper
type and other variables.
What’s the primary factor in determining print speed? Simple: the number of inkjet nozzles
available. The more nozzles available shooting out ink over a wider printhead area, the
faster the printing speed. You can easily see why the desktop Canons are so speedy: the
i9900 has a total of 6,144 nozzles (768 × 8 colors), while its sister imagePROGRAF
W2200 printer has even more (7,680 nozzles at 1,280 nozzles per color). To accommodate
all these nozzles, the printheads are giant (over 1 inch wide). By comparison, the
much-larger Epson 4000 printer has only 1,440 total nozzles and the even-larger Epson
7600 has only 672 total nozzles.
There are workarounds to deal with slow printing speed (beside buying a faster printer).
I’ve gotten into the habit of having several in-progress projects ready that I can immediately
move to while waiting for a slow print. Organizing my office studio, emptying the
trash, that sort of thing (it also gets me out of my computer chair). If your printer allows
Canon’s i9900 Photo Printer is the
desktop inkjet speed champ.
Courtesy of Canon USA, Inc.