Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Color Printers
in sequence so dust may move around the page between layers.
I'll test out the longevity as soon as I get a chance, but I left some prints in my car's
rear window by accident. In the week they were there they were apparently
unaffected. They were also unaffected by some hot coffee I spilled on them..
-- George Pang, August 10, 1998
I looked at the printer market in the $500 and under range about one year ago and
settled on the HP PhotoSmart, which at that time sold for $500.
Today that same printer goes for $400. BUT! there is another HP printer, the
HP720 or HP722 which sells for around $300 and can match the performance of
the PhotoSmart, when using the Glossy Photo HP paper.
The cost of a print is $0.80 for the photo paper and $0.80 for the ink, for 8"x10"
prints on 8.5x11 paper.
The print quality is excellent, difficult to distinguish from a "real" photo at normal
viewing distances for a photo that size. HP does not rate the printer for dot pitch,
since the photo paper reacts with the ink to "meld" the printed pixels as the ink
spreads into the paper coating, it doesn't make sense to speak of dot pitch.
Kodak makes a photo paper that costs about half the HP paper. I have not tried it
yet.
-- Dave Conrad, August 29, 1998
I've had an Epson Photo EX for a few months now. I love it! I do some electronic
art and some more photo retouching. The colors are smooth and it provides good
contrast and excelent sharpness. I've had some digital images transfered to slides
then printed and the results were exactly the same except that I was in control of
the process. I had some initially dissapointing results when I scanned in some black
and white prints for enlarging. There wasn't enough detail in the shadows. This was
a probably a result of my reasonably priced 30 bit flatbed scanner. Some tweaking
in photoshop however rectified the problem. Some of the work I've taken to
framing shops has gotten good comments.
-- Tom Menegatos, September 11, 1998
I have a PowerMacintosh, an Agfa Snapscan 600 scanner and an Epson Stylus
Photo 700 printer. The results? Good, very good for a relatively cheap system. I
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