The Fine Art of Digital Printing, Part 3

By David Em

July 26, 2004

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The printing industry's recently coined a new acronym: DFA, which stands for Digital Fine Art. A DFA printer should deliver uncompromising image quality, work with a variety of media, and create prints that last a lifetime. DFA printers are typically inkjets, since they provide the best detail, color range, and media options.

The big four inkjet manufacturers (Epson, HP, Canon, and Lexmark) all have products with impressive specs on the market, but when it comes to figuring out which printer to buy, and what inks and papers to stock it with, it's a jungle out there.

Inkjet technology's come a long way over the last ten years. What was once marginal image quality is now superb, print life has jumped from months to decades (and in some cases, centuries), and the astronomical prices of yore are now consumer-friendly. This week I'll explore what it takes to produce "museum quality" prints on your desktop, and examine some of the pitfalls you'll encounter along the way.

Print Quality

Overall image quality varies from model to model, but printer resolution is quickly becoming a non-issue. With droplet sizes as small as two or three picoliters, most new printers deliver more detail than the human eye perceives. For example, many Epson printers output at either 1440 or 2880 dpi, but very few people can see the difference unless the print is viewed through a magnification loupe. Even very inexpensive inkjet printers now provide image detail that's equal to or better than any traditional printing or photographic process.

Of course, there's much more to a great looking print than mere detail. Color gamut, tonal range, surface quality, and permanence are equally critical elements of a printed image. These properties depend on the inks an image is printed with and the physical media it's printed on.

Each printer manufacturer uses proprietary inks, all of which have different properties. And just as the chemicals that go into film emulsions such as Kodachrome are tweaked by the manufacturer over time, the chemistry in inkjet cartridges can change too.

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