H-P Paints the Big Picture

By David Em

January 1, 2007

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There's big bucks these days in what's known as DFA (Digital Fine Arts) printing. Personal DFA printers are a step up from garden variety printers. They deliver sharp detail, excellent color, and prints that won't fade for decades.

Everybody who's purchased a good DSLR camera over the last couple years--and that's a lot of people--now wants an affordable DFA-quality printer to go with. Virtually every graphic designer in the world uses one, and there are zillions of people who'd simply like their prized family photos to last as long as the sepia-tinted ones they inherited from their great-grandparents. Hewlett-Packard aims to own a big piece of the rapidly growing DFA printing pie. In this article, I review H-P's 42-inch wide Designjet 5500 inkjet and the new $699 13-inch bed Photosmart Pro B9180. I'll also discuss H-P's upcoming line of DFA printers that includes the 12-ink Designjet Z3100, scheduled for release early in 2007.

The Rodney Dangerfield Effect

H-P dominates business printing, but when it comes to the photography and art markets, they can't seem get to get any respect. Most imaging pros perceive H-P as a developer of generic business-class devices rather than of high performance instruments that produce museum-quality prints.

What do terms like "DFA" and "museum quality" actually mean? A personal DFA printer has to hit seven marks:

• Excellent detail.
• A wide color spectrum.
• The ability to print on a wide variety of media.
• Print life that's measured in decades or centuries before noticeable fading occurs.
• Consistently repeatable results.
• Solid construction.
• Affordability.

I'll examine the extent to which H-P's DFA printers and media meet these criteria in a minute, but first a little background.

Then and Now

Few people know H-P's been pushing the envelope of affordable DFA printing for a decade. Ten years ago, producing a digital inkjet print meant hiring a third-party shop with a printer that cost a couple hundred thousand bucks and required a full time engineer to keep it humming.

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