Color 
Inkjets use liquid-based inks to produce small dots that are placed on paper to create the final images you see. Some use dye-based inks, others use pigment-based inks.  Pigment-based inks  are better at preventing see-through, that is light shining through the ink from behind and appearing in front of the paper and image.  Dye-based inks usually can create images with a greater dynamic color range than pigment- based inks, but may not be as permanent as pigment-based inks.  Technology in this area changes very rapidly, and this may change in a matter of months.

Pigment-based inks may also clog print heads more easily if left to dry out, but this has not been proven one way or the other yet.

Either way, some inks are made permanent, while others are not.  You can test this by smearing parts of an image with a wet finger.  With non-permanent inks, you will see substantial smearing similar to watercolors.  With permanent inks, you may see a bit of smearing caused by the movement of the top layer of loose ink particles as you smear the image, but the majority of the ink that has entered the paper will remain in place.

Pigment-based inks usually produce colors that are more saturated and dark, especially black, however, this will also depend on paper and technologies used.

Color gamut is the range of colors that can be reproduced.  A small gamut means certain colors can not be reproduced.  Often, fluorescent colors, metallics, and extremely bright highlights cannot be reproduced on most  imaging devices, whether they be printers, monitors, or whatnot.

The human eye can detect a much wider gamut than any output device that has been created by man.  (Refer to the CIE color charts for additional  information on this topic.)

As a result, all printers can never display the full range of colors one  sees in real life, just like a photograph does not display the full range,  either.  Again, hard-to-get colors like fluorescents can not be duplicated  by most imaging devices.

Inkjet printers have traditionally used three or four colors, and mixed them together on paper, to create their images.  Recently, some printers geared towards photo printing have adopted six or seven color printing to increase the color gamut.

This is similar to the increased gamut that is available in traditional offset printing through the use of 6-color systems such as Hexachrome.

On any color scale, you see smoother steps between colors and a smoother gradiant overall when you increase the number of colors used.  This is  similar to drawing with crayons.  If you have only black and white, the intermediate grays are difficult to produce easily and accurately  through the mixing of these two color.  However, if you add a couple  shades of gray crayons, then the task becomes easier and the gradiants between black-to-gray-to-white are much smoother as well.

On three color inkjets, they are usually cyan, magenta, and yellow -  abbreviated using the first character of each color as CYM.

On four color inkjets, they are usually CYM plus black, and again, abbreviated as CYMK.

On six color or seven color inkjets, they are usually CYMK plus two colors chosen by the manufacturer as what they belive to be the best two colors at increase the color gamut for their printer.  There is no standard in this area.  However, usually, two of the 'darker' looking colors are duplicated, but with lighter shades.  Thus, you may have two cyans, one lighter than the other, and similarly, two magentas. You may abbreviate this by using lower case letters for the lighter shade, and thus a six-color printer with CYMK and two shades of magenta and cyan can be abbreviated as CcYMmK.

So how do you produce black if you have a cheap printer that holds  a single CMY color cartridge?  Well, mathematically and in theory, if you combine the three colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow, together, they should absorb all light and reflect none, and thus create black.

However, in reality, everyone, especially commercial  printers, know that what you actually get is a muddy dark  brown-black color that isn't truly black at all because real  pigments and colors don't mix perfectly.  This very reason is why we have 4-color printing presses and inkjet printers that have the extra color, black (B), as well.  We use B instead of a combination of CYM whenever we want true black to appear on paper.

Resolution

Resolution can be measured in many different ways depending on the output technology being measured, and guages the fineness of detail that can be produced.

For inkjet printers, dots per inch (dpi) is the standard applicable measurement of resolution.  If the printer can place 300 dots next to each other on a straight one inch line, the resolution is 300 dpi. This also means that the printer is not capable of putting a dot between any pair of dots on that 300 dpi line, and cannot print a line  that 1/600th of an inch wide, only 1/300th of an inch wide.

Lines per inch (lpi) and other ways of measuring resolution do not  apply to inkjet technology because they are not designed to be used on inkjet outputs, only offset printing technology and other methods. (Refer to Yahoo! and printing documents for complete details on  lpi, etc.)

Naturally, finer/higher resolution will give you better images in  general with less grainiess and better detail.  However, at the same time, the inkjet dots must also become smaller at higher resolutions.  If they don't, you won't be able to create a dot that fits in a  1/(dpi raiting) area and the printer will not be able to print details at the highest resolution it can.  Paper bleeding affects this and some printers with high resolutions may not be able to produce output as good as printers with lower resolutions due to bleeding.

Of course, higher resolution means more data, and this means there has to  be more data sent to the printer from the computer.  This may or may not affect overall print time (this is more mechanically and physically based and limited).

As an example, to print one 1-dot wide, 1" line on a 300 dpi printer, you must send information to the printer on those 300 dots.  You double that information when you print a 1-dot wide, 1" line on a 600 dpi printer. (This doesn't include considerations for data compression, etc., but is valid for color printing in general.)

Dot Size
While this is something you don't see mentioned with regards to laser printers (in general), this is becoming a topic of concern to inkjet printer buyers. Now remember, resolution, as described above, tells you just how thin of a line the printer can output.   The dots size, the size of the inkjet dots on paper, may be exactly the same width as 1 / resolution (eg. 1 / 300dpi = 1/300 th of an inch wide), or smaller. We can measure the width of these dots, but some printers can vary the droplette sizes as well.  As a result, many inkjet printer manufacturers have begun reporting the smallest amount of liquid that the inkjet heads can produce in picolitres.   Naturally, this does not correspond directly to any given dot size on the  paper per se, but it does reflect the ability to create a dot of a certain size. One can assume that producing a droplette of a smaller amount will correspond  to the ability to create a smaller dot on the paper.

As an example, the Epson Stylus 740 uses a 6 picolitre droplette while the HP 712/720/890/1120 series (HRET II printers) uses a 10 picolitre droplette, and the HP 2000 uses an 8 picolitre droplette. When viewed at 30x magnification, the Epson 740 dots are smaller than the HP dots, thus resulting in the reduced graininess in Epson printouts and smoother gradiants. As a result of using smaller dots, you may be producing dots that are smaller than 1 / resolution, but if done correctly (eg. Epson 740), you will get much smoother gradiants and better printouts.  A good example of this is the HP series.  The newer ones that have the HRET II technology can vary dot sizes from big to small.  They still run on the same 600 dpi resolution as older models but can produce better looking pictures (not as good as the top rated inkjets though due to lower resolution). Older inkjet printers use larger droplettes and the quality of prints are lower. Currently, the Epson Stylus 900 is the leader this category, using a 3 pl. droplette size.

It is of interest to note that this information on droplette sizes  (and resolution in HP's case for the 720/890/1120) is/was not commonly published nor made available to US consumers for some time, but  was made available through detailed advertisements for inkjet printers in the Japanese computer magazines.   Obviously, this fool's ploy to 'trick' 'dumber?' US consumers into thinking  inferior printers such as the HP's with HRET II (only 600x600 dpi! 4-color, old technology!) could beat higher resolution,  greater color printers such as the 1440x720 Epsons/Canon or the 1200x1200  Lexmark's was a poor marketing tact to take.   I'm sure a lot of disappointed HP customers are now wondering why even  regular photos of people on their very best HP Photo paper have  distinctively visible graininess throughout the faces. (Even my official HP print sample on photo paper shows this!)

Let's face the facts.  Unless you can produce effectively 'infinite' gradients and dot sizes like commercial print press, resolution and the number of colors used by an inkjet printer will still weigh very strongly in the final quality in the printouts.  Thus, higher resolution and more colors will, in general, beat out printerss with lower resolution and fewer colors.

Paper

Paper is made of fibers and materials from natural plants, and may include  additional materials, chemicals, coatings, etc.

In general, when water is added to paper, it is absorbed to the extend the paper can carry.  As it is absorbed into the paper, it may bleed outwards from the point of contact, sometimes in a spider-web like manner as it follows the fibers in the paper.  This reduces the quality of inkjet output. However, sometimes, the manufacturers create paper that absorbs ink in a well-controlled manner.  These inkjet papers are often recommended by manufacturers for the best output from their printers.  Dots printed on  inkjet paper tend to be well-defined and do not bleed very much at all. Additionally, special coatings added to the top of these papers increase the saturation, vividness, and color of most inkjet inks and allow for a wider gamut of colors to be created.

Photo-quality inkjet paper/film is usually the top-of-the-line media  created by these manufacturers and have a great deal of processing done to them to allow the highest quality prints to be made from their printers. More expensive than inkjet paper, and used for the final high-quality prints.

In general, plain paper output has been one of the troublesome areas for most inkjet manufacturers.  Some optimize/gear their printers for the best plain paper output, others for the best inkjet/photo paper outputs.  Thus,  your final selection of an inkjet printer will depend on the type of paper you will commonly use.  Nevertheless, the lower quality of plain paper  means that you will not see the best quality, highest resolution prints using these papers.

Most papers have one side that is prefered for printing.  Often, this is  indicated by an arrow on the ream of paper, or by some other means.  This side has been processed to handle ink better than the other side, so you should feed paper accordingly.  Substantial differences will exist between images printed on the two sides.

Finally, if you are using plain paper in your inkjet printer, you will see greatly varying results across different plain papers.  You must test a range of plain papers to find those which give the best results with your inkjet printer.  If you use the wrong plain paper, you will see heavy  bleeding of ink around text, blurred graphics, and poor quality overall. Simply switching to another brand or type of plain paper can improve the crispness of text and graphics substantially.

In fact, this is one cause of complaint for many new inkjet printer owners. They stick in regular paper and get crummy results, then assume all inkjet printers are bad.  Not true.  Most modern inkjet printers will give you decent results as long as you feed it the correct papers.  Try differnt papers and you should be able to find one that minimizes the bleeding and defects of printing on plain paper.

Of course, no such thing should occur on the manufacturer's inkjet or photo quality papers. (eg. Any Epson on Epson inkjet paper will produce crisp, vivid graphics and sharp text.)

Comparing printers

Try to print the same image on different prints using the paper appropriate and recommended by the manufacturs.  Use settings recommended as well. Quality will vary depending on paper and settings, but if you are comparing photo prints on photo paper, you should be using the very best settings and paper.  Using plain paper is not recommended as a good test unless you  have the time to try out a wide variety (20+) of plain papers to find the one(s) that match that printer well.  (See note above re: how the wrong plain paper can make a wonderful inkjet printer look horrible and the extreme variety of output you can get from different plain papers.) But,  you can try plain paper to see if the inkjet can work decently on less-than- optimal plain papers.

Preferably, also try to compare standard color test charts, especially those will color gradiant bars or graphs.  These will reveal the smoothness  the inkjets can achieve in blending from one color to another.

First, ignore color casts.  This is often something you can easily adjust  later on when you've calibrated your printer, and almost all printers need some calibration before you can expect very accurate color output. However, in general, you will notice that the Epson printers tend to be very accurate in rendering colors; the HPs, a bit on the oversaturated-side to compensate for their plain-paper optimizations.

Second, examine prints in a well-lit area.  Looking at prints under darkness will do you no good.

Thirdly, examine shadow areas.  Often, smooth or textured areas will hide/mask the dots in an image and while that is nice, we're trying to compare the ultimate/highest quality that can be achieved.  Thus, in shadow areas, you'll tend to see the most visible dots and the roughest gradiants possible.

Fourthly, in a medium-lit area, not so bright that you have to squint, and not so bright that a beam from a strong flashlight can not be clearly seen over room lightling, use a 4 cell or greater flashlight (we want a very bright flash light here, not a dim 2 cell pocket flashlight) to examine the prints.  Hold the flashlight so the beam comes at the prints from the side, almost parallel to the surface of the paper.  You don't want to shine the beam perpendicular  into the paper (like in a bright room) because the reflection off the paper will hide some artifacts.   You will notice that you can now easily see all dots, artifacts, and grain in the printouts vs. viewing it regularly, and this will allow you to examine the printer quality more objectively. Sweep the beam across the page several times while examining the overall defects in the image.  You should easily see the graininess of dots in the image, and the dithering patterns in the images you have produced.

Finally, put the images underneath a 30x scope (easily obtained for $10-20 at any Radio Shack store for the pocket model) or photography loupe.  Examine and compare dot sizes as this determines the graininess of your images.  Examine for bleeding as this will affect the crispness of your images.  And compare the sharpness or smoothness color areas are renedered.  Sharp, distinct dots will be good for business printing, but dots that seem to mix smoothly are best for photo printing.  As an example, the dots in all areas of an Epson Stylus 740 image are crisply defined and clearly distinguishable.  On the other hand, those on the 700/EX models can be seen, but seem to mix well and color gradiants are rendered very smoothly.

Naturally, no inkjet printer can get the same crispness in text and graphics as a laser printer on a wide variety of plain paper.  Most of the time, you will see some defects such as bleeding around text when you use plain paper with inkjet printers.  However, once you move to better paper, this will go away  and you will get superb results with these printers.  The Lexmark printers will tend to give the best, laser-like quality text on better plain papers,  superior to what other inkjets can currently produce on plain papers.

Ranking -Photo Printing

The Alps 1300, while not an inkjet printer, is a sub-dye printer available for  under $500 US and creates output that is basically a photo in quality.  You can not discern any dots at all, and unlike inkjet output, is fade-proof due  to the use of solid colors vs. water-based colors.  This is what I consider the baseline, or the ultimate, inkjet printers are trying to achieve in  photo-quality (that is looks just like a photo) printing at any distance.

(0. Alps 1300 - baseline)
 1. Epson Stylus 900 
 2. Epson Stylus Photo 700 & Photo EX
 3. HP Photosmart (highly saturated) [also, Epson Stylus 5000, but >>$1000 US]
 4. Epson Stylus 740 (for overall crispness and vividness)
 5. Canon 5000 (w/photo cartridges, for smooth color gradiants)
 6. Lexmark 5700 (w/photo cartridges, for laser sharp text)
 7. Epson Stylus Photo (original model)
 8. Epson Stylus 600/800/850/1520/3000
 9. HP 710/720/890/1120/2000
10. Lexmark 7000 series (w/ regular cartridge; possible higher with photo cart.)
11. Canon 7000
 

Ranking - Business text & Graphics 

Crisp text and sharp graphics on a wide variety of plain and inkjet
paper.
 1. <- HP 7xx/8xx/11xx/2xxx series
 2. Lexmark 5700/7000
 3. Anything else.
 

Ranking - Speed 

1. HP 2000/2500
2. Epson 900
3. HP 8xx series
4. Anything else...
 

Subjective Evaluation
The following evaluations were made during daylight, inside, with indirect  lighting from the mid-morning sun in my room.

I have recently been tested with 20/15 vision.  Print samples were taken one  at a time and viewed.  I was turned 90 degrees away from the window so that I was not looking toward the light, nor looking in the opposite direction to prevent excessive light or glare from distoring the viewing process too much.

I held each print sample at arms length, angled so that glare was minimized, and held at that distance for several seconds until my vision stabilized on the image and it looked like a photo.

I then brought each image closer to my eyes until I could distinctively and clearly detect the dots in the image.  I did not stop earlier when I thought it looked grainy or fuzzy, but when I could actually make out/see the dots stand out from each other.

At those distances, I measured the distance with a tape measure, then continued to bring the images closer to my eyes.

Several distances were measured for each image, and the areas in which the dots became visible are noted.  Paper types are notes along with the image used (many of them are samples produced by the inkjet printer  companies you may have seen in the stores yourself).

Usually, black dots were visible and distinct well before color dots were. Then, dots appearing in faces and sky and finally, dots in color gradiants, areas where colors changed from one to another like on clothes and fruits.  Some  gradiants, those with extreme textures, such as sweaters, hid the dots very  well and made them 'essentially' indistinguishable except at very close distance with prolonged examination.

As an example, the texture of the red hair girl's sweater in the HP 712C printout, the house in Epson Stylus Color Photo 700 printout, and several HP Photosmart images.

While mostly a subjective evaluation that will vary depending greatly on lighting,  and on vision, health, and other factors, the figures below tend to be lower for those printers that are higher in photo inkjet print quality and close to actual photos in final image output.

---

Epson Printers <<Epson site>>

• Stylus 900 - 4 color photo printer, 1440x720 dpi

The smallest dots of any inkjet printer, 3 picolitres!  4-color printer.  This latest printer from Epson has made yet another evolutionary jump in inkjet technology through the use of 3 picolitre droplettes.

In test prints on photo paper, it is extremely difficult to  determine whether the prints are from the Epson Stylus Photo 700/EX models or the 900 (in fact, or even vs. the Epson 5000).

However, in large areas of smooth color gradiants, the new 900 printer beats even the 700/EX & 740 models in smoothness of coverage and minimized visible dots.

You must look very close and even then, the dots look like a coating of fine dust rather than the 'clearly' visible and distinguishable dots of all printer past.  The dot sizes have dropped to the level where they are not 'harsh' nor 'irritating' as with larger dots from other printers.

Gray and silver color scales and color renditions are very accurate and near high-quality magazine prints in terms of quality andresolution.  Overall impression at almost all standard viewing distances (beyond the 4.5" I started to see dots) is one of high quality and immediate awe, and that of the viewing seeing a photo or press proof and not an inkjet print.  This 4-color printer would work well in printing photos of static still lifes, architecture and such.  At up-close viewing distances, the 'fine dust' effect appears however as mentioned above in certain areas, though without prior knowledge, you may well think it's part of the orignal image itself.

I do not have a good image of people yet, so whether the flesh tone rendition is superior to the Epson 700/EX printers has yet to be determined.  Also, it remains unknown whether the gamut of the 900 is near/equal to the 700/EX models, but probably not as almost all 6-color printing systems exceed the gamut of 4-color printing systems.  (eg. Hexachrome vs. traditional 4-color offset printing).

Also, without the release, or print sample, from the new Photo printers that will replace the 700/EX models, I can not say whether the 900 would be better than the new 6 pl. Photo printers, which are already out in Japan and Europe.

This is not to say there can be no further improvment.  Direct comparision to high-quality magazine cover prints show that the minimum dot sizes on magazines are on the order of at least 4x-6x smaller than the 3pl. dots of the Epson 900 under 30x magnification.  Also, on the other end, maximum dot sizes of magazine prints exceed the 900 by several times, allowing for full coverage of colored areas without any white paper show through from underneath and more even coverage of single colored areas.  Finally, the gamut of tradition print inks far exceeds that of inkjet printer inks, and they're waterproof (color inkjet inks are not).

Output on standard plain paper remains equal to other Epson printers -- thus, you'll see bleeding across different brands of plain papers, more so than the better plain text HP inkjet printers.  Once on inkjet or better paper, all output is sharp, well-defined, and vividly colorful.

700/EX - 6 color photo printer, 1440x720 dpi

Best on Epson inkjet paper or better media.  Plain paper color is a little subduded vs. the 740/800/850; just slightly.

Awesome photo paper prints.   Almost as good as an Alps 1300 printer for photos (still can see some dots here and there, esp. in gray scale areas).  Very hard to discern the dots on photo paper.
Slow.

Best inkjet photo printer around
 

740 - 4-color printer, 1440x720 dpi.
Replaces the 700 apparently.
 

4-color printer. 6 picoliter droplette sizes (BTW, and that's 4 picoliters smaller than the 10 picolitre minimum for the HP 720/890/1120/2000 series of printers, in case you didn't know -- and that's why even on plain or photo paper, the Epson's printouts are much smoother vs. HPs). Neat!
Plain paper prints of photos and graphics are not as saturated as an HP, but decent.  Very smooth nevertheless and better than a HP at any cost.  Minor bleeding (but all inkjets have this problem anyways) - goto any computer store and press the demo print button to see.  Decently fast. On Epson inkjet paper, oh! stunning!

Very rich blacks, vivid details and colors, fine resolution, outstanding 'eye grabber'.  Very 
smooth details and to me, smoother than the 850 on inkjet paper (different images? smaller dots?).  What you might have expected from the older Epson Stylus Photo (6 color, 720x720) last year now in a 4-color printer.  Graphics are crisp and color gradiants (eg. those Powerpoint backgrounds) are very smooth and you just dont' see the stair-steps you'd expect.
 

A fine printer and worthy of comparison to the Epson 700/Photo EX/5000 printers (thought the latter ones are much better at photo printing due to 6-colors).  Is not quite Alps 1300 quality, but decently close.  Behind the 700/PhotoEx/5000 vs. the Alps 1300. At 12" or farther, it's a photo.  6" for the 700/photo ex/5000 series. (closer and you can just see the dots in some areas). (BTW, the Alps 1300 is a sub=dye printer that prints 'photographs' that have no dots at any distance -- basically, it's a photo, okay?)
Best 4-color inkjet printer on inkjet paper around.
• 850 - 4-color printer, 1440x720 dpi

Supposedly their fastest inkjet printer  for that size and 'replaces' the 800.

Smaller dots vs. 800, but not as small as the 740. Prints on plain and inkjet paper are good.  Bright colors thought not as vivid as an HP 720/890... series on plain paper, but HP does optimize for plain paper while Epson optimzes for photo/inkjet paper.  Inkjet paper prints have are colorful, bright and vivid.

740 has better quality.
 

• 600,800,1520,3000 - 4-color printers, 1440x720 dpi.

Yawn. Last year's models.  Decent, but outdated. Still, better than the HP 720/890/1120/2000 on inkjet or better papers. Same dot sizes as the HPs.
Can't say how 'fast' the newer ones are,but PCMag's site has tested the older 800. In their tests, the 800 was as fast or faster vs. the HP 890 in most tests (except Freelance graphics and Photoshop page).  The 850 is faster than the 800, and one would think the 740 is as fast as the 800.  In any case, these are multi-minute printers.  The only inkjet that's under $1000 that I've seen which will throw out color pages like a slow laser printer is the HP 2000 series.  (Now that's a business printer!  Zap, another page, zap, another page....)


So, what to get?  You'll need to compare the 740 vs. 850 more in terms of business graphics on a variety of media.  I think they're running on the same design, but maybe only the newer 740 is using the 6 picoliter droppletess.  Next, compare speeds.  The 850 will probably be the faster one, but slightly.  Besides that, if you can't wait several minutes per page for a 1440x720 printout, might as well get the HP 2000 for $750 instead.  You loose some smoothness in the prints (they'll look like big film grain), but you do get a very fast plain paper, color business printer.  (forget the HP 890 as it's just as fast/slow; almost any other printer in the <$500 price range will be just as slow/slower).

HP Printers <<HP site>>
 

• 720,890,1120,2000 - 4-color printers, 600x600dpi.

Same 10 picolitre HP RET II techology.
HP has traditionally optimized their printers for the best plain paper output among inkjet printers, and that's still true in general.   Nevertheless, the Epson 740 will give these printers a run for color on  plain paper, and the Lexmark 7000 series has the very best black text  on plain paper still.

Plain paper output is very good overall, with good saturation in colors, decently crisp text, and general reliablity in output overall.

However, even on inkjet paper, dots are readily seen and quite visible. Photos of peoples faces, maps, detailed metalic reflections will all  exhibit visible dots.  Photo paper output does darken images and increase saturation, which hides some defects, but still images of faces and other areas of low-texture are covered with visible (ie. annoying) dots at handheld (12"+) distances.

 
As an example, their Porsche Boxter demo printed on inkjet paper exhibits clearly noticible dots at handheld distances on the entire area of the trunk lid.
On another note, it appears that on HP's best photo paper with the printer in the best quality mode, HP 710/720/890/1120 printers print  text with a combination of colors rather than with true black.
I don't have a way yet to find out if these printers are laying colors on top of black, or mixing CYM to get black.  But quite clearly, with identical printouts from HP on their plain, inkjet, and photo papers, the text on the photo papers are less sharp and of a lower resolution than text on inkjet paper, and are made up of color (and perhaps black) dots mixed together  to form the black text.

Quiter than the Epson printers when printing, and turns on very quickly. (eg. the Epsons occassionally do their multi-minute head cleaning when you turn them on and you have to wait until that's finished  before you can print anything. Very noisy when doing this too, and printing.)

Printheads are built-into the cartidges (Epson printers all have printheads fixed in the printers and are not replaced when you insert a new cartridge. Thus, replacing/repairing clogged Epson printheads can be expensive.) and replaced each time you replace the cartridge.

HP printers tend to be workhorses and very reliable.

They've given up the resolution race and unless they develop a higher resolution printer in the future, will most likely become a third-tier photo printer manufacturer in the future.  All of their current RET II printers run on an antiquated 600x600 dpi resolution and are no match at all for the 1440x720 dpi Epson printers for color photo printing, or the 1200x1200 dpi Lexmark 7000 series printers for black text printing.
• HP Photosmart - 6-color printer, 600x600dpi.


Imagine their 4-color printers running on 6-colors.  Rich, vivid, smooth and saturated prints on photo paper.  (this is a photo paper printer,  don't bother with regular or inkjet paper at all.)

Their dots are larger than the HPs w/RET II as listed above, but they've coupled the Photosmart printer with unique paper that blurs and blends the dots together almost completely.  This results in prints that seem very smooth and photo-like, but at the slight loss of very fine image detail.

Nevertheless, for most general photos of different subjects,  you will be suprised at the rich quality of the prints.  However,  gradiants that change smoothly and gradually from one color to another may exhibit noticable dottiness that are sharper than what you'd see on the Epson Photo 700/EX printers.  This slight dottiness generally is not a problem at handheld distances, but can be seen at 10" or closer.

 
A fine photo printer now that the price is down to $199, but don't expect to do any decent plain paper printing with this one.
 

Canon Printers <<Canon page>>

Canon 5000 - 4 or 7-color printing, 1440x720 dpi.

Similar to Epson Stylus Photo (original) but at 1440x720  resolution when using photo cartridges. (Still, the newer Epson Photo 700/EX are better at photo printing than the Canon 5000.)

You can drop in two black cartridge for very fast black text prints.

Nice color photo prinouts, but color matching is not as good as with the Epsons, and pictures don't come out looking as good on the first try.  You need to adjust photos to match the color gamut of this printer to get great results.  Relatively smooth printouts, but grain is not as small as with the Epson 740 or Photo series.
 

Canon 7000 - 7-color printing, 1200x600 dpi.

Blah.  Even on photo paper/film, the prints have graininess in shadow areas you'd think would have only shown up on lesser printers. More of a technology demonstration for their waterproof pre-coating, but even that doesn't work very well anyways (still some bleeding).
 

Canon 4000 series - 4-6 color, 720x360 dpi.

Last years printers.  Decent, but the newer printers from other manufacturers and the Canon 5000 are better at photo printing. However, the 4000 series does have the abilty to take a swappable scanner head in place of the ink cartridge and scan sheet-fed images into your computer.  Unique in that Canon has neon color cartridges available for these series so you can get true fluorescent in your prints.
 

BJC 50/80 - 4-color, 720x360 dpi.

While these printers are last, last years' generation of printers and have very low resolution, they are worthy of note in that they are capable  lithium-ion battery powered printers than can be used with laptops to print and scan images.  They have built-in IRDA infrared ports so you don't need cables at all.  If you print images on Canon's backlight print film (translucent white), you'll be amazed at the quality of images that can be created from these printers (of course, you'll have to hold it up to the light).

Lexmark Printers <<Lexmark page>>
 

Lexmark 5700 series - 4-6 color, 1200x1200 dpi.

Excellent black text on any paper, and better or equal to most laser printers.

With the photo cartidge, the Lexmark 5700 produces dots equal to the Epson's not running on the 6 picolitre dots (only Epson 740 at this time); thus, similar to the Epson 800/850 series. Similar to the Canon 5000 in the quality of printouts, but at 1200x1200 dpi vs. Canon's 1440x720 dpi.  In general, like an Epson 800 series with 6-color photo printing, but strangely, even the company provided samples have a few defects of note.

 
While color gradiants are smooth, areas which require black, such as grays, exhibit very noticible black dots in those areas due the deeper, richer black ink used in the Lexmark.  Without a secondary, lighter gray/black, the Lexmark fails to produce gradients as smooth as the Epson 740 in these areas, and instead, one notices the dottiness of these areas.  Also, minor color banding in areas of nearly identical colors.  One would expect that with a minor software adjustment, you can rid youself of these banding artifacts, but on a company provided print sample?

 
Without further high-quality print samples (I have just two), I must rank the  Lexmark lower.

• Lexmark 7000 series - 4-6 color, 1200x1200 dpi.



Excellent black text on any paper, and better or equal to most laser printers. Unlike the sharp black dots, color dots tend to bleed on plain paper, thus reducing the apparent quality of the prints.  Still a decent printer but outclassed by the newer Epsons.  Probably similar to the newer 5700 in quality with photo cartridge.
 

Other Printers

Well, if it's not the photo Alps 1300, why bother?  Sure, you can get a cheap inkjet for $100 that runs at 600x600 dpi, but for photo printing, you'll want to spend at least $230 for the excellent Epson Stylus Photo 700 (see www.shopper.com for price comparisons).  Otherwise, a cheap printer will be perfect for those other projects like banners, cards, and things that look nice with a splash of color.

Just remember though that like monitors, people tend to keep printers for many  years and if you are in the market for one, you might as well get a nice, top-of- the-line printer in this category.

People will say that oh, this printer is just as good as another for photo printing on inkjet or photo paper, but they haven't examined the print quality  up close and compared test images intensively.  If you don't look and notice  the differences, then well, maybe it doesn't matter to you the resolution of the prints or the color gamut available.  If you don't look closely enough, then you won't notice the differences anyways. In that case, pick whichever  printer you like and use that.

(this applies to all things in life -- if you don't notice or don't care, then don't spend the extra money for what  you'll never see/use/care.  bad analogy time: some people will notice a little ding in their cars right away, other will never even notice -- but still, there's a difference.)

 
Resolution and dot sizes do not always matter.  If you are printing a wall-sized poster, you don't need 1400 dpi at all to achieve an acceptible print.  Even 200 dpi! will do fine because the image will be viewed from far away and thus, you won't be able to distinguish the dots at that range.  (eg. billboard advertisements)

Nevertheless, if you print a wall-sized image at 1400 dpi with the highest quality inkjet printer you can get, it will not only look stunning at a distance, but up close as well.

Dot Size

Having wondered at what dot size is actually being produced by the various printers, I went home and threw all of my Epson and HP print samples under a 30x scope.

• Epson Stylus 600/800/850/1520/3000

The Epson 600/800/850/1520/3000 series of printers are last years printers.  They have a dot that is about the same size as the HP 720/890/1120/2000 series of printers (when the HP is tossing out a big dot - remember, it can vary dot size smaller).

• HP

The HP can make the dot a little smaller to give you the additional color gradiants that they toot as RET II.  However, you can clearly see the dots seperated by clear areas in between and these HP printers are definetely running on a 600x600 resolution mechanical step.  This means, no matter how hard you try, the HPs will not print a line that is finer than the 600x600 dpi resolution.  IE. So much for fine details.

Another very disturbing note is that the HP RET II dots are not round!!!

From plain paper to inkjet paper to photo paper, the damned HP RET II dots are teardrop shaped and are not Epson Sylus round dots.  What this means is that additionally, when you try to print fine lines on the HP, they will not be completely of one color from side to side.  Instead, they will exhibit a slightly lighter color on the thin end of the teardrop edge, and the darker color on the head of the teardrop end (assuming the line is printed perpendicular to the print head movement).  Thus, what is disturbing about the HP printers is that not only do they run off a 600x600 dpi mechanical stepper, they can't even print a decent solid line!

Now this is not to say that you'll ever notice a 1 point line on a 600x600 dpi printout to be slightly lighter on one side vs. another (in fact, it may not even be visible to your eyes), but when you think about it, if there is more ink on one end of the teardrop vs. the other, that side/edge will be darker than the other.

Very disturbing.....


Anyways, back to the Epson's...
 

• Epson Stylus 900

Even better than the 740 at 3 pl., resulting in a new level of inkjet print standards.  The first 4-color inkjet printer to match a 6-color
inkjet, ie. Epson 700/EX printers, IMO and a fine, fast printer overall for both photo and business use.
 
• Back to Epson Stylus 600/800/850/1520/3000...

The dots are dots, even if a bit eggshapped now and then (hey, you can make those flying dots perfectly round all the time), but still, clearly round-like dots. The older series of printers, 600/800/850/1520/3000, all have a dot that is as large as the 10 picoleter maxiumum dot that the HP can produce.  One the plus side, they run at 1440x720 and is much better than the HP resolution wise.  This itself will produce prints that are 'better' than the HP printers, and many photo-paper printouts support this fact.  A higher resolution print will look crisper than a lower resolution print.

• Epson Stylus 740

The 6 picolitre dot that they advertise for the 740  beats HPs 10 picolitre dot, and makes for the amazing plain paper and inkjet paper printouts I have at hand.  In fact, the smaller dots are still well defined on plain paper (less bleeding due to less ink absorbtion into the paper), and this results in the nice, smoothness I mentioned earlier about the Stylus 740 series on both plain and, even better, inkjet papers. I'd buy the 740 over the 850 for the fact that it uses 6 picolitre droplet size alone and gander at my very smooth output prints from the 740.

• Epson Stylus 700/EX

Photo 700/Photo EX dots are larger than the 6-picolitre dots in the 740 but the use of 6-colors makes the 700/PhotoEX the winner in photo printing on inkjet/photo paper.

The 740 will never be a photo-like as the 6-color 700/EX printers, but very close.  And unless you're a real nit-picker, you won't notice the difference at 12" or farther on inkjet or photo paper from any of these printers under most situations.  You will be able to see more grain on the 740 output, but if you can see that and the grain on the 700/EX printers, why didn't you just get an Alps 1300 in the first place, duh!?