Home Printer: Inkjet Printing

Many home PC owners, when choosing a printer and estimating their expected print volume as small, opt for inkjet models. Indeed, for low print runs an inkjet printer is an ideal option. The price of a color device and a black-and-white device is practically the same, and the cost of cartridges is quite acceptable if you consider that you won't have to replace them very often. In addition, nowadays it is possible to buy compatible cartridges at a lower price for most inkjet printer models. So inkjet printing today is an excellent option for printing texts or photos at home.

The inkjet printing principle is based on using a print head with nozzles that is mounted on an ink cartridge. It is through these nozzles that measured droplets of ink are ejected. There are a great many models and types of inkjet printers. The simplest of them (but, alas, not the best) use three primary inks: yellow, magenta, and cyan to obtain all other shades. Black is produced, accordingly, by mixing all three inks. This printing method is not economical, because if you need to print plain black text, you will use all three inks simultaneously. Moreover, mixing the three components never yields a deep black (rather, a dark burgundy), so the color reproduction of such printers is lacking.

Printing is much more economical and of higher quality with 4-color printers. In them, all color shades are obtained by mixing three primary colors, while black is printed separately. What is particularly convenient is that the black cartridge and the color cartridge can be replaced separately. The most advanced models use four separate cartridges, which has a significant effect on economy. Experience shows that most often you have to replace the yellow and cyan inks, while magenta much less frequently.

And finally, the highest-quality color printing is photo printing. If you enjoy taking photographs and want to have your shots not only in computer folders but also in albums, then you definitely need a photo printer. First of all, such devices use not four but six basic colors (light cyan and light magenta are added). In addition, the print heads of the cartridges in such printers have particularly small nozzles, which benefits ink consumption. And finally, when printing on special paper, photo inks dry in such a way that they do not smear even when exposed to moisture.