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Printing Photos: An Ink Dilemma

By Pablo Zedd

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 27Mar2008 Word count: 612 Viewed: 285 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Most people today own their very own digital cameras. If you don't own one then you probably know of people within your circle of friends/ family who have one. We carry our cameras everywhere and many people don't even realize it even though every modern cell phone has a camera functionality. Whenever that perfect opportunity to 'snap' a photo arrives, we know that our trusty cameras are just at hand. Once we have our precious images stored away on hard drive, the next step is to print them onto photo paper.

The advantages of printing the images that we capture from digital cameras play a great role in the reduced rate of commercial photo printing. Firstly, you can forget about the idea of printing out an entire negative roll. Capturing a great photo isn't an easy task and as a result, there are always those shots which are unwanted. With digital photos you can choose which photo's to keep, and most importantly which photos to print. On top of this, you can manipulate you photos with image manipulating software such as Photoshop to create fancy effects or adjust the image setting for an optimal result.

As more of us print more and more of our Digital Photos we find that it can become costly. Photo paper in itself is quite affordable. Pre cut paper (4 x 6") is easily attainable from high quality companies such as HP at very reasonable prices. The problem however lies in ink prices. A single cartridge of ink can set you back anywhere between $35 - $50. Considering that at regular usage of a printer, a cartridge will need to be replaced more than 10 times throughout a year which can become very expensive. Printer machines are surprisingly quite cheap these days. In fact this is a tactic of printer manufacturers to lure consumers in to purchase their printers. Consumers only realize the true expense of owning a printer after purchasing numerous cartridges.

Needless to say, there is a solution which can help drastically reduce the cost of printer cartridges. Many companies such as inksmile.com and 4injkets are now offering re-manufactured ink supply solutions. Re-manufactured ink cartridges are essentially cartridges that have been re-filled with quality ink. The quality that re-manufactured produce is essentially the same to standard ink cartridges. The only difference is that they are much cheaper and there affordable to you - the consumer. Re-manufactured ink cartridges are produced by third party suppliers such as inksmile.com. Due to this they don't hold any of the larger brand names such as HP or Epson. In fact many of these larger companies will criticize re-manufactured ink cartridges, for their quality. The truth is that the larger companies are simply interested in increasing their profits by charging large sums of money for their original cartridges.

In any case there is a considerable price difference between the two types of cartridges. The choice is essentially up to you, however many savvy consumers are slowly switching to re-manufactured cartridges as they print off more photos to save money. Leading more into the future, consumers will learn of an even cheaper printing solution know as Continuous Ink Systems (CIS). This new system is slowly emerging in the market and can literally save you thousands due to its bulk storing ink mechanism. However you want to look at it, the ink market is becoming competitive, which means great deals and prices for the consumer - which is never a bad thing. Over the coming years, printing those photos we love will become more affordable as printing options expand and prices become ever more competitive.

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