With the advent of cheap powerful computers, it has become possible for every photographer or photo lab, no matter how small, to get into the business of retouching and/or restoring photographs and printing photos from digital cameras. All that's needed is a scanner to scan in photos to be retouched, a reader or other means of bringing in images from digital cameras, a reasonably fast computer, and some means to output the digital image onto a "photograph". Computers have become extremely inexpensive - see our page on Recommended Computer Configurations for how much computer you need for various types and qualities of output. Scanners have also come down substantially in price, although the cheapest "home" scanners will not produce results adequate for professional use. See our page on Scanners for more information. The most difficult decision is in what type of output equipment to purchase. There are essentially two choices: a printer, which prints directly onto paper; or a film recorder, which produces a negative that can then be printed onto photographic paper.
Printing directly onto paper may initially seem ideal, compared to the extra steps required in exposing, developing, and then printing a negative. But there are some distinct disadvantages, depending on the printer technology:
Ink Jet Printers. These are the least expensive, in the range of a few hundred dollars for printers that print on A size (8.5" x 11") paper. They are manufactured by Epson, HP, etc. These squirt tiny dots of yellow, magenta, cyan (a greenish-blue), and (in some cases) black ink onto a piece of ordinary paper, or specially treated papers for a more photographic look. These printers are usually rated in "dots per inch", or "dpi". This specification is the number of individual dots (of each ink color) that the printer can print across each inch of paper, and therein lies one of the biggest problems with these type of printers. Each printed dot can only be maximum intensity yellow, maximum intensity magenta, maximum intensity cyan, or maximum intensity black, or any combination of these colors. That is, there are no shades of these colors - the dot is either there at maximum intensity, or not there at all. Combining maximum yellow and maximum magenta produces maximum red, maximum yellow and maximum cyan produces maximum green, and maximum magenta and maximum cyan produces maximum blue. Once again, these combination-colored dots are either there at maximum intensity, or not there at all. So, the bottom line is that ink-jet printers can really only produce individual dots in seven colors: yellow, magenta, cyan, red, green, blue, and black. To produce more colors, as are required in photographic images, the printers have to combine adjacent dots into "superdots". For example, assume you need to represent a medium pink (half-red, half-white) color. You could combine lots of sets of two adjacent dots together, one red and the next one blank (white), and from a distance the effect would be a pink color. However, note what has happened: viewed up close, the color is not solid pink at all, but essentially a white background "speckled" with red dots. And to get the huge number of colors and shades required to represent a photographic image, lots and lots of adjacent dots have to be combined together to simulate these colors. Viewed up close, this gives the "speckled" effect. Ink jet printers now have such a high resolution (up to 1440 dots per inch) that the speckled effect is less obvious; and some ink jet printer manufacturers use fancy techniques to attempt to disguise the dots; but the bottom line is that viewed up close ink jet prints do not look like real photographs .The next big problem with the current crop of ink jet printers is that the inks are not permanent!. First, the inks these printers use are water soluble, so if any moisture whatsoever touches an ink jet print, it will run or smear. Moisten a thumb to turn a page in the family album, and a big thumb-sized smear will appear on the image. Perspiration on the hands, a drip of water from a soda can or glass of iced tea, a drop of rain on a mailed "photograph", and the image is ruined. Second, ink-jet printer inks are also not resistant to light, so a few months' exposure to even indirect sunlight or indoor lighting will fade them out substantially. Stick a favorite photo of a grandchild on your refrigerator, and watch it fade away before your very eyes. Not the way to keep a customer happy. And third, ink-jet inks will fade over longer periods of time even if they are not exposed to light. When your customer opens their family album in five years and finds the "photos" faded out, you had better hope he doesn't remember who he got them from! The manufacturers of the big poster-size printers have developed permanent inks that can withstand water, sunlight, and ageing, but the small photo-size printer manufacturers have not - at least not yet.
The third major problem with ink jet printers, is the material cost. Manufacturers sell the printers very cheap, maybe even below cost, but they make up the profit on the the ink cartridges and photo-look paper, which are expensive. Ink jet printers can print pages with mostly text and maybe a few small photos very economically, because only a small percentage of the page actually requires any ink. But by definition a photographic image has 100% coverage, and the ink usage is huge. Of course, not every ink color has 100% coverage, or the page would be solid black. But assuming an average of 25% coverage for each color, a typical ink jet printer would use up a $25 color ink cartridge in about 50 prints, for an ink cost of about $0.50/print. For 50% coverage, the ink cost is about $1.00/print. Add to this the approximately $1.00/sheet(?) for photo quality paper, and an ink jet photographic print will cost you about $1.50-$2.00 per 8x10 (8.5" x 11") sheet. And this for a non-permanent, moisture-sensitive print which up close doesn't look like a real photograph!
The bottom line is, ink jet printers (with the possible exception of the big poster printers) are just not suitable for imaging digital photographs.
limited sizes! Photo-quality Printers. These are printers which also print individual dots, in yellow, magenta, cyan, and black, and combinations of these colors. But with these printers, each dot can have a wide range of intensity, from zero intensity (i.e., no colored dot at all=underlying paper color) to maximum color intensity, not just the zero or maximum intensity of the ink jet printers. So if you want medium pink, the printer just prints each dot as half-intensity red. This way, there is no "speckled" effect. The combination of yellow, magenta, cyan, and black, each in a wide range of intensities, can produce a dot of almost any color the human eye can perceive. Since every dot is a true color, the resulting image appears to be a photograph. While these photo-quality printers eliminate the "speckled" effect of the ink jet printers, and their prints are usually more permanent, they still have some serious drawbacks. There are basically four printer technologies which can produce near photo-quality prints:1. Dye Sublimation Printers. The ink media for these printers is a ribbon with one-page-size panels of yellow, magenta, cyan, and (sometimes) black ink. The ribbon is pressed up against a piece of special treated paper, and a strip of heated dots "sublimates" (evaporates) the ink onto the paper. How much ink is transferred to the paper for each dot is controlled by how much heat each heater strip dot produces. Thus after the all three (or four) ink sheets are passed over the piece of paper, varying amounts of yellow, magenta, cyan, and (sometimes) black ink are deposited on each dot, and a full color print results. These printers are most commonly available in "A" size (8.5" x 11"), although "B" sizes (11" x 17") have been produced. Manufacturers include Alps, 3M/Imation, Kodak, Mitsubishi, and Shinko. Dye sublimation prints will fade in direct sunlight, but otherwise are relatively permanent and not particularly sensitive to water. The chief disadvantages of dye sublimation printers are, first, that they can only print on special treated paper. This paper is not available in all the finishes which photographic customers are accustomed to, and furthermore the paper frequently does not "feel" like photographic paper to the touch. Their second disadvantage is that the cost of the material, ribbon plus special treated paper, is high. An 8 x 10 (8.5 x 11) print will run between $2.00 and $3.00 in media costs, an 11 x 14 (11 x 17) print $5.00 to $7.00. And their third major disadvantage is that they are available only in limited print sizes. Most dye sublimation printers are "A" size (8.5" x 11"), the largest are "B" size (11" x 17"). In addition, they will only print on their one rated paper size; that is, if you have an "A" size dye sub printer, and the customer wants only a 5 x 7 print, you still have to use up a complete A size piece of treated paper and all three (or four) panels on the ink ribbon. So a print smaller than 8x10 still costs you the same as an 8x10.
soft, can't put in sleevesFuji "Thermal Development and Transfer" Process. This is a proprietary process developed by Fuji, and implemented in the Fujix Pictrography 3000 (8.5" x 11") and 4000 (11" x 17") printers. This Silver Halide process images on a "donor" roll, which then transfers the image to "receiver" paper (also on a roll). Distilled water is the only liquid used - there are no chemicals. Each dot in the image is imprinted by a tiny laser diode; this results in very sharp images, probably sharper than any of the other printer technologies. The disadvantages again are that it requires special paper, although Fuji has both glossy and matte papers which closely resemble the most common photographic papers in both look and feel. A more critical disadvantage is media cost. A donor roll for the model 3000 can produce 149 prints and costs about $270, for a cost per print of about $1.80. A roll of paper for the model 3000 can produce 104 prints and costs about $70, for a cost per print of about $0.70. Thus the total cost for an 8 x 10 (8.5|" x 11") print is about $2.50, and roughly double that for an 11 x 14 (11" x 17") print on the 4000 model. And, like most other printer technologies except ink jet, these printers are available in only small to medium sizes; and if you want to print an image smaller than the printer's standard size, the cost is almost the same because you use less of the receiver paper, but you still have to use a full sheet of the donor material (?????).
special paper media cost limited sizes & have to use the whole sheetDirect-to-Photographic Paper Printers. (sienna, ????) soft chemicals cheap
Color Laser Printers. flat colors reliability direct prints from slides, etc.
The alternative to a photo-quality printer, is the film recorder. A film recorder (sometimes called a slide maker) connects to the computer like a printer, but exposes the image onto photographic film (positive/transparency or negative) instead of onto paper. To produce a photographic print, negative film is exposed in the film recorder, developed, then printed onto photographic paper. The biggest advantages of using a film recorder instead of a photographic printer are:
The main problem with negatives shot on film recorders, is the "haloing" effect. Film recorders display their images on a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), similar to the one in your TV but much, much higher resolution. An electron beam produces a spot in a coating of phosphor on the inside of the front glass face of the CRT, and this spot is moved around the face of the CRT at varying brightnesses to paint the picture. The problem is, some of the light emitted by the spot doesn't pass through the glass face of the tube, but instead is reflected back from the front surface of the glass and illuminates the phosphor around the spot. This results in a "halo" around the spot - dim, but nevertheless visible. Transparency films like slide film are not particularly sensitive to this haloing effect, but negative films are. The result is that dark areas, especially those which are near light areas, are "fogged" slightly on negatives, losing shadow detail and producing negatives which are too "flat". Some other film recorder manufacturers have attempted to reduce this problem by making the face of the CRT out of glass which is gray, rather than clear. The idea is that the "halo" light will have to travel through the gray glass from the phosphor spot to the front of the glass tube face, then back to the phosphor on the rear of the tube face, then back to the front of the tube face again and out to the lens, which is three times as far through the gray glass as the light which passes straight through the glass to the lens, so the reflected light will be dimmed three times more than the direct light, and the halo will be less obvious. The problem with this approach is that the intensity of the spot has to be increased to compensate for the loss of the direct light through the gray glass, so the spot gets bigger and fuzzier. So by reducing one problem, they create another possibly worse one - now the whole image is fuzzier. On the other hand, Lasergraphics has created as proprietary method of mechanically cutting off the halo while still using a clear glass CRT face, virtually eliminating (not just reducing) the haloing without increasing the spot size or making the image fuzzier. This technology is not available on any other brand of film recorder, but is standard on the Lasergraphics LFR Mark III DPM, LFR Mark V DPM, and LFR Mark VI DPM film recorders. The special DPM enhancement has no adverse effect on positive films such as slide film; any DPM model can also be used to image excellent positives.
The first Lasergraphics DPM model is the Mark III DPM. This model features 8000 lines (8K) resolution, and includes a standard single-cannister 35mm film adapter. The LFR Mark III DPM is recommended primarily for imaging onto 35mm negative film. Optionally available for this model are medium-format 120/220 or 4x5 film adapters. However, if you want to blow medium-format film up to very large (poster) sizes, we recommend instead the LFR Mark V DPM. This model is also rated at 8000 lines (8K) resolution, but has a larger CRT and relatively smaller spot size than the LFR Mark III DPM, so negatives produced by the Mark V DPM can be blown up to larger sizes. Finally, the top of the line is the LFR Mark VI DPM. This model features 16000 line (16K) resolution! With this resolution, even the biggest enlargements from medium-format negs look sharp and clean.