Economics of Printing at Home

[Darin Boville]

I think there's no question about it. If you are at the point of considering the purchase of a higher end printer that suggests you are already spending $$$ at commercial labs. You'll save a ton. Also will print a tone more.

A few years ago a gallery wanted to show several of my prints at 44x44-inch size. The bill was nearly $1800 bill to have them printed at West Coast Imaging (the gallery footed the bill, but ignore that for now). By contrast a few months ago I bought a Canon ipf8400 for $2800. You can see that the printer paid for itself almost immediately (because it's rare that they gallery pays the bill). I should have bought one years ago...

--Darin

[Fr. Mark]

I am contemplating putting an idled, cartridge-less Epson 1400 in service again, if I can. First in color to clear backlog of un-printed files then all black inks. Part of the equation was the free printer but more so even is that with 3rd party cartridges or bottle adapters and inks (in gallon quantity of you use that much) paper becomes the issue not ink. And there, it may be possible that watercolor paper from cheap joe's or dick blick or jerry's art o rama etc on sale either in rolls or 22x30 (Arche's Hotpress 90 or 140 pound) and cut to size may cost less than stuff sold for photos.

[Jim Jones]

When using a mixture of 3rd party inks and papers you may encounter longevity problems. researching www.aardenburg-imaging.com or wilhelm-research.com if permanence is important.

[Fr. Mark]

Arches watercolor paper is more permanent than (most) inkjet paper. Carbon based monochrome ink-sets ie Eboni are as permanent as they come. I think this has been demonstrated by ardenburg. Thanks for your concern.