How to Save Ink on Your Wireless Photo Printer
Printing pictures on a wireless photo printer can be expensive. When choosing a model, you need to look past the initial expense of the printer and ...
Printing pictures on a wireless photo printer can be expensive. When choosing a model, you need to look past the initial expense of the printer and see the cost of the individual photos.
You can save costs on photo printing by doing the following:
Raise the Resolution: Any digital camera that is less than three years old can capture at least 1 megapixel of data with each shot. This is sufficient to print a good-quality 4 X 6-inch photo; a 2-megapixel image holds enough information to output a higher-quality print of the same dimensions.
If you know what photos you might want to print, adjust the camera to its highest resolution.
Don’t Compress Photos: Save your originals – don’t compress them into JPEGs or other file formats.
Enhance the Photo Image: Play around with your image editing program to crop, contrast, brighten etc. until you are satisfied with the image’s composition. That way, you won’t waste ink on photos you just want to discard.
Draft Prints: Sometimes you want to make test prints. In that case, reduce the image size and then load the printer with plain, inexpensive paper.
For 4 x 6 images, print on matte-finish photo cards instead of glossy photo paper.
Save on your ink: Special photo inks can provide your printer with a more refined color palette.
It pays to comparison shop though. Generally, general purpose cartridges can look just as good as photo ink and can be purchased in bulk for a lesser price.
Get your Cartridges in Line: Use your printer’s controls to realign your cartridges–especially if you see vertical or horizontal bands, unwanted lines, gaps, or bleeding colors in your prints. Right-click the printer’s entry in Control Panel’s “Printers and Faxes” or “Printers” applet, click Properties, and search for a cartridge maintenance option.
Keep Your Printer Clean: When you keep your printer’s mechanisms clean, the device runs best.
Keep the ink nozzles clear of dry ink in your wireless photo printer. When an inkjet printer is left idle for a week or so, the ink in the tubes that feeds the nozzles begins to dry. So, if it’s been a few days since you last printed, wipe the nozzles down first.
You can make the ink last a lot longer in your wireless photo printer by following the advice in this article.
For more tips on your or to buy a new one, go to