Adding The Gloss To Your Printing

The Sunday Age

Saturday April 26, 1997

Mary Riekert

Once your images are downloaded onto your computer, the fun really starts. With digital imaging software you can experiment to produce snapshots, presentations and reports. Incorporate your pictures in posters, cards and banners and breathe new life into the kids' school projects.

Kodak has produced a range of papers for inkjet color printers and, while are still a long way from producing film quality snaps, it's a good way to share your digital images. Their Inkjet Snapshot Paper is sold in packs of 36 A6 (102mm by 152mm) sheets for about $11.

The glossy paper is easy to use and requires setting up your printer correctly. Each pack comes with a sheet of printer settings and the paper is designed to be used with HP, Canon, Epson, Lexmark, Tektronix and Apple inkjet printers.

I used our family Canon BJC 600 and my office HP Deskjet 850C to test the paper. The images from lower-resolution cameras were noticeably grainy and pixellated but, with images from the Kodak D120, the result was very clear.

Kodak advises you to avoid handling the printable surface of the paper or you will get fingerprints on the image area. Also handle the printed snapshot carefully and allow it time to dry.

Avoid exposure to moisture, high temperature and humidity, which can affect drying time and image quality. Drying time varies according to the printer, ink used and color saturation.

They also produce an Inkjet School Project pack with 30 sheets of A4 high-quality inkjet paper to enable you to print images incorporated into presentations. The pack, which costs around $10, also contains four sheets of A4 Photo Weight Glossy Paper for producing project covers. With both papers the ink doesn't bleed as it can on ordinary A4 paper and I would recommend it for that special presentation or report.

Those with home offices will find useful the Transparency Film sheets for printing overhead presentations.

Hewlett Packard also makes glossy photo paper in 210 by 297mm sheets. A pack of 20 costs $29.95. If you are going to do a lot of photo printing it may pay to take a look at the newest range of printers from Hewlett Packard.

According to HP marketing assistant Jennifer Gammon, the newly released HP Deskjet 690C and the Deskjet 820Cxi, both of which use Color Resolution Enhancement technology (C-Ret), will produce photo-quality images never seen before on a home printer if used with HP's new Photo Cartridge.

The 690C will give you a color resolution of 600 by 300 dpi on photo paper and transparency film and the 820Cxi gives 300dpi in color. The 690C costs $349 to $399 and the 820Cxi $485 to $625.

Kodak's photoscanners are also worth a look if you want to turn your old photos digital. They produce a Photodoc color scanner for around $480, which will scan documents and photos, and a smaller Snapshot Photo Scanner for about $299.

The latter is a neat little box only a little bigger than a snapshot with easy-to-install software and a step-by-step scanning program. It's a cinch to use and lets you take grotty old pictures and turn them into winners.