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by GordonS 2345 days ago
I do the same, and it works well for me.

The printers they use at print shops are not the same crappy, consumer-grade inkjets that people have in their homes - the quality is much better. And you don't need to deal with a constantly "needy" printer that guzzles ink like it's going out of fashion, and needs cleaned/declogged/realigned every time you look at it.
1 comments
ahartmetz 2345 days ago
According to my Wikipedia research, the photo kiosk printers are not even inkjets at all. They are thermosublimation printers. In any case, their output looks just like chemically developed photos, no comparison to any inkjets I have seen.

They might also be wax printers. When I worked (student job) for a medical imaging company, they had their customers use wax printers IIUC. At least that was what they used internally.

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tomatocracy 2345 days ago
At the other end of the market, if you're putting photos on your wall, specialist photo printers who target the art market have quite a few different process options and some very interesting paper options, although you'll be looking at maybe GBP10+ or equivalent for an 8x10 print.

Many will give or sell you cheaply a sample pack - it was a revelation to me how good and broad the options were. This includes printing using old fashioned optical photo paper and a machine which is effectively a projecter to expose the image on it - I like this for black and white prints especially.

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vanniv 2345 days ago
I have one of the Canon PRO-1000 printers. There was a really good sale going on a couple years ago, where I could get the printer + 2 full sets of inks for just the price of the inks.

It is incredibly expensive to operate, especially at low print volumes. If I were printing on it all day, it would probably be fine -- but I end up wasting probably half the ink in startup cycles.

But, when using good papers, it produces the most amazing prints I've ever had.

Now that I've used one, I'd never buy it again unless I had some sort of business that produced more volume -- but until I use up all the supplies I bought, I have the most amazing prints!

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