Color Laser Printer - Will it Print Photographs?

One of the biggest questions that people have when they first set out to purchase a color laser printer is “Will it print photographs?’  This is the type of question that can only be answered with another question “What kind of quality do you want your photographs to have?” 

Purists would simply be compelled to answer the question “Will it print photographs?” with a flat no. Color laser printers simply do not have the power to replicate a high-resolution photograph simply because they only print on one kind of paper. In order to print high-resolution photographs, you need a pricey inkjet printer that can print on photographic quality paper. 

However if all you are looking for is a photograph with skewed color, much akin to the kind of image you might get out of a color Xerox machine that has not been adjusted quite right then by all means go ahead and print photographs using your color laser printer. However do not expect very high quality and lots of bleary edges as well as off colors.  The problem is that color laser printers simply do not print off enough dots per square inch to replicate the photograph properly.  There is simply not enough gradient in terms of light and shadow in the entire process to recreate photos in a realistic way. 

Every printer you look at will have a resolution specification. This specification reveals how much detail a print can reveal.  The rating consists of two numbers. Something like 4800x1200 dpi. That “dpi” term means “dots per inch” and refers to how many points of color (or pixels) a printer can transfer to each inch of paper. The higher the number the more detailed the image, the better its quality will be. 

So when it comes to printing out photographs you should forget about color laser printers altogether and go for one of the hundreds of high quality jet ink printers on the market that can easily print out a photograph.

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