Inkjet printers are still the most widely used printer technology in homes, home offices and small businesses. There are basically two types of inkjet printers, all-purpose and photo quality.
Most moderate to high priced all purpose inkjet printers excel at producing sharp, crisp looking black text. Though not specifically designed for photo printing, many will find the results satisfactory.
For lab-quality prints, you'll need a inkjet photo printer. They provide outstanding quality and most make borderless prints.
Photo printers that use individual ink cartridges save money because you don't need to buy an entire multi-color cartridge when a color runs out, only a tank for a specific color. If you want to print directly from your camera, bypassing a computer, both camera and printer must be PictBridge compatible.
During installation of camera software, a printer driver is installed on your computer and is accessed in the "print" menu. Use the "properties" menu to select paper type, print quality and page orientation and size, etc. In addition, the driver provides access to settings for general maintenance & cleaning such as cleaning printer nozzles and aligning the print head.
Most print drivers warn when the level of ink is getting low. A printer will automatically stop when an ink cartridge is empty, so you won't be able to resume printing until you insert a new cartridge. This is a good reason keeping extras on hand.
