Hey ya'll!

I know so little about good printers! We're looking at getting something that will do pretty decent prints to fullfill some of our normal in house type needs (event cards, maybe do our own fine art cards to act as "thank you's" to clients, etc etc. I don't think we would need to print any bigger than 8x10.

Anyone have any recommendations? Anything specifically to look for? We don't want to spend a fortune, but we also want to get something where the prints will look pretty darn good.

Any suggestions or thoughts would be great!

Thanks!!

The best (relatively) inexpensive printer that would meet your needs is an Epson R800. Archival pigment ink. Gorgeous prints. If you want a bigger one that'll take up to 13x19 paper, the big brother R1800 is good. The same printer, really, only bigger.

You could spend more on Epson's higher quality printers or Canon's new ones, but unless you're planning on printing on weird substrates (like canvas or something), you can save a lot of money with the R800 or R1800.

Anyone else have any recommendations?

Also, we're looking for this printer to be able to print out event cards for us. We've had them done at Overnight prints, but it's kinda expensive to do per wedding with them, but I don't know how easy (or expensive) it will be doing it ourselves with printers.....Anyone done this? Any suggestions?

That R800 is really nice, Chris...I don't print in-house myself, but I have a couple of buddies who use this printer with good results. Just remember to do a cost analysis of printing at home vs outsourcing. You have to take all your consumables (as well as the life expectancy of the printer itself) into consideration...it all depends on yourl monthly volume.

Epson just brought out the r1400, might be worth a look. If you print regularly, the bigger guys will cost less in the long run as the ink is soo much cheeper. I traded in my epson 2200 for a 4800, and its way cheeper to print on.