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If I want a nice color photo print, I use a service. Owning a color printer just seems not worth the hassle. And I still have darkroom stuff. These inkjet printers, esp. the cheap ones, are of less value than _that_.
Inkjet printers have always been a dumpster fire. It is easy to blame devious and rapacious practices by their manufacturers - but these same manufacturers also make laser printers at similar price points that are much more reliable and do not have the same frustrating failure modes seemingly designed to keep you buying consumables.
Is it possible to make a good inkjet printer? Or is inkjet printing just an inherently bad technology?
> Is it possible to make a good inkjet printer?
I think so, in my experience Epson makes _very_ good inkjet printers.
>Or is inkjet printing just an inherently bad technology?
I don't really know anything about the work that goes into developing and manufacturing these printers, but I'll never cease to be amazed by the precision and reliability at which a $700 inkjet printer can deposit 1.5 picoliter ink droplets onto the print medium.
Bad technology? I don't think so. What you can accomplish with modern inkjet printers for chump change is downright incredible.
> but these same manufacturers also make laser printers at similar price points that are much more reliable and do not have the same frustrating failure modes seemingly designed to keep you buying consumables
It's downright ridiculous to compare laser printers and inkjets, these have completely different use cases. Although these days laser printers generally do not offer advantages beyond speed and cost of operation, nice inkjets can produce crisper text at far smaller font sizes than laser printers.
Does anyone know what kind of printers are used by professional photo services?
Most use Epson and if you go into really large format HP. Proof printers (best color reproduction) in agencies are 90% Epson machines. If you stray away from inkjet and go into wax based printers most are from a company called chromaline.
How do "professional" inkjet printers avoid these problems, and what's the transition point (in price, or whatever) at which this happens?
The big difference is maintenance the bigger proof printers are just build with exchangeable parts and guides how to keep the machine in working order. They also have color calibration build in. You can clean printheads with ease and you can flush the color lines easily with washing fluid. They basically have the same problems as desktop machines but instead of sending them in or do an RMA you can just mend it yourself. Proof Printers start, if you go for used ones, at 1500$ and go up to 100k$ with the larger formats going even more expensive. We are one of the biggest agency in germany and use printers priced around the 4-7k$ range.
The last one we bought for smaller jobs is this one
https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Large-Format/SureColor-P...
Our local Walmart photo centre uses a Epson SureColor P8000.
Inkjet Photo printers are bad because you buy bad inkjet photo printers. Even for casual home users, there are _great_ inkjet printers available at excellent prices prices such as the Epson SC-P700.