Conventional wisdom says laser printers shouldn’t be able to produce decent-looking photo prints. After all, they use only four colours and they’re designed for productivity; not reproducing tonal nuances. But when I needed a couple of prints in a hurry and my monitors weren’t profiled, a colour laser printer was at hand and switched on, so I decided to use it.
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To my surprise, it delivered photo prints that were good enough to surprise friends and colleagues with printing expertise. The secrets of success lie in understanding the printer’s limitations, setting up the printer correctly and using the right printing paper. We’ll cover these factors in this feature.
Image Choices
You can print both colour and monochrome images, covering subjects as different as landscapes, portraits and interiors. However, some image types produce better results than others. We obtained the best-looking prints from images with plenty of detail and bright, vibrant colours.
Images with subtle tonal nuances are more difficult to print well, partly because laser printers tend to boost contrast but also because it is more difficult to reproduce subtle transitions in pastel hues with a four-colour printer.
Monochrome prints made with the B&W setting were free of colour casts but different printers reproduced our original with different densities. One printer (the Canon) lightened the image by approximately 10%, while another (the Samsung) darkened it by roughly the same amount. Monochrome prints made with the colour setting always had colour casts. Some were slight enough to overlook but others were quite obvious.
