Printers blow through ink as extravagantly as Wall Street bankers blow through bailout money. And your printer might cry “no ink!” when in fact it has plenty to spare. (See our story, “How Much Ink Is Left in That Dead Cartridge?”) Whatever the case, no one likes paying for pricey ink and printing supplies, so let’s look at ways to cut your consumption.
Buy discount printer ink: Do you really need to buy pricey name-brand ink for your inkjet printer? As we found in “Cheap Ink: Will It Cost You?” inexpensive third-party and remanufactured cartridges often yield more prints than their new, branded counterparts–but they don’t always deliver the same quality and fade-resistance. Thus, while you’ll definitely save some money, you may not be as happy with your printer’s photo output.
However, if you print primarily text, there’s every reason to choose the cheap stuff. This is true for laser printers as well: For years I’ve used only remanufactured toner cartridges in my HP and Brother lasers, and the results have always been excellent. Estimated savings: $30 on a black-ink replacement cartridge compatible with an HP 45 inkjet printer.
Use your printer’s economy mode: Not every page you print needs to be fit for framing, right? If you’re just cranking out a draft of, say, a school paper or business presentation, why not use your printer’s economy mode? True to its name, this setting uses less ink, resulting in lighter (but still readable) output.
Before you print, open the printer’s preferences settings from within the program’s Print dialog box. Look for a setting called Draft Mode, Economy Mode, Toner Saver, or the like. (On some inkjets, the “Fast” quality setting is equivalent to economy mode.) If you can live with the results, consider making it the default setting, switching to standard (or high-quality) mode only for documents that need to look their best. Estimated savings: $25 per year.
Print two sheets on each page: Here’s another way to cut your printing bill: Shrink your output. Most printer drivers can fit two pages’ worth of a document on a single sheet of paper. Each page gets reduced in size and rotated 90 degrees, so that two pages land side-by-side on one sheet (think: booklet).
Programs like Word and Adobe Reader give you this option right in the Print menu. In programs that don’t (like Firefox), you can venture into the Properties menu for the selected printer and look for a “page layout” or “page scaling” option. Obviously this won’t be practical for all your printing needs, but it will save you both ink and paper. Estimated savings: $20 per year.
Print to PDF instead: The best way to save paper and ink is to bypass them entirely. Whenever possible, “print” your documents to PDF files you can store on your PC or e-mail to others. I’m partial to CutePDF Writer, a freeware “printer driver” that lets you turn virtually any document into a PDF. Obviously you need a hard copy sometimes; but before you click Print, ask yourself if you–or the document’s eventual recipient–can get by with electronic text. Estimated savings: $20 per year.
Get a laser printer: If you’re an infrequent photo printer but like to make hard copies of Web receipts and other (mostly) text documents, you could save a lot of money by opting for an inexpensive laser printer to do routine jobs and using online photo printing services when you do want images you can touch (or hang on a wall). While laser printers still cost more than inkjets, toner’s cheaper per-page cost can pay for the difference over time. But you can do your own total-cost-of-ownership math with a spreadsheet such as the one at Nifty-Stuff.com. Estimated savings: Depends on printing habits.
Want more tips? Check out “Six Savvy Ways to Get More Prints for Less Money.”
Looking for oversized posters for a graduation party or special event? Maybe a point-of-purchase display, business presentations, or vinyl banners? Wherever you need to make an impact, there are a multitude of items — whether you want 1 or 1,000 — that can be printed on a large (or wide) format printer.
If you have an idea of what you’d like, the next step is defining the details. Will this be displayed inside or out? For how long? Does it need grommets for hanging or mounted on a stand? What are the advantages of large format printing over offset? What kind of materials can be printed on? What are the costs? For picture perfect results, let’s break it all down.
Large format printing
Offset printing uses plates and wet ink, requiring an extensive set up process, press checks, and long drying time. But with offset, the quality of printing, color reproduction, and (in some cases) paper options are high. Plus, the higher the quantities, the lower the costs — in set up, time to print, and paper.
The downside: since it requires plates (one for each color), the turnaround time isn’t as fast and if there’s an error, more cost goes into producing new plates and getting the press up and running again. And any special treatments or additions like folding, stitching (the print term for binding), or embossing need to be done on a separate machine. If offset is the direction you want to go, finding a quality printer — with a lot of print runs, operators with experience, and an eye for detail — is essential. The process of lining up four (or more) plates is a science… not a given. It’s also best to see a proof before they print the entire batch, and if possible, be on hand to take a peek at the finished product as it’s coming off the press to ensure you’re getting the best quality for the price — re-doing print runs can be costly.
Digital printing, on the other hand, is ideal for low quantities, set up is quick and easy (which means faster turnarounds), and printing takes little, if no, drying time. Plus, it’s an inexpensive way to print black and white, and you can customize variable data like names and addresses for each piece you produce. Probably its biggest advantage is the size of print options you have.
The drawbacks are sometimes digital printing is lower quality than offset and depending on the vendor, may be limited in the types of substrates you can print on. Plus, if you have embellishments like foil stamping or special coatings, offset is better suited.
It depends. If you have a project where you need 1 to 1,000 pieces that are individually customized or has multiple pages that need collating by tomorrow, it can be very cost effective. But if you have more than 1,000 pieces to print, there are special collating or stitching needs, and timing isn’t as tight, it might get a little pricier because you’re paying per piece.Not everyone is a printing expert. And even if you now have a better understanding of the process, we might not have solved your biggest dilemma: where do I begin? Start with Custom Printing . We can help you find the answers to all your questions about large format printing — even the ones you didn’t know you had. Give us a call today.