New Printer Outputs 3 Billion Dots Per Inch: Rob Sheppard points the finger at marketing people who create inflated hype about printer resolutions. Sheppard goes on to say that: “We’ve seen no evidence that anyone can see any real, visual difference in prints made with printer dpis higher than 1440.” And yet marketing people constantly overstate printer resolutions in publications directed at the buying public.
Marketing types at manufacturers are responsible for the problem of hyped-up printer resolutions. It shows up in many publications masquerading as “just the facts, ma’am” sort of reporting. Consumer-oriented printers today will boast printing resolutions of 4800 to 5760 dpi. I’ve heard salespeople at mass-marketing stores like Best Buy tell customers that such resolutions mean they offer the best photo quality. Nonsense.
We’ve seen no evidence that anyone can see any real, visual difference in prints made with printer dpis higher than 1440. There are some claims that seem legitimate, stating that 2880 offers some slight advantage in printing out certain tonalities on specific papers, but we’ve yet to see any visual proof, short of putting a magnifier to the print (when was the last time you went to an art museum and used a magnifier on the paintings?).
But the high numbers sure look impressive on the printer boxes, right? Too many printer buyers are swayed by big numbers-power, power, power-even if they have no real effect. Well, actually, there is an effect; the printer is slowed down and it uses more ink.
Even if we never made any prints from these printers and compared them, there are two things that should make one suspicious about the super-high dpis for inkjets: the highest photo-quality settings on some printers aren’t available when the high dpis are chosen; and the pro printers using the same print technology as their sibling consumer printers don’t typically include these high numbers.
You have to buy printers with high-dpi capabilities, but you don’t have to set them to such heights.
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