What is a good quality color ink jet printer for a graphic design student that wont break the bank?

Answer 1

I worked at a professional print shop and used a Canon, so it should work fine for you. Typically, when working in print media you will print your colors on seperate "plates" to be printed. If you have a black and white business card design made in Pagemaker, when you go to print you will print the black plate first, and then the red plate (which will also print black because the color isn't added until it is on the printing press). Hope this helps!

Answer 2

It's not the printer that sucks the cost. It's the ink cartridges. There are 2 types of ink, dye and pigment. Dye will fade over time and Pigment stands up to fade much better (advertised to be 100 year or more). Epson has the larger line of Pigmented ink printer with names like Durabrite or UltraChrome, etc. Also look for a printer with in-line feed versus the types uses by HP where the pager curls around before printing. The reason is that in-line can handle thick pager better and also more types of pager sizes and types without messing up the feeding. Look for printer that can handle borderless printing as your work may require printing right to the edge for brochures and flyers that demand it. Paper matching to the printer manufacturer is also important. With Pigment ink, color matching can be a real problem, i.e. the color on the screen is not what is being printed out. Again Epson has the largest selection here. Your work may involve printing on double sided thick matted paper that is acceptable as the finish good. I would also suggest investing in a wide format printer as there as definately situation where there will be a demand to print 11x17 double sided and then folded in half for a cover type of brochure. The printer to go for here would be the R1800. If you start to print lots of pages and want to save on cost of ink, then go to www.inksupply.com to get continuous ink system and bulk ink.