What is the best printer to have in-house for a museums?

Today all kinds of new and better color printers are available that produce photo-realistic exhibit-quality color prints. There is no need to waste time by sending your images to Kinkos to print. You can print professional color in your own office (or at least on your own campus).

I prefer to print in my own office. This way I can control the quality. Yet the advantages of having an on-campus print shops include not having to learn how to handle digital images. Print shops can scan your image and do all the color printing for you.

Most museum, college, university, and comparable in-house repro shops, print shops, copy centers, however, need to upgrade their old-fashioned printing technology.

Here is my office at the university, a wide format printer at the back (left) and a brand new 11x17 color laser printer in the foreground. With these two printers I can cover about 90% of my printing needs. For the other 10% I would need a fine art wide format printer and a long-format B+W laser such as a GCC. A fine art printer can produce exhibit-quality digital prints which requires the equivalent of 1200 dpi and/or a 6-color, 8-color, or 12-color printer (Epson 9000, Roland, ColorSpan, or Iris).

The new generation of color laser printer technology is so much better than available for color printers just three years ago that it is worthwhile to get rid of your old printers and budget for new ones. I previously had a Lexmark color printer, which was great until I saw the difference (the better quality) produced by true 1200 x 1200 dpi.

Where to get your Tally printer? e-mail John@QmaxDigital.com. He has Tally, QMS, HP, Tektronix-Xerox, Panasonic and all major brands (naturally we recommend the Tally but you may have other needs as well).