The inks are supposed to dry quickly, and the colors are supposed to remain true to what the computer signaled the printer to put on the paper. To be considered photorealistic, the resolution of a printer should approach 1,440 dots per inch, with 720 dpi as the minimum acceptable. At the higher resolution, with photo-quality paper, the results can be stunning. In more than one printer company's demo, the company's print is shown side by side with a traditional print. From what this writer has observed at HP, Canon, Epson and Lexmark, it's difficult to tell the two apart.
Paper is key to photorealistic results.
For its printer, each maker specifies various kinds of photo-quality paper, usually sold under its own label. In informal testing of several such printers, I found the photo-quality paper sold by Avery Dennison Corp. of Diamond Bar, Calif., or Eastman Kodak works as well as the proprietary brands. The third consideration is ink. Although printers such as the Epson Stylus Color 850 use standard cartridges supplied with the printer, for others, such as the Lexmark Colorjet 5700 and Canon BJ series, special ink cartridges are suggested. Others, notably the Epson Stylus Color 850 and the Canon BJC-4550, which can handle plain paper up to 11 by 17 inches, have drivers and ports for both Windows and Apple Macintosh systems.