How Can I Print on a Budget?

Many photographers are often concerned about wasting money on printing due to bad results. Many printers are often Luckily, this doesn’t have to be the case. There are plenty of ways to keep the costs down when printing at home – whilst still creating impressive prints that show off your photography skills to their full potential.

Below, we go through some money-saving tips, and take a closer look at options that may be costing you more in the long run, so you can get the most out of your prints without spending a fortune.

Get The Right Ink

There are a few parts to printing that we can’t change, one being ink costs. Ink is generally a fixed cost per size of paper. For instance, an A4 sheet uses around 1 ml of ink in total to print, and then multiples of that thereafter. 

Depending on your printer, this can be as much as £1.70 per ml of ink or as low as 30p for the same ink. There are third party inks which can often save money when printing, however, it’s best practice to use the manufacturer's inks with your printer. By doing so, you will see more consistent prints and find yourself having to profile less frequently – both of which will save you money in the long run.

The best way to save ink and get the best value for money is to try and spend the most you can on a printer. As a rule, ink gets cheaper the bigger the printer you buy.

See below for a table of ink costs per printer.

Larger printers tend to be a bigger investment, but they will save you money on ink in the long run. If you are a regular printer or an avid hobbyist, it may be worth the splurge.

Profile Your Printer

Profiling can be one of the most important things you do in the printing journey. Not only do profiles reduce the amount of ink being drawn onto the page, but they also help with colour accuracy. Accurate colours will allow you to get consistent results across your images, which will prevent you from wasting your paper on endless test prints, trying to find a result that you’re happy with.

Custom profiling is a free service we offer here at Fotospeed and something we can help you with every step of the way. To start the process, download our custom profiling pack. 

Choose Your Paper Wisely

With printing, the biggest regular cost we face is the paper. When looking to print on a budget, consider what kind of image you want to create, and what paper would best suit it. Will you need fine art paper? What size print are you looking for?

Of course, you can still get great results without spending a fortune. Fotospeed’s PF-Lustre costs around 50p per sheet in A4 size, and is a great paper for competition prints and general use. The same can be said of the Matt Ultra paper, which costs around 38p per sheet. When used with pigment based inks, this paper will give amazing fine-art prints.

Not sure what paper suits your needs? Feel free to get in touch with any questions!

Proof Your Print

The last thing you want is to waste an entire sheet of A3 paper only for the image to come out completely different to how you envisioned it. This is where proofing comes in. Proofing is essentially a small-scale test print that allows you to see what your image will look like before you print the real thing.

The best way to proof an image is to use little pieces of paper, such as A6. Alternatively, you can use one sheet of A4 to print different versions of the same picture onto one sheet. This will allow us to see how the picture looks with different level adjustments, without going through endless sheets of paper.

For any Canon users, the Canon Print Studio Pro and Professional Print and Layout software will also do the hard proofs for you using the “Pattern Print” function. Not sure how to do this? Check out this video.

Learn Your Printing Setup

Remember that everyone's setup and workflows will be different and this will affect the final outcome. It comes down to finding a way that works for you. That could mean using custom profiles, or the printer black and white mode for black and white prints. With time, practice and experimentation, you will learn how different papers and images print through your printer which, in the long run, will save you money on paper and ink. 

Ultimately, the best way to print on a budget is to print little prints, which will help you find your feet with printing without wasting paper.

At Fotospeed, we want you to get the most out of printing and to enjoy the process along the way. If you have any questions or queries, we are on hand to help, so feel free to get in touch.

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