Yesterday I was printing some photos for a scrapbook page I have in progress, and I wanted to share some concrete reasons for staying loyal to your printer’s brand name. It’s so tempting to run to Walgreens and get a cheap inkjet refill, or buy the on-sale generic Officemax brand photopaper. There are very good reasons to coordinate your paper and ink with the kind of printer you have, whatever that might be.

Hybrid scrapbookers need a good printer. Depending on your specific brand of crafting, a middle-of-the-road inkjet/photo printer does the job just fine. Most of the major brands have good, functional models. I probably do just slightly more than most scrapbookers with my printer, which is exactly what classifies me as a “hybrid” papercrafter (not digital, not paper-only, but hybrid). Hybrid crafters do any or all of the following with their printers:

• Printing out custom digital patterned papers
• Printing my own photos (there are a vast number of reasons I do this over sending them to a photo processor)
• Printing journaling, either in small pieces or directly onto my 12×12 page
• Printing custom embellishments & titles
• Printing full size copies of digital or scanned pages

I have used an HP DeskJet 9800 wide format printer for the past 5 years, and I love it for many reasons. I’ll replace it when the new Kodak printers with the inexpensive ink become available in a wide format version that works as well as the HP one does. Ink is expensive.

So… brand loyalty… here are a couple of reasons why that Walgreens refill ink and generic paper is a no-no:

1. Archival quality: with modern printing technology, inkjet photos will last longer than photos printed out of a photo processing lab. BUT only if you use the best quality paper and the inks that are designed for printing photos from the same manufacturer as your printer. It might sound like a gimick of some sort… a plot to make you stay brand loyal… but the reality is that it’s true: photos and papers are chemically designed to work together, and there’s no guarantee that changing up the brands will give you the same long-lasting prints.

2. Photo quality: yesterday as I was printing out photos, I came across a package of generic 4×6 photo paper that I’ve had around for a while but never used. I’m not even sure where I got it, but I decided to give it a try for the sake of not being wasteful. When I first printed the photo, I was very disappointed. It came out dull and washed out. I suspected immediately that it was because of the paper, but I gave the generic brand the benefit of the doubt. So I digitally adjusted the photo and printed it again. I was still unhappy with the results. I popped a good piece of HP Premium Plus Photo Paper into the printer, and it printed beautifullly. Here’s a before and after scan:

I’m picky about my photos, maybe pickier than most. I choose to print my photos at home because in the times when I have them printed in a lab, I’ve often been disappointed in the quality, the color adjustments and how long it takes them to arrive at my house. The control freak in me keeps me going back to my trusty HP9800 almost every day, and now that I have hard evidence to support my brand-loyalty, I’ll never buy non-HP paper or ink again.