When it comes down to quality, outside of the general consumer ink jet printers which are generally not recommended for quality photo printing at home, the difference between a commercial wide-format printer in a lab and a professional wide-format printer for home use is minimal. At worst, the overall quality between a lab print and a print from a Canon PIXMA Pro9000/9500 II or an Epson Stylus Pro 2880 (both "entry level" pro wide format printers) will be the same. At best, the fine art quality from either the Canon or Epson pro printers will be a bit better given some advancements in printer technology that is generally available on the more consumer-oriented lines than professional lines, The ability for you to calibrate the printer yourself to most ideally match what you see on your screen will also give you an edge when printing yourself.

When it comes down to cost, a lab may be cheaper (depends on size and volume), however that will ultimately depend on your volume and the number of years you use the printing equipment you buy. A lab can often generate a medium format print (say 13x19") for around $10-$15, excluding any shipping costs if the lab is not local. Excluding the cost of the printer equipment itself (we'll factor this in later), a similar print from your own gear may cost about $5-$8 (details later).

Some additional factors you'll need to include when deciding whether to purchase your own printing equipment, or use a lab, include turn around time. If you find a lab close by, it may not be an issue, however many of the highest quality labs only exist in one place. Shipping film there and back will cost time and additional money. With digital, you can simply transfer the images over the net in most cases, however the final prints will have to be mailed back, which will cost time and money. Given these factors, printing in bulk will get you more bang for the buck with a lab, and given the cost of some consumable materials for home printing, higher volume printing will also often be cheaper at a lab.

Analysis of Cost: Lab vs. Personal Printer

The cost of a lab can be cheap, however the difference between a lab's cost and the cost of using your own printing gear is a lot smaller than it used to be. In some cases, the cost may be the same, or even cheaper with your own gear.

A wide variety of quality papers are available for professional home printing these days. 20-50 sheets of glossy, luster/semigloss, matte, and fine art papers can be found in a wide variety of sizes, weights, and tones for decent cost. An example of a paper I prefer myself for my landscape photos is Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Fine Art paper. Its a medium weight paper with a fantastic texture and nice natural tone. A package of 20 sheets costs about $60, which boils down to $3 per sheet.

Professional wide format printers are also pretty cost effective these days. Two of the most popular in this class are the Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II, and the Epson Stylus Pro 2880. They both run for about $700, and offer superb quality, high resolution prints on almost any gloss, luster, matte or fine art paper you can imagine on up to 13x19" paper (third-party papers will generally require custom calibration, more on this later.) These printers also offer very high quality black and white printing capabilities with pure grayscale inks, eliminating unwanted color casts to B&W prints. For around $1200-$1400, you can get similar printers that support larger papers (17x22" and roll), and higher volume ink tanks (8-10 times more ink per tank.)

The ink cost for professional wide-format printers is relatively high, compared to commercial printers. Both Epson and Canon use individual colored ink tanks, containing 13-14ml of pigment ink. Each tank costs about $14-$16, so about $1.07 - $1.23 per ml. Most commercial ink jet printers use much larger tanks, from 80ml to 700ml, usually costing less than a dollar per ml. Several tests done in recent years have indicated the ink usage for professional wide-format printers is about 0.00075 tanks per square inch. (Black ink usage statistics, one of the highest-used colors in most prints, can be seen here: Canon 9500, Epson 2400).

Between the cost of the paper and the cost of ink, an average 13x19" borderless print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Fine Art media would cost $3 for the sheet of paper, and about $2.60 for the ink.

inkCost = paperWidth * paperHeight * costPerCartridge * 0.00075
inkCost = 13" * 19" * $14 * 0.00075

To get a more real-world cost per sheet for 13x19" prints on a Canon PIXMA Pro9500, you would need to factor in a couple more things. In addition to the ink usage just for the print, there is also some ink waste due to cleaning cycles. Some variation will use more ink than others...generally the lower the key of an image, the higher the density of ink. Economic forces often affect the price of individual tanks or colors (i.e. gray and black are often highly used colors, and may have a higher cost per tank than other colors). A margin of error of about 10% should be factored in to ink cost for these various factors, leading to a cost of about $2.80-$2.90 per 13x19" sheet.

Finally, the cost of the printer itself will need to be factored in as well. This is a difficult one to factor, as it will be dependent upon how often you print, and how long you intend to use it before replacing it with a newer model. A modern professional-grade wide-format printer from Canon or Epson is a quality investment, and can be used for many, many years without serious failure. Ink heads are usually replaceable in this grade of printer, as well as commercial gear, which greatly lengthens the life span of the printer housing. Assuming you generate 5 13x19" prints a month, every month, for a mere three years, the "printer cost" per sheet would be about $4. Smaller prints would make more efficient use of ink, so this would be more of a maximum cost per sheet. This is a fairly low volume, and if you sell prints for a living you may generate considerably more. If you create 20 prints a month for three years, the printer cost per sheet would shrink to about $1. At the very least, one print a month is generally necessary to keep a professional wide-format printer in good, working condition, as ink can dry and cause tremendous ink waste and possibly even require a new print head. At only one print a month, the printer cost per sheet would be a painful $20. If your volume is particularly low, using a lab would be far more cost effective.

A final cost factor if you choose to use your own print gear would be calibration. Generally speaking, out of the box, a Canon or Epson professional printer is able to print high quality prints on a fair variety of Canon or Epson brand papers. If the quality is not up to your (or your customers) standards, or if you need to use third-party papers (there is a tremendous variety of amazingly high quality papers out there), you may wish to invest in printer calibration. Very good calibration devices can be had for about $500, or you can send calibration sheets you print off to one of a variety of service centers who can perform calibration for you for a small cost. If you choose to send out for calibration, the cost is minimal, and generally only needs to be done once or twice for any given media. If you need the maximum possible quality, the cost of a printer calibration system would also need to be factored into your per-sheet print cost. Similar to the printer cost, it would depend on how frequently you print on media types you've calibrated, and how long you use the calibration system. An additional cost of a couple dollars per sheet is probably warranted.

Overall Costs

Overall, between ink, paper, printer, and calibration costs, you can print a sheet of 13x19" fine art media for about $8-$12. Thats pretty on par with a lab for moderately low (5 sheets a month) to higher (20+ sheets a month). The more volume you do, the more cost effective your own printer will be, however for large format (greater than 17x22" size, up to around 40x60"), the cost of printers begins to become prohibitive (thousands of dollars just for the printer.) A lab is the obvious choice for printing on larger format media.

Below is a shot of my own setup. I print about 5-20 prints a month, many of them for my portfolio, the rest for friends/family/gifts and for sale. I've had the printer for about a year, and the calibration equipment for about a week or so.

Pictured equipment above includes the printer, a full workflow calibration system, the papers I currently have at hand, as well as some print calibration patch pages and some pre- and post-calibration sample prints from a recent calibration. The total cost of everything pictured is about $1500:

• Canon PIXMA Pro 9500 Mark II ($700)
  • Full set of Lucia Inks (very lower right, $140)
    1. Gray
    2. Photo Black (glossy/luster paper)
    3. Matt Black (matt/fine art paper)
    4. Yellow
    5. Photo Magenta (lighter, desaturated)
    6. Magenta (darker, saturated)
    7. Photo Cyan (lighter, desaturated)
    8. Cyan (darker, saturated)
    9. Green
    10. Red
• DataColor Spyder3Studio SR, Full-workflow Calibration System ($500)
  • Aluminum carrying case (right of picture)
  • SpyderCube (left corner of printer)
    • Used as a full white, 18% gray, dark dray, black color checker
    • White provides a target to pick a white point
  • Spyder3 Elite (right corner in front of printer)
    • Colorimeter used to calibrate screens, TV's, projectors
  • Spyder3 Print (on patch paper lower left)
    • Strip-reader spectrocolorimeter used to calibrate printer, paper, ink
    • Includes guide to help when scanning patch strips
    • Includes base holder with full white patch used to baseline calibration
• Various papers valued at approx. $200
  • (Canon) Hahnemuhle Photo Rag "Fine Art"
    • 13x19"
    • 8.5x11"
  • Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss
    • 13x10"
    • 8x10"
  • Canon Photo Paper Pro Platinum
    • 13x19"
  • Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II
    • 8x10"
    • 5x7"
    • 4x6"