Is it that bad?
To summarise, I need:
1)Edge to Edge A4,
2)Photo quality (looking similar to chemical prints) matte paper,
3)No metemarism,
4)Good-ish B&W's on an RGB image (I'm used to the horribly green B&W's from a frontier so doesn't have to be as good as a real silver print!)
5)Doesn't continue printing if there is a problem or ink runs out,
6)Doesn't cost over ~50p an A4 print,
7)Ink/paper combo HAS to be archival (50 years+),
To be honest I'll be printing two 7X5" prints plus shadow on a white background if that will help for the costing, I had intended to use a cream background but it is far from being crucial. Basically what are the print costs on this printer for a 7X5" in ink, I can work it out from there!
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I'll have a go at this
1)Edge to Edge A4,
Most standard A4 capable small inkjets will print borderless A4, oops there goes the ability to load 100 sheets and walk away, either the input tray will be to small or the ink will run out!
2)Photo quality (looking similar to chemical prints) matte paper,
Most would agree that the current crop of photo inkjets, colour profiled and with the right paper will deliver this.
3)No metemarism,
Personal decision to be made by looking at examples printed on the printer of choice, paper of choice.
4)Good-ish B&W's on an RGB image (I'm used to the horribly green B&W's from a frontier so doesn't have to be as good as a real silver print!)
Any properly profiled inkjet will turn out "good-ish" BW.
5)Doesn't continue printing if there is a problem or ink runs out,
OEM carts without autochip resetting should stop, any other problem will stop the print run as well.
6)Doesn't cost over ~50p an A4 print,
Now we get to the centre of the problem.
small form inkjet
Cheap prints = Dye and maybe 3rd party inks with cheap paper. Oops no archival properties.
Archival = good pigment inks on good paper, Oops not cheap per print.
7)Ink/paper combo HAS to be archival (50 years+),
See answer to point 6
the upshot of all this is for A4 inkjet printers the trade-off becomes price vs archival.
The new yet to arrive HP9180 may break this cycle.
One questions the archival requirement for a proofing book. Dye ink prints bound into a book are unlikely to suffer from fade anyway.
Now it may make sense to buy a wide format and use a roll feed and roll paper, the only issue is you lose the ability to make double sided without some pain and obviously special papers.