Epson-PictureMate-Personal-Photo-Printer

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Epson PictureMate Personal Photo Printer

Price: $199.99

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The PictureMate from Epson is a photo printer designed to produce lab-quality prints from the comfort of your own home. With its simple one-touch printing, 5,760 x 1,440 maximum dpi resolution, and convenient PictureMate Print Packs, this printer is a remarkable combination of quality, ease of use, and affordability.

Wide Compatibility

Slots for digital camera memory cards in several formats

The PictureMate prints JPEG or TIFF photos from any USB digital camera and is compatible with both Mac and PC operating platforms. A wide variety of card types are also accepted, including CF Type I and II, SmartMedia, Sony Memory Stick/MemoryStick PRO, Duo (requires adapter), SD, MMC, and xD-Picture.

The printer initially comes with a starter photo cartridge and 20 sheets of paper. Thereafter, you'll purchase PictureMate Print Packs, which contain 100 sheets of paper and a photo ink cartridge with an approximate 100-page yield.

Prints That Last and Stay Beautiful

Original print (left), then a spill-and-wipe test on leading glossy and semi-gloss papers (two middle) and on PictureMate (right)

The prints resist water, smudging, and most notably fading. Epson estimates an archival lifetime of up to 200 years if the photos are kept in a relatively dark place (such as a photo album) or up to 100 years in a frame (see Epson's web site for details). True borderless printing (or bordered, if you prefer) combined with sturdy stock help to give your prints a professional look and feel. A cartridge level indicator lets you know how much ink you have left.

Easy Operation

Simple menus and one-touch buttons make printing a snap!

Other features include a multiple print function that lets you make up to 100 copies of a single picture. A Save Photo button lets you back up digital files directly to an external CD-R, Zip drive, or USB Thumb drive.

The small 10-by-6-inch footprint fits neatly onto your desk or countertop, and the convenient handle provides true portability. An optional Bluetooth adapter lets you print wirelessly from Bluetooth enabled devices. The PictureMate is backed by a one-year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
PictureMate Personal Photo Lab, power cord, starter PictureMate photo cartridge, 20 sheets of PictureMate Photo Paper, CD-ROM, user manuals; Epson Software Film Factory 3.05 (PC and Macintosh compatible, P.I.M. and Exif Print-enabled); USB cable not included

Reviews

Terrific Little Printer

Before I bought the Epson PictureMate, I had some of my digital photos printed at the local drug store. Then I took them in to the store where I was going to buy my Picture Mate and asked them to print the same pictures so I could compare the quality.

There was no comparison! The pictures printed by the Epson PictureMate were 100% better than the same pictures when they were printed commercially. So I bought it immediately.

For $29 you get a six jet ink cartridge plus 100 sheets of 4 x 6 paper -- making the cost 29 cents per photo, same as in the store. Epson guarantees that you can print 100 pictures from the ink cartridges. Being somewhat cheap, I have printed several more pictures after the 100 sheets ran out. I did find that the quality on another brand of paper is not as good as on the Epson paper. They probably design the ink and paper to be used together.
I am very satisfied with my Epson PictureMate. We took a long vacation this summer in a travel trailer, and it is compact enough to store easily, and easy enough to use that when I wanted to print up some of my photos I did.

Best Little Photo Printer Ever!

I have owned the Epson PictureMate for the past five months and have printed at least 1000 pictures with it. No other photo printer I have ever owned comes close. The prints are dry coming out of the printer, scratch resistant, and gorgeous. They are equal in quality to 60 cent prints from a photo shop and superior to what you can get at CVS, Costco, or online. I routinely get at least 150 prints from each cartridge (extra paper is available from Epson at $14/100 sheets) so the cost per print is much less that the 29 cents advertised. I have only had to clean the print head once. I use Photoshop Elements to crop and edit all my photos and have never had the cropping problem described in previous reviews. I suspect that some of this my be due to the camera not being set to take 4x6 ratio shots.

A few minor caveats: You MUST use Epson PicureMate paper. Results are poor to fair with anything else. But at these prices, so what. Printing is s--l--o--w. Paper tray is too small.

So close! Almost 5 stars!

I've had this printer for over a month now and I've printed over 100 photos from the cartridge that was provided. I am VERY happy with the quality of the photos. Not only are they sharp but the color is beautiful and saturated. AND the prints are finger print proof!! (I'm very anal about that so this is a huge plus for me.) As a photographer, they're perfect for giving away as self-promotion items. I was able to print directly from my computer (I have an Apple G5) and from a USB flash drive without any problems. I printed a friend's wedding photos in black and white and in color and they couldn't believe it was printed at home.

There are only a couple reasons why I did not give this printer 5 stars. One was the lack of portability. A battery option would have been nice, especially since it is compact and comes with a handle. Also, there is no display to see what you are printing. How can you crop a photo without knowing what you're cropping??

I hope Epson will take these things into consideration and include these options in the next model.

As for those of you who have had problems with the printer cropping your photos when you didn't ask it to, it is because your camera may not be taking 4x6 photos. The printer will fit the photo the best it can but it will have to cut some information out in order to print it on the given size of the paper.

Overall, I am very happy I got this printer. I highly recommend it!

Film is finally obsolete!

This is the killer of the last die hard film camera users! I purchased this printer for myself to go with a simple Sony 3.1 digital camera. My wife is the one in the family that takes all the snapshots of kids and family functions and vacations. She has resisted the digital photography revolution up until now due to the costs and hassle associated with digital photography. After one week of having this printer she changed her tune 100% and now has switched to digital photography solely due to this printer.

We've had this printer for many months and found it to be great. The ink outlasts 100 prints and you can by the Espson paper separately. So it is getting even better than 29 cents per print. The lack of a screen on the printer isn't that bad as we delete unwanted prints with the camera's functionality. It does cut off the head of the photo a bit, we are now careful to make sure the subject is not to the very top of the picture to workaround this problem.

Quality definitely is better than comparable drop off photo shops, we printed the same photo at home and had them developed at local drop offs to compare.

Only other minor annoyance is when you want to print just one or two photos on a card, there is no way to know what number the priter thinks they are without printing a thumbnail sheet(s).

I've had to copy the desired shots to another card via my computer as a solution to save time hassle when I want to do this.

This thing is great for basic snapshot photography people. If you take a lot of pictures and are always droping them off at local processors, this will change that forever. Its so easy to use, my six year old can even do it. The kids love to wait while the photos come out!

If you just need 4x6 photos this is for you

Great printer if all you need is 6x4 pictures. The print quality it's as advertised, top lab quality. Low price per print, since the "ink", in fact pigment, will last you more then 100 photos.
On the down side, a little bit slow (but not 6-7 minutes like someone post it here), but considering the quality of the photos it's worth it. Also known poor Epson support.
Now if you print from desktop, the Epson driver will still somewhat crop your picture, even after you crop to 6x4 in Photoshop or something like that. That's because the printer driver increases the size of the print to allow for sloppy alignment and the edges of the photo are oversprayed (printed off the edge of the paper) when borderless is selected.
If this is a problem for you, there is a work around. Just add a border of about 15 pixels before you print, and the driver will remove the border and no additional cropping of the picture. There you go...Happy printing....

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