Enshittification

Btw I just thought of another thing I figured I'd mention.

Have you heard of giclee prints? https://www.prodigi.com/blog/what-is-giclee-fine-art-printing/

I met an artist at a comicon selling these beautiful prints of his work that really stood out and I stopped to talk to him about them. I thought they were screen printed because of how vibrant they looked.

That's when I learned about giclee printing.

Now I don't know if it's great for photographs. But it certainly looks exceptional for digital art or prints of artwork.

Check the link or search around online to learn more but the basics is that it's a type of printing that doesn't use the basic black, cyan, yellow, magenta inks. Instead it uses hundreds of colors. Pre mixed.

It's why it's special. And it really does look like professional high quality, multi layer screen prints.

I have that exact Brother printer, which I love, but sadly it's not capable of doing photo printing to any reasonable standard. For general use I thoroughly agree with you though.

For photo printing at home, you sadly probably do need an inkjet for it, and specifically a photo printing one with 6 inks.

I used to use old Epson ones (I think an R200 and R2400), which are old enough to be mostly pre-enshittification. These did serve me well (accepted 3rd party ink refills, printed well, gave me no shit), but eventually I stopped using them frequently enough to keep them in good working order. I've still got the R2400, but it's back in its box on a shelf, and would need quite a bit of cleaning and maintenance to get running again.

As others suggested, if I need anything of very high photo quality doing these days, I send it to the local printers.

I do have one remaining inkjet, which is an older "Epson Ecotank", so it runs from bottles of ink instead of cartridges, and seems relatively happy to sit unused for months without clogging up, and the running costs are incredibly cheap - but it probably cost about £200-£300 new when I got it (about 10 years ago) - and it's okay for images and photos, but nowhere near the quality you'd get from sending things to a printers. So it's fine for printing a photo well enough to show someone something, for a diagram, manual, floorplan example etc - but not a good enough print for someone to buy a copy to frame and put on their wall.

There are newer ecotank printers (which include 6 ink photo versions) - though I've not tried them personally- but may be worth OP looking at? Might cost you £600 - £700 (or your regional equivalent) though. Perhaps a slightly older model could fit that price range?

[Edit] "Tankbenefit" is the Brother equivalent of Epson "Ecotank" - and some of those claim to be photo printers, for about £300

Friends don't let friends buy inkjets

This needs to be on a billboard.

I haven't had an inkjet in my house since about 2003. Fuck that junk. Did I mention they were junk. Or how much I hate, hate, hate those things?

Fuck an inkjet, I'd sooner let a toddler scribble a monster spreadsheet in crayon.

You're lucky.

Everyone around me thinks their 20 year old all-in-one is still worth $120

Sorry mate, only thing that's good for is the Office Space treatment

A lot of newer Canon printers claim they require apps, internet, and even social media accounts on their store pages; did you run into any of that with your printer?

Ooh, aren't you rich.

I haven't thought about one in years, will look to see what's out there.

But you're right, for photo quality a dye sub is hard to beat