CHAPTER 13 HOW PHOTO-QUALITY PRINTERS WORK^193
For me the printing process is part of the magic of
photography. It’s that magic that can be exciting,
disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the
same few moments in the darkroom.
John SextonA QUARTERof a century ago, when I started writing about computers, a magazine sent me a couple of
machines to test and write about. They were called “plotters.” At the time, they were the peak of technology when
it came to computers printing anything other than text.
Each plotter filled a table, and they were a wonder to behold. I clamped in place a large sheet of paper on one of
the plotter’s broad, flat beds. It took me about an hour to get the plotter and my computer to talk to each other, but
when they got their acts together, zowee!A mechanical arm moved to one of several ink-filled pens lined up on one
side of the plotter’s bed. Servos clamped the tip of the arm shut about the pen, pulled the pen from its holder, and
whined and growled as they pushed the arm back and forth over the paper. It drew with the boldness and certainty
of an artist who knows exactly what he wants down to the tenth of a millimeter. Suddenly the arm would rush back to
the sidelines to exchange one pen for another and add strokes of another color to the emerging art work. For all this
rushing around, completing a drawing could take an hour, which was fine because watching the creation of the art-
work was always far more interesting than the finished artwork itself.
Plotters, welcomed at the time by architects and draftsmen, were not destined to be the tool that took computers into
the brave new world of digital graphics. They were too slow and lacked any subtlety in their pen strokes. The only
other output devices for color graphics at that time were crude printers with multi-colored ribbons, marketed to
schools and children.
Color graphics printing and photo printing went mainstream with improvements in the ink-jet printer. The first ink-jets,
with only three or four colors printing on common paper, were hardly fit for photos. Photographers owe a debt to
Canon and Epson—later joined by Hewlett-Packard—for pursuing a goal of better and better ink-jet printing that has
come to rival traditional photo printing. They did this at a time when there were no guarantees many people would
ever care. Now they’re the method of choice for creating prints, not only for the amateur photographer, but the pro
as well. The promise of inexpensive, versatile photography through digital cameras would never have come true
without the appearance of this unbidden blessing.