Printer for passport photos

[bwana]

A bud wants to offer passport/ID photos from his shop - does he need a special type of printer/paper or will any old Epson Stylus Photo type printer do?

 

[Defib]

i stand under correction, but u get a special type of printer, dont think your std home printer will work

 

[Syndyre]

When I had photos done at some place they printed 4 on a bigger sheet then just used some sort of punch that cuts them out to the correct dimensions etc. so I'd presume then as long as you could print on decent photo paper and got something like that you'd be fine.

 

[ronan73]

Chemist close to me use a thermal transfer printer. You get 9 id photos for 30 bucks.

 

[bwana]

Chemist close to me use a thermal transfer printer. You get 9 id photos for 30 bucks.

9? Thats a lot of photos!

I'll have to look into that type of printer - not sure he's going to want to spring for something too pricey.

 

[Browser]

Hey bwana, I don't see why you couldn't just use a normal photo printer and use photo paper, nothing special about it really. The only problems you might have are, at first getting the pictures the right size, and some wasted paper because you'll have to cut off the blank white edges.

 

[HavocXphere]

It needs to be the same paper/print as a normal photo. If I get a passport photo at a shop that was printed with a home printer, I'd tell them to keep it.

 

[Browser]

It needs to be the same paper/print as a normal photo. If I get a passport photo at a shop that was printed with a home printer, I'd tell them to keep it.

Hence photo printer with photo paper.

 

[adsl3g]

I was one of those that waited till the last minute to hand in my gun license application. On the Saturday morning I was set to go off to the Police station and to my horror realised I had forgotten about the passport photos -
I set up my Canon 200SX and shot off a few timed pics of myself, loaded them into CS3 and cropped them to the right size (35 x 45mm) and printed them on my Canon printer on photo paper - cut them to size and handed them in with no problem....
They looked better than my actual PP photos taken by a 'professional'.

EDIT: ...but to add, that is for a once off... for a business you would need something less cumbersome.

 

[bwana]

I was one of those that waited till the last minute to hand in my gun license application. On the Saturday morning I was set to go off to the Police station and to my horror realised I had forgotten about the passport photos -
I set up my Canon 200SX and shot off a few timed pics of myself, loaded them into CS3 and cropped them to the right size (35 x 45mm) and printed them on my Canon printer on photo paper - cut them to size and handed them in with no problem....
They looked better than my actual PP photos taken by a 'professional'.

EDIT: ...but to add, that is for a once off... for a business you would need something less cumbersome.

I figure a tethered camera and a photoshop action and he'd be set to go as far as the printing goes.

A few chops with the guillotine and job done right? Does it need to be more complicated?

 

[eye_suc]

well the punches they use to cut the photos make nice rounded corners good luck cutting rounded corners with the guillotine!

i don't think the corners HAVE to be rounded.

 

[adsl3g]

I figure a tethered camera and a photoshop action and he'd be set to go as far as the printing goes.

A few chops with the guillotine and job done right? Does it need to be more complicated?

Not really, the time consuming part for me was getting the composition on the pic right as I was shooting 'blind' - set the cam, press the timer and jump in front of the lens..

...and corners not round either - have never seen a rounded cornered PP foto..

 

[mercurial]

I've got the Lexmark P4350 printer. It prints photos too. It comes with glossy paper and a special photo ink cartridge. It prints photos just fine. For ID photos, you would just need to set it so that it frames the normal photo down to ID size. Not sure if I can do it with the software included, but I'm sure you could manually resize the photos to the size of an ID photo or get a special piece of software to do that ID resizing for you, and then you should be able to print multiple ID photos.

EDIT: The printer was on special with a 5mp camera for R1500, but that was quite a while back. I'm sure you can get that printer on its own for much cheaper now. Check Game or Makro.

 

[Nerfherder]

You do get photo printers that can print ID photos by having a camera plugged directly in to the printer. HP even has one that comes with a battery and is about the size of a tissue box. Very quick and easy but might cost you between R1500 and R2500 depending on the printer and camera.

 

[bwana]

Its for a new business so I'm probably going to work around existing equipment.

Since I've got a spare 400D and an old powerbook he can use in the beginning that part of it is already taken care of. Canon has a nice tethering application and with photoshop and osx assigning actions to a folder is a snap so basically - in theory at least - all he's going to have to do it hit the space bar and job done.

My main concern was with the ink jet but I guess with good paper stock the photo is going to outlive the document anyway.

I'll tell him to steer clear of UK passport photos - they're really fussy.

I appreciate all the help - might have a look at one of those small photo printers mentioned.

 

[Nerfherder]

Get the right weight of paper.. it must be above 170g and gloss

 

[bwana]

Get the right weight of paper.. it must be above 170g and gloss

Thats good to know - iirc I saw Epson Glossy 4x6 paper on special at Macro and I think that is about 230g.

 

[werner]

the photo paper would also need to be UV resistant, otherwise the picture will fade in a few years from the occasional exposure to sunlight

 

[adsl3g]

Thats good to know - iirc I saw Epson Glossy 4x6 paper on special at Macro and I think that is about 230g.

Yup, thats the one I used - Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper... 255g - 2 packs for the price of 1 (around R1.00 per sheet. - Easily fits 4 pics on for cutting .

 

[adsl3g]

the photo paper would also need to be UV resistant, otherwise the picture will fade in a few years from the occasional exposure to sunlight

By that time you probably have to renew whatever again.