When digital cameras and camera phones became ubiquitous tools in the daily lives of Americans, printer manufacturers saw this as an opportunity to expand their market. Photo printers, which only a few years before were available only to those who could afford the hefty tag price, became available even to ordinary people. Manufacturers released new printers that are faster, produce better quality prints, and more importantly, at just a fraction of the cost of earlier models.

Due to the cheap prices, consumers took to the fancy photo printers like mad. Soon there were hundreds of models available from the major players like Epson, Canon and Hewlett Packard, and lesser known brands like Kyocera and Dell. Buyers are literally deluged with options, and choosing a printer that suits one's requirements became a rather difficult task with so many features one has to consider. If you are in the market for a new photo printer, here are the most important things that you should consider while looking for the right device.

Color printing is available from laser, inkjet, solid-ink or dye-sublimation printers. However, for high-quality photo printouts, inkjet and dye-sub printers are the best options. Small business and home users can do well with an inkjet photo printer, such as Epson Stylus Pro 3800 or a dye-sub like Canon Selphy CP710 - both printers output professional-level prints that are hardly distinguishable from lab-developed photos.

Pro-level printers which give vibrant and high-definition prints generally cost more than regular color printers. If you're a serious hobbyist, you wouldn't mind paying the hefty price tag, considering the high quality of the output. Both inkjet and dye-sub printers are excellent for photo printing, but the former has an advantage over the latter: cost per page is generally cheaper in inkjets as the printing process for dye-subs require fixed ribbon usage per page, regardless of the amount of dye and color necessary in the printing process. In contrast, inkjets only disperse the actual amount of ink color required during printing, minimizing wastage.

The resolution in printers refers to the maximum number of dots per inch (DPI) that the printer can make vertically and horizontally- the higher the resolution, the sharper and more detailed the printout would be. The ultra-small dots of ink (in one color or combination of colors) are precisely sprayed by the printer on the paper, resulting in vibrant images. Most printers these days have resolutions of 600 x 600 dpi (i.e., 600 dpi horizontally and 600 dpi vertically) which is just right for everyday printing needs. For photographs, however, 1200 X 1200 dpi or higher is necessary. Some Canon models using canon ink cartridges have resolutions of 9600 x 4800 dpi which deliver truly awesome photographs.

Color printing is rather slow compared to monochrome text printing. The more complex the page is and the higher resolution the print job is set, the lower the page per minute (PPM) will be. Speed also varies by the technology used: laser printers are much faster than inkjets in plain text and colored image printing. However, print quality when it comes to photos is much better with inkjet and dye-sub printers. Thus, if you want to have great lab-quality pictures, you'll just have to wait a little longer for the prints to come out an inkjet rather than rush things with a laser printer. Several of the HP Photosmart printers print in as little as 60 seconds using hp ink cartridges.

Most printers have junked the parallel port for the newer Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, although there are still models sporting both connectors. As most PCs also have parallel and USB ports, it is better to select a printer with the speedier USB connector - installing the Plug and Play unit will be easier and you'll get to send printing jobs to the printer a lot faster.

Photo printers are rarely networked but if you must have one linked to a network, some printers are also equipped with RJ-45 Ethernet connectors. Moreover, other printers with built-in print servers offer wireless options such as infrared, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi that completely negates the need for cables.

Some photo printers can also be used for stand-alone printing, using memory cards or directly (with PictBridge support) from digital devices such as cameras, PDAs and mobile phones. Printers with this capability often have an LCD screen for image viewing while fancier models allow picture-editing without the PC. These are important considerations if you want to quickly print your photographs without having to fire up your PC and downloading the images to your hard disk first.

When you click the print button, the PC (or digital device) sends the request to the printer and stores it in the printer memory. If there are multiple print jobs, all print requests are queued in the memory and the processor executes the print request in sequence. Since photos are more complex and consists of more bits than text files, more memory space is required to store the image files on queue. Thus, fast processors and large on-board memory are required for photo printing.

Remember that in choosing a photo printer, opting for the highest resolution, fastest speed and largest memory may not be possible. Rather, it is a game of compromises: you sometimes would have to sacrifice speed for better print quality, or forgo a cheaper priced model for a printer with a bigger memory. You should evaluate your options and needs, and select the printer most suitable for your requirements.