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Printing Advice
Print Smart
How to save on General printing costs?
How to save on Photo printing costs?
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Print Smart
Has this happened to you? You’ve printed something only to find that it didn’t turn out the way you expected – the printout was the wrong format or bits were left off and you’ve wasted paper and ink/toner? Here is some simple advice on how to avoid this.
“Think before you print” – and check the settings in your application’s “Page Setup” and “Print Preview” features before printing. Things to look out for include:
- page orientation (Portrait or Landscape)
- paper size (eg: A4, A5, Letter, Legal, etc)
- page layout, for example:
- headers and footers (include details you need [eg: file name and path, page numbers, etc])
- margins (narrower margins give you a larger print area if you require)
- print range (check what specific parts [eg: rows or pages] of the document you want to print)
- text alignment (both vertical and horizontal)
- table formatting, for example:
- column headings appear on top of each page when a table spans across pages
- table / cell borders (style, colour, thickness)
- text alignment in cells (left/center/right and top/middle/bottom)
- formatting of bulleted and numbered lists
- page breaks are in the right place
- Colour vs Black-and-White – Colour cartridges are generally more expensive than black ones. So if it doesn’t have to be in colour, change the printing setup to Pure Black and White in your application before you print the document (for example, you can do this with Microsoft PowerPoint documents).
Have TWO cartridges for your printer – one in your printer and one spare that you interchange. You can avoid the disappointment of not being able to print if suddenly a cartridge runs out of ink. Just replace it with your spare one and return it to us for remanufacturing. In the meantime, you’ll be able to continue happily printing.
Click here for more printing tips.
How to save on General printing costs
Buy Compatible or Remanufactured cartridges
Instead of expensive OEM cartridges, buy the same quality Compatible cartridge for less. A lot less – up to 50%.
Remanufactured cartridges can save you even more – up to 75% on some OEM cartridges. In addition, you’ll also reduce environmental waste if you recycle your used cartridge by returning them to us to be remanufactured.
See the FAQ section for explanation of terms such as “OEM”, “Compatible” and “Remanufactured” cartridges and for more details on our remanufacturing processes.
Look after your printer
Like all other electronic appliances, a printer is most effective when it is in tip-top condition. Pay special attention to the print head. When you are not using the printer, place a cover on it to keep off any dust and dirt. You should also store the printer in a cool, dust-free environment so that the ink on the print head will not dry up and clog the nozzles.
Paper media is also important to be stored properly when not in use as they can get rather dusty when left exposed over time. This will affect not just the print quality but may also damage the print head.
You can rectify cases of minor clogging easily by using the cleaning utility found on most printers. Use this only when necessary as it drains your ink cartridge. For printers whose print head cannot be unclogged, you can either get a new ink cartridge (for those that come with print heads) or replace the print head altogether, which can be quite costly.
Reduce paper and ink/toner waste
Ask yourself the question whether you REALLY need that printout?
- If a short document, is it just as easy to read on screen?
- Would it be enough to print only specific parts or pages, rather than the whole document?
What are the readers’ preferences? Readers / users of the document may be happy for you to:
- re-use the blank pages or reverse sides of old printouts that you no longer need
- print two or more pages to a page (note: this will make the writing smaller as two pages are reduced to fit next to each other on the one sheet of paper)
- print double-sided documents (ie: on both sides of the paper)
- combine the 2nd and 3rd points above to get even more savings
Many printers these days have a “toner saving” mode that could save you up to 30% on toner (ie, you could print 30% more pages with the same cartridge). In this mode, your printouts will not be as black, but it should be sufficient for most purposes. In particular, you could use this mode for draft documents that may not be read by anyone but the original author.
How to save on Photo printing costs
Printing your own photos is easy and fun, but it can be expensive – special paper media and ink consumables alone can cost a bundle, particularly if you make lots of prints for friends and relatives. But there are some smart ways of reducing printing costs.
- Make draft prints – One of the most effective ways to save on ink and photo paper costs is to make a test print on cheap plain paper before embarking on the actual project. It may sound contradictory at first since you will be using more ink for the test print. But by ensuring the correct print resolution and paper size settings, this actually helps prevent wastage and, at the same time, preempt clogged print nozzles or alignment problems.
- Multiple photos on one sheet of media – You can cut down on media costs by printing a few pictures onto one large photo sheet. For example, instead of four separate 10 x 13 cm prints, they can all be printed on one A4 sheet, and later cut with scissors. (Many printer manufacturers now bundle software printing applications that let you do that easily.)
- Play with printer utilities – Don't just stick with the default settings on the printer. It helps to know how to adjust the print quality settings for different types of prints, as higher-resolution prints use more ink and sometimes it isn't necessary to utilise maximum resolution when the source image doesn't justify it. Also see “Think before you print” above.
- Share a photo printer – Photo printers, unlike ordinary inkjets, are not designed for printing documents. So unless you print a lot of photos regularly, the printer is pretty much left unused most of the time. Therefore, if you have a group of friends who intend to print their own digital photos, why not consider sharing a printer among yourselves? Besides paying only a portion of the printer and consumables cost, the printer is also kept in use most of the time, preventing ink clogs on the print nozzles.
- If you make lots of prints – Printing your own photos may be fun, but if you intend to make more than 50 prints, we suggest you send your images to a photo lab instead. Most photo labs are equipped with facilities to deal with digital images; it is of course worth checking beforehand. Processing bulk prints through a photo lab can be a great deal more economical and also much less time-consuming.
You may not be able to use all of these tips due to your preferences or limitations in your application or printer or printer driver. But we hope you’ll be able to apply most of these and save yourself some money and time.
And when you’ve become a more efficient printer, you can use your savings to get more out of your printer and have some fun with it too!
Use InkSaver
The award-winning InkSaver software allows you to control the amount of ink used by your printer, saving you money by making your inkjet cartridges last longer. Simply adjust the ink savings slider and print! Behind the scenes, InkSaver's patent pending technology optimizes your printer data so that you use less ink.
Click HERE to learn more about InkSaver and to TRY it for FREE!
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