The Best Photo Printers for Professional-Looking Results
If you have ever spent serious time getting an image right — calibrating exposure, working a scene, editing carefully in post — and then sent it to a consumer inkjet only to get a flat, muddy print back, you already know the problem.
Most printers are designed to handle documents and the occasional holiday snapshot. Getting a print that does justice to a carefully made photograph requires a different category of machine entirely.
This guide focuses on the printers that photographers — from serious amateurs to working professionals — actually use when they want results that rival a print lab.
The market is essentially a choice between Canon and Epson. Other brands exist at the consumer level, but when it comes to dedicated photo printers worth taking seriously, these two dominate completely.
Dye vs. Pigment: The First Decision
Before looking at specific models, you need to understand the fundamental split in inkjet photo printing technology, because it affects every decision that follows.
Dye-based printers produce vivid, smooth colour on glossy paper. The prints look brilliant straight out of the machine, particularly for saturated colour and portraits. The downside is longevity: dye prints fade faster than pigment prints, especially when exposed to light or humidity. They are also less versatile across paper types.
Pigment-based printers use ink particles suspended in liquid rather than dissolved dyes. The prints are more archivally stable — properly stored pigment prints on quality paper can last 80 to 100 years or more — and they perform across a much wider range of media, including matte fine art papers, baryta papers, and canvas.
The colour on glossy paper is slightly less vivid than dye at first glance, but for any serious photographic use, particularly black-and-white printing and fine art work, pigment is the correct choice.
For most photographers who care enough to be reading this, pigment is the answer.
The Printers Worth Buying
Canon image PROGRAF PRO-300 — Best 13-inch pigment printer for most photographers
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The PRO-300 is the benchmark for desktop photo printing at the 13-inch (A3+) size.
It uses nine Lucia Pro pigment inks, including dedicated channels for both photo black and matte black, which means you never have to purge and switch black ink when changing between glossy and matte papers — a frustrating and wasteful process on older Epson models.
Paper handling is excellent and reliable, which matters more than it sounds: consistent, clean feeding of heavy fine art papers is something cheaper printers simply cannot do.
The print quality is outstanding across colour, portraits, and black-and-white. Ink costs are reasonable compared to its direct Epson competitor.
This is the printer to buy if you want to print exhibition-quality work up to 13×19 inches at home without commercial-scale investment. Approximate price: $900.
Epson SureColor SC-P700 — Best-in-class 13-inch colour gamut
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Epson's P700 is the PRO-300's direct competitor and uses the UltraChrome PRO10 ink system — ten inks, with a colour gamut that is technically slightly wider than the Canon's.
For photographers printing highly saturated landscape work or colour-critical commercial images, the Epson's gamut advantage is real, if narrow.
Earlier production models had paper feeding issues that frustrated many users, but Epson has addressed these in current production.
The P700 also has a roll paper option, which the Canon lacks. Ink cartridges are larger (25ml) but more expensive per milliliter than the Canon's. For photographers prioritising maximum colour range, the P700 is the right choice. Approximate price: $800–850.
Canon image PROGRAF PRO-1000 — Best 17-inch printer for high-volume and large format
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Step up in size and the PRO-1000 is the machine of choice for photographers who regularly print at 17 inches wide — A2 format, or up to 17×24 inches in a single sheet. It uses twelve Lucia Pro inks (two more than the PRO-300), including three blacks for exceptional tonal range.
Build quality is outstanding — the PRO-1000 is a tank of a printer that handles heavy use with minimum fuss.
Canon's automatic cleaning cycle means clogged print heads are rare.
The ink costs are higher and the machine is large and heavy, but for photographers selling large prints or producing gallery-quality work in significant volumes, this is the professional standard. Approximate price: $1,300.
Epson SureColor SC-P900 — Best 17-inch pigment printer for versatility
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The P900 is Epson's 17-inch counterpart to the PRO-1000, using the same UltraChrome PRO10 inkset as the P700. It is lighter and more compact than the Canon for its format, includes a roll feeder, and the ink is genuinely efficient.
The colour output and archival stability are both excellent. As with the P700, early paper feeding issues have been resolved in current production.
For photographers who need 17-inch printing with roll capability and lighter ink costs than the Canon, the P900 is a serious option. Approximate price: $1,300.
Canon PIXMA PRO-200 — Best dye-based option for glossy prints
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If your work is primarily colour photography on glossy paper, and archival permanence is not the priority, the PRO-200 is worth considering.
It uses eight dye-based inks and produces prints with exceptional vibrancy and smoothness on glossy and semi-gloss media. Print speeds are faster than pigment printers.
The compromise is longevity and versatility: PRO-200 prints are not suited to matte or fine art papers, and they will fade more quickly than pigment alternatives.
But for photographers producing glossy colour prints for near-term use — commissions, gifts, personal projects not destined for gallery walls — the PRO-200 delivers outstanding results at a lower price. Approximate price: $500.
The Paper Matters as Much as the Printer
A professional printer used with cheap photo paper will still produce mediocre results. The printer and paper need to work together, and the major manufacturers have tuned their ink systems to perform at their best with specific media.
For colour photography, Hahnemühle Photo Rag or Canson Platine Fibre Rag are the standards for fine art work.
For black-and-white, baryta papers — which have a surface similar to traditional darkroom fibre-based paper — produce the most tonally rich and archivally stable results. For glossy colour work, the manufacturers' own papers are generally the safest starting point before you experiment with third-party alternatives.
Using ICC profiles — downloadable from the paper manufacturer's website for specific printer and paper combinations — is essential for accurate colour output.
Without a profile that tells your printing software exactly how that ink and paper combination behaves, you are guessing at colour, and the results will show it.
Calibrate Your Monitor
This is not about the printer, but it is inseparable from the quality of the print. If your monitor is not calibrated to a known standard, the relationship between what you see on screen and what the printer puts on paper is unpredictable.
A hardware calibration tool — the Calibrite Display Pro or the Datacolor Spyder series being the most common — takes around ten minutes to run and eliminates the single most common source of disappointing prints: editing on an uncalibrated screen and printing what you thought looked right.
Prepare Your Files Before Printing
Before sending any image to a professional printer, it is worth doing a final review and adjustment in a precise editing environment.
Pixlr is an excellent and affordable browser-based tool for this — it gives you proper Curves, Levels, and HSL controls for checking that your tonal balance and colour are correct before committing to paper and ink. In particular, use Pixlr's soft proofing capability or Curves tool to check that your highlights are not clipping and your shadows are holding detail.
A print catches every error that a screen glosses over.
The Honest Summary
For most photographers who want to print their own work at exhibition quality up to 13×19 inches, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 is the best starting point: reliable, excellent print quality, reasonable ongoing ink costs, and no black-ink switching hassle.
For larger format work, both the Canon PRO-1000 and Epson P900 are serious machines that will produce work indistinguishable from a professional print lab. The choice between Canon and Epson at this level comes down to your priorities — ink cost efficiency, gamut, roll capability, and personal preference rather than any fundamental quality difference.
What all of these printers share is the same basic requirement: the print is only as good as the file, the paper, and the calibration behind it.
Get those right, and the hardware will not let you down.