Welcome to another Inkjet Online Update 1-9-09

• Ink Cartridges by Printer Model
• Fast Find - Coming soon
• Generics Ink Cartridges - Branded verses non branded
• New products - Epson 73N and 73N twin packs
• Printing Tips - Image Resolution Part 1
• Joke of the Month - Got a good joke? Send it to us and we'll share it with everyone
• Items of Interest - The next generation of Keyboard?

We have designed our site and the process of finding cartridges around your printer model. A lot of customers are searching through our products list to find what they need. This is an inaccurate and time consuming way of doing things.

There are generics and then there are generic generics. Do you know the brand of the product you are buying? In our opinion, unbranded generics should be left on the shelf.

Most of us are familiar with the generic brands in our local supermarkets. Generic goods bring us cheaper prices with relatively plainer packaging and somewhat 'different' contents. Everyone has a different opinion about what you are actually getting with generics but the point I'd like you to think about is that regardless of the quality of the product in the packaging these generic products are all branded. When you go shopping, you can easily make a choice or judgement on a product based on its brand and your experiences or word of mouth. That one was terrible, that one was great etc and you can avoid the poorer products and choose the better products as a result. The branding of a product allows you to make an informed choice. The branding is a critical service to you and it places a great deal of pressure on the manufacturer to ensure their product is up to scratch. If an easily identifiable product is of poor quality it won't sell and the manufacturer goes broke.

Unbranded products have no such pressure to perform and it takes away your ability to make an informed choice. What quality are you getting, who made it, where do they source their components, are they responsible manufacturers, will you be getting a product from the same manufacturer next time? So many questions that should be answered. They have no name to live up to, no brand recognition and no reputation to protect and build.

We now stock the Epson 73N Black in Twin packs

http://www.inkjetonline.com.au/epson-73n-black-ink-cartridge-twin-pack-epson-73n-twin-pack-ink.html

And the new Extra High capacity 73HN. These are NOT compatible with all machines that take the 73N so please make sure you check.

http://www.inkjetonline.com.au/epson-73hn-high-capacity-ink-twin-pack-epson-73HN-ink.html

Compatible machines

• Epson Stylus C110
• Epson Stylus CX7300
• Epson Stylus CX8300
• Epson Stylus CX9300F
• Epson Stylus Office T30
• Epson Stylus Office T40W
• Epson Stylus Office T1100
• Epson Stylus TX200
• Epson Stylus TX210
• Epson Stylus TX400
• Epson Stylus TX410
• Epson Stylus TX550W
• Epson Stylus Office TX300F
• Epson Stylus Office TX600FW

Appropriate image resolution is a critical requirement for good image quality. Low resolution results in pixelation and loss of detail. Too higher resolution results in needlessly large files that take an age to print and can even crash your system. The following articles aim to explain resolution and suggest some appropriate resolution levels to aim for. Because this is a rather complicated subject and we are all pressed for time I've broken it down into several parts that I will release each month.

Part 1)

Image Resolution - Image resolution is the measurement of the amount of potential detail in a digital image. It is measured in PPI or Pixels Per Inch. The higher the PPI the greater the potential detail.

There are 2 types of images we see on screen. 'Text & graphics' and 'images'. In this article I am only talking about images and printing images.

'Text and graphics' are objects that have outlines and fills whose colour, thickness and size can be easily changed, things like fonts (text) and shapes you draw, being lines, circles and squares etc and most clipart (graphics). If you are printing 'text and graphics', you don't need to worry about image resolution as resolution doesn't apply to 'text and graphics'. Text and graphics do not have the same quality issues as images, they can be made larger without quality loss.

Sometimes (most of the time) the resolution of an image is referred to as DPI - Dots Per Inch. This is incorrect use of terminology. When talking about the resolution of an image in your computer it is correct to use PPI - Pixels Per Inch. DPI is actually a term relating to the printed resolution of an image from your printer. Printers print images with dots. The number of dots it prints in 1 inch is its dpi, dots per inch. The more dots per inch a printer can print the better your image can look. People have gotten them confused over the years and the two descriptions have come to mean the same thing. Although they are similar they are not the same. So ingrained is this misuse of terminology that Its most likely your software will use DPI for images as well so don't be too worried about it. For the sake of this article I must make the distinction and use them correctly because I need to talk about both, PPI for images on your computer, DPI for printers and printed images.

Images on your computer are 'digital image files' that you will get off of a digital camera, scanner or from the internet and you can create them yourself with the right programs. Images are also known as Photos, Bitmaps, Raster images and many more names, sometimes people will refer to them as tifs, jpegs or gifs which is actually a reference to the type of file. There are many types of digital image files and they have file extensions such as jpeg, tif, gif, png, bmp and many more.

A digital image is a picture stored on a computer that is displayed by colours in a grid where every square in the grid is assigned a colour. A bit like painting by numbers, the image file is just a set of instructions that tell the program how to display the image by telling it how many squares there are, how big the picture is and what colour each square should be.

Below is a very simplistic image that I created. I saved it as a jpeg and called it 'yellow circle on red' so its file name is 'yellow circle on red.jpeg'. It is a grid of 12 rows (12 squares high) and 12 columns (12 squares wide) making 144 squares in total and each one has a colour.

 with grid highlighted    with grid removed

The individual squares in images are called pixels and when people talk about dpi or more accurately ppi, the resolution of an image, they are talking about the number of pixels it has in a row or a column over 1 inch. The images above are 1 inch x 1 inch squares (or supposed to be, your monitor or browser may make them bigger or smaller than I intended) and they have 12 rows and 12 columns of pixels in each side, so it can be said that they have 12 pixels per inch or they have a resolution of 12 ppi.

Most of the time images should have the same number of pixels per inch vertically and horizontally. As in the images above, but this is not always the case. We can stretch an image vertically or horizontally only and change its shape. As an example the image above was stretched out to 2 inches wide. It still has 12 x 12 pixels but the stretched side's pixels are now spread over a larger area, 2 inches instead of 1. See below.

 Stretched 200% horizontally only

The resolution of this new image can no longer be described as 12 ppi. It now needs to describe the changed horizontal ppi. We doubled the horizontal distance so halved the pixels (number of squares) per inch, ppi. New resolution is 12 x 6 ppi. So stretching your images lowers the ppi in one direction and may lower the quality of your image.

In the above example we stretched the image in one direction only and have seen that the resolution is reduced in the side that was stretched. If we stretched the image in both directions at the same time, otherwise known as enlarging an image, we will see that the resolution is reduced in both of the sides. The image now has a lower ppi over all.

 Stretched 200% in both directions

The above image was stretched / enlarged to 200% of its original size. You can now see that it has 6 pixels per inch in both sides. This picture now has a lower ppi of 6, 6 ppi.

So now we know that image resolution is the number of pixels in 1 inch of 1 side of an image.

If you stretch or enlarge an image you reduce its resolution.

Image resolution is the number of pixels in one side of a square inch of an image.

Nelson Mandela is sitting at home watching TV and drinking a beer when he hears a knock at the door. When he opens it, he is confronted by a little Chinese man, clutching a clipboard and yelling, "You sign! You sign! "

Behind him is an enormous truck full of car exhausts.

Nelson is standing there in complete amazement, when the Chinese man starts to yell louder, "You sign! You sign!"

Nelson says to him, "Look, you've obviously got the wrong man", and shuts the door in his face.

The next day he hears a knock at the door again. When he opens it, the little Chinese man is back with a huge truck of brake pads. He thrusts his clipboard under Nelson's nose yelling, "You sign!, You sign!". Mr. Mandela is getting a bit fed up by now, so he pushes the little Chinese man back, shouting; "Look, go away! You've got the wrong man. I don't want them!" Then he slams the door in his face again.

The following day, Nelson is resting, and late in the afternoon he hears a knock at the door again. On opening the door, there is the same little Chinese man thrusting a clipboard under his nose, shouting, "You sign! You sign!"

Behind him are TWO very large trucks full of car parts. This time Nelson loses his temper completely. He picks up the little man by the shirt front and yells at him; "Look, I don't want these! Do you understand? You must have the wrong name! Who do you want to give these to?"