Weeks 3 & 4 came fast because of the holidays so I am lumping them together. Both included a lot of photo printing, which I gave to my mother and mother in law as gifts for the holidays. They can never get enough photos of their grandchild!
For the photos, I needed to do some red eye reduction, so I used each printers photo program that came with the printer. The HP Printer’s program is called PhotoSmart Essential 3.5 and the Kodak’s is AiO Home Center. They are both very basic editing programs that can reduce red eye, crop, and print photos in different sizes.
The Kodak AiO Home Center is so much more user friendly. The HP PhotoSmart Essential is really complicated as you have to add your photos to your photo library before you can edit them. This is really annoying and it takes a lot longer to do touch ups or simple cropping. Unfortunately, the Kodak prints are still printing out at a lesser quality then the HP, so I am suffering through the extra steps to get the look I want with my prints.
I also changed the HP ink on week 3 after the machine gave me about 50 warnings the the ink was low or gone. Even with all the low ink prompts, the HP prints were still coming out good. I probably could have left it in for another whole week if I didn’t print any photos. I finally gave in and changed the ink as I had a bunch of holiday photo projects that I was doing. My 8×10’s that I printed with the fresh HP ink came out perfect. You would NEVER believe they were printed from a home printer.
I have yet to change the Kodak ink but I am noticing the difference in the printing quality. I burned through the HP ink faster simply because I have printed extra photos because I am liking the quality better. I have been getting the prompts for the Kodak and have been letting it go, but I am sure I will be changing it in the next few days.
The test for week 4 was scanning. I don’t do too much scanning in general but this was the perfect time to dig out some old photos and give it a go. I chose a few photos from a trip I took to Alaska in 2000.
I am going to let you judge for yourself which scan you like better. To be fair, the HP is the truest to the actual picture, but I do like some of the lightening elements of the Kodak.
This is a tough call on this particular photo. Here is another-
On this one it seems the Kodak is more true to the actual photo. With that, I have come to the conclusion that both the HP and the Kodak printer have similar scanning quality. I don’t think there is a clear winner here. I do want to add that I put both of these photos on the bed of the scanner at the same time. The HP Printer scanned them in as 1 photo one on top of the other (as I suspected they would do). The Kodak scanned each photo in as 2 separate photos, which I thought was interesting. Scanning of the actual photos took about the same time with each printer.
Next week, week 5 – MORE PRINTING!
Disney World Feb. 10th-13th
Mardi Gras Feb. 13th-16th 
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