Our printers

At HappyMoose we have two types of printer – digital press and inkjet printers. Each type has it’s own distinct properties which impact on the print quality and cost.

Understanding a bit more about the printers and which products are printed on which type of printer will give you the chance to have better control of the outcome of your photo printing at HappyMoose.

What you need to know

If you don’t have time to read the details below, here’s what you need to know. The digital press printer can be thought of as a glorified desktop printer. It has four colours of ink and takes sheets of paper. If you are printing photos in any of our photo card products, then this is the printer we will be using.

The inkjet printers use 12 colour ink cartridges and print on rolls of fine art photographic paper. Inkjet printing takes much longer than digital press printing, but it is incredibly precise meaning those large wall prints will look amazing.

Digital press printer

You can think of the digital press printer as a glorified desktop printer. It has four colours and it takes sheets of paper. Prints from the digital press are more affordable than the inkjet prints. However, keep in mind that the colour is not as vibrant or rich and, because we print onto heavy card stock, the image will not as bright as what you might see on a computer or phone screen. You may also find that the print appears a more grainy than you would get from the ink jet printer.

Products printed on the digital press printer:

The two paper options for our digital press products are: Silk 210gsm and Silk 300gsm. These are heavyweight art papers, which means the ink will soak into the paper a bit differently than it will on a traditional glossy photo paper. For example, shadows will be more pronounced, and neons may not pop quite as much. It’s worth keeping this in mind when editing your images for print.

TIP: Before you upload your image, take a look at it with your screen brightness turned down to about 50%. This will help you get a better idea of how the print will turn out. From there you can use an editing app/tool to adjust the brightness of your images accordingly.

Inkjet printer

We currently have three inkjet printers in our HappyMoose workshop, and while they might be slower and more expensive, the quality they provide is the best of the best. Inkjet printing uses pigment-based ink and our printers can print a wide range of colours with their 12 different ink cartridges. Inkjet printing takes much longer than digital press printing, but it is incredibly precise – the colours and resolution can stay accurate and brilliant at larger sizes (up to 24×60″), meaning those large wall prints will still look amazing.

Products printed on the digital press printer:

The five paper options for our inkjet products are: Photo Matte 180gsm, Pro Satin 240gsm, Archival Silk 260gsm, Hahnemuhle Cotton White 188gsm, and Hahnemuhle Cotton Rag 308gsm. They are all professional photo papers that we have carefully selected to work with our products. Images will look slightly different on the different papers, and so if you are a professional photographer we would recommend reading our soft proofing guide to help get the best results from your prints.

TIP: When uploading a image for print, you’ll want to keep in mind that as you go up in size, you’ll begin to see a small loss of quality. Most phones and cameras aren’t capable of capturing images at large sizes like 24×40″ or 24×60″, so some blurriness coming from loss of resolution will likely appear in prints of that size. But here’s the good news – when you hang your print, friends and family probably won’t be inspecting it up close like they would a book. Instead, they’ll be viewing it from farther away, so that blurriness will likely not be noticed.

Printing from a roll of paper

One thing to keep in mind is that our inkjet printer is a roll-feed machine. This means that it prints onto paper coming out from a roll. So if you find your prints are slightly curled, that’s why. Here is a quick video showing you a free and simple way to de-curl your print.