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.

Digital press printer

You can think of the digital press printer as a glorified desktop printer. It has four colours and it takes sheet paper.

Products printed on the digital press printer:

• Desk Calendar Prints.
• Wall Calendars.
• Everyday Photo Books.
• All Photo Card products.
• All Occasion Cards.

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

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.

The three paper options for our digital press products are: Silk 210gsm, Silk 300gsm, and Mohawk Superfine 270gsm. These are all heavy-weight 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.

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.

Products printed on the inkjet printers:

• Collage posters.
• Giant photostrips.
• Mounted photo prints.
• Wall decals.
• Framed prints.
• All photo prints.

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.

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.

The four paper options for our inkjet products are: Pro Satin 240gsm, Archival Silk 260gsm, Hahnemuhle Cotton White 188gsm, and Hahnemuhle Cotton Rag 308gsm. They are all professional photo papers, with the first two being a semi gloss finish and the Hahnemuhle papers being a cotton based matte paper. 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.

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.