Inkjet printers come in a vast range of individual products, from well-known small inkjets suitable for home use, to monster-sized systems to print advertising billboards and truck signs. Here are a few definitions in the range in between, to assist with matching buyer requirements to available systems.



A useful place to start is to understand a difference between inkjets which offer "page-width" formats and those which are defined as "wide" or "large format".

Page width printers generally have outputs which range from about 8.0 inches to 36 inches(about 18 cm to 97 cm). These are most commonly used in the printing high-volume business communications, where contents is more important than any need for images and colour. Often now associated with all-in-one print/copy facilities, such inkjets are commonly employed for billing, business letters and mailing, and individualised report documents

Wide format printers ranging in print width from 24 inches up to 15 feet(about 75 cm to 5 m). That's 5 metres - thus becoming massive and with amazing capabilities. Most wide format applications involve advertising or presentation graphics, but wide format printers are also important for large-scale drawings by architects and designers and similar trades where technical detail and large-scale output are twin requirements.

The photographic industry has its own particular needs when deciding on which inkjet application is needed. A vital part of the production process involves the creation of prepress colour proofs for printing jobs created digitally. These printers are designed to give an accurate colour preview of how the image will look when the job is finally produced on a large volume press. An example of an inkjet printer designed for such proof work is an Iris printer. Outputs from these are known as "iris proofs" or "irises" for short.

Additionally of course, exact colour proofing is of absolute paramount importance in the field of photo-art. Here, wide and large format printers, with multiple ink systems are specified to deliver colour output over which the photographic artist has total control.

The major supplier of inkjet printers is Hewlett-Packard. This company supplies over 90 percent of the market for printers for technical drawing applications. Their major products in this sector are the Designjet and the T-series. Hewlett Packard also has the HP Designjet 5500, which is a six-colour printer used especially for printing graphics as well Designjet Z6100 which has an eight colour pigment ink system. Other suppliers of low volume wide format printers are Epson, Kodak and Canon.

Kodak offer high-speed, variable-data, inkjet printers for production printing, including the Kodak Versamark(tm) VJ1000, VT3000, and VX5000 printing systems. These are roll-fed printers and can print at up to 300 metres per minute!