Printing digital photos at home can be a fun, creative experience or an expensive printing disaster. If you want to have an enjoyable photo printing experience, you must have a good photo printer, the right printer ink and of course the proper photo paper.

Choosing a photo printer these days is a lot like walking into a car lot and saying show me a dependable car. Photo printers are sold absolutely everywhere and they all claim to be the best photo printer on the market. The Canon Pixma, HP Photosmart, Epson Stylus, Lexmark Home Photo, and the Sony Digital Photo Printer are all popular well made models, but how do you know which one will give you the best photo prints for your money?

Purchasing an inkjet photo printer rather than an all in one printer or a multifunction laser printer is the most cost effective way to get dazzling digital prints. Inkjet photo printers are manufactured specifically for photo printing. They use intricate print technologies that will produce high quality crystal clear photographs.

Selecting the best photo printer that will give you the absolute best clarity when printing your masterpieces is easy when you understand that image quality is all about resolution. Specifically, how many dots per inch (DPI) of ink the printer lays on the paper. A good rule of thumb to use when you're out shopping is; the higher the resolution or DPI number, the smaller the dots and, in theory, the better the prints.

Another important specification for inkjet photo printers is ink drop size. Usually measured in picoliters; the smaller the number, the more ink per square inch can be printed on the paper. The more ink on the paper, the more precise and lifelike the print. Canon's new Pixma iP5200 has a rating of one picoliter, the best rating in the industry, but you can find many photo printers rated at one and half and two picoliters.

Photo printers with such high specs start at about $150, which may seem expensive since you can go out a pick up an inkjet for 50 bucks, but it's really not very expensive once you see how much the printer ink and photo paper is going to cost you.