HP intros photo printer, scanner at Photokina

At the Photokina 2008 show on Tuesday, Hewlett Packard introduced a number of products aimed for the digital photography and publishing markets. Chief among the releases were the Scanjet G3110 photo scanner and B8550 photo printer. The latter features a five-ink system and extra large feed tray and printing area that lets users to produce photos as large a 13x19 inches. The printer’s USB port and multi-format memory card reader work with a 2.4-inch LCD screen for PC-free printing of documents and images.

The B8550 printer will produce 33 black and white pages per minute or 31ppm in color, while a 4x6-inch photo print can be produced in 18 seconds in draft mode, or 60 seconds in the best quality mode. The maximum print resolution of the B8550 is fixed at 1200x1200 pixels. Thanks to the five-ink system that uses individual cartridges, users can replace each separately, as needed. The B8550 has 128MB of built-in memory for storing jobs.

The HP Scanjet G3110 scanner features a 4800x9600dpi scan resolution along with 48-bit color resolution for high-quality scans of photos, slides, negatives and documents as well as 3D objects. HP also includes software that makes it easy to remove red eyes from photos, make scratches or dust particles disappear and restore faded colors. The built-in transparent materials adapter allows four 35mm slides or five negatives to be scanned in quickly, while photos are digitized quickly thanks to a feature that allows three 4x6 prints to be scanned simultaneously yet saved individually. A Scan to PDF button lets users create quick PDFs of any document or photo on the scanner’s bed, while a Scan to Email button sends the captured images to any user-selected email address. Another dedicated button will send scans to a connected printer.

Either product is currently available and compatible with either Windows Vista and XP or Mac OS X v10.4 or newer operating systems. The B8550 printer is priced at nearly $300, while the G3110 scanner costs $100.

HP B8550 photo printer