Choosing the right printer for your organization

There are several factors to consider when choosing a printer for your organization — first among them is that it’s powered by a reliable technology such as Adobe’s RIP solution, the Adobe Embedded Print Engine. The RIP lives at the heart of the printer and converts the document you are printing into the dots and marks that appear on the paper, be they text, graphics, or images.

How big do you need to print?

Your printer will be used to take your document and bring it to the real world, but what size paper will you need to print? An A4/US Letter printer is a minimum for printing presentations or most office documents. Still, to print larger notices or posters, you might need a printer capable of A3/Tabloid or Large Format Printers. This flexibility is important, particularly to fold the paper to make a booklet with pages printed side by side. A printer based on the Embedded Print Engine uses Adobe’s PDF technology to ensure the print faithfully reproduces what you see on the screen. PDFs can be printed at any size without losing quality — text and graphics are scaled, preserving the detail and sharpness of the lines, whether they are small in a footnote or large in a bold heading. And if you enlarge your print, the same detail is retained as the artwork gets bigger. Adobe Embedded Print Engine powers millions of printers from leading Print OEMs worldwide, across a diverse spectrum of device types, ensuring that every print mirrors the quality and intent of the original design.

Single function or multi-function?

Depending on the type of work you do regularly, consider whether you need the flexibility of a multi-function printer that can scan, copy, and print or are better suited to a single-function printer that prints. Only some users need to scan regularly, though you might want the option to do so. Adding a scanner to the printer enables you to digitize your paper documents. For best results, you can scan to a PDF that can be easily shared or archived — even converted to an editable document. And the same PDF can later be printed on the same device. You will find Adobe Embedded Print Engine in both single-function and multi-function printers.

Flat sheets of paper or booklets & brochures?

Depending on the finished print product you want to make, you might consider a printer capable of ‘finishing’ the print so that it’s ready for your customer, event, or meeting. It starts with being able to print on both sides of a sheet of paper without operator intervention (known as duplex printing), where the printer passes the sheet through the print mechanism a second time, sometimes printing every other page upside down so that the finished product behaves correctly as the viewer turns the page. From there, the flexibility to print on paper of differing sizes or colors can be helpful in conjunction with an automated folder and stapler. For example, you might print a stack of pages on A4/US Letter paper and rely on them not separating as you turn the page, or you could print on paper twice the size (A3/Tabloid) and have the printer fold the pages in half, stapling each set so that the pages don’t separate. A printer that ‘finishes’ your printing needs to be more robust to handle the complexity of printing the right pages side by side on the correct sheets in the proper order before they are folded and bound. Page 1 must be printed to the right of your last page, and page 2 must be printed to the left of the penultimate page. That sounds complicated, but a printer powered by the Adobe Embedded Print Engine can easily handle the challenge of maintaining quality. A ‘finishing’ printer can reduce the manual steps you might otherwise have to perform in the office, freeing you up for other tasks.

Black and white or color?

Whether you are printing text documents or colorful presentations, you will likely want a solution that can express your content in a way that is visually appealing to the reader. Colors convey important information, whether that’s through engaging photos, using colors in charts to convey meaning, or creating a connection to your brand using color palettes that match your identity. It’s essential that your printer faithfully reproduces color, and the Adobe Embedded Print Engine technology ensures that your colors appear as expected. There will be occasions where you don’t need or want color, sometimes by printing in black and white mode on a color printer or by printing on a device that only has black ink or toner. In that case, you need a solution that will reproduce the contrast in the document so that the information you are sharing is clear — that the legend on the chart matches the contents or that images are reproduced. Either way, the Embedded Print Engine reproduces your document for maximum impact.

How much are you printing?

Whether printing in large quantities or smaller volumes, there are benefits to choosing a printer that matches your needs. If your needs are large, you will want to pick a printer with more than one paper input tray so you don’t need to restock frequently. You may want a printer with multiple-sized trays so that the printer always has the right paper size ready, whatever you are printing, and doesn’t stop while you hurry to change the loaded paper — causing delay and inconvenience. Or your needs might be more modest, and a half-ream of paper might last you a while. Either way, you will find an Embedded Print Engine-powered printer that meets your needs.

How are you printing?

A printer based on the Embedded print engine is enabled with the same Adobe technology you will find in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Creative Cloud applications like Adobe Photoshop and the latest Adobe Express. Using this common technology, you can be sure of the same high-quality results trusted by millions of businesses worldwide. The results are proved daily by the most discerning brands and use cases, whether you are printing graphically rich marketing materials, important financial documents, or accurate shipping labels that are relied upon to see that your deliveries arrive at the correct destination. With the Embedded Print Engine, your printer will be compatible with existing and future workflows, whether you print from Mac, Windows, or mobile devices using iOS or Android.

Conclusion

Whatever your print needs, a solution with the Embedded Print Engine at its heart can be trusted to reliably reproduce documents, bringing what you see on the screen to life on paper. If you have a large organization with many users, you may need various printers with different capabilities suited for different roles. By standardizing Adobe Embedded Print Engine across your fleet, you can be sure of consistent quality and reliability of output, whether you are printing colorful presentations, folded booklets, or large posters.

Adobe Embedded Print Engine’s state-of-the-art architecture provides unparalleled quality and performance for A3 workgroup devices. With a 70 percent market share in the A3 segment, the Embedded Print Engine is the industry’s preferred RIP technology. Expanding its influence, it is rapidly becoming the RIP-of-choice for the A4 segment and is on track to achieve 65 percent market share by 2026. It is also gaining momentum in other segments, including entry-level large-format printers, marking a significant industry shift toward Adobe-powered solutions. For more information, visit here.