OM Digital Solutions Camedia P-400 Digital Color Photo Printer

I have owned this printer for nearly two years. It has been trouble-free and has given me hundreds of beautiful pictures that have the look and feel of high-quality photo prints. I use Photoshop Elements to clean-up my images and to size them for printing. Photoshop elements allows me to place multiple images on a full sheet of paper. I recently showed some travel photos to a friend. He said, "I've seen digital pictures before but never any that looked this beautiful! What kind of a camera do you have?" I told him that it wasn't the camera, it was the printer. The printer, itself, is not hard to set up and use. At first , you must pay attention to how you load the ribbon, but if you look carefully at the instructions, you will be fine. A negative review mentions the micro lesions on the surface of the prints. It is true that there are a few extremely fine scratches on the plastic surface of each page . However, you will never notice them unless you take them to a window and tilt the picture around to catch the light just so. In normal viewing, you will never know they are there. And they are only on the clear, plastic coating that covers the pigments on the paper. (The paper makes four passes over the thermal head. Three passes put the color on, the fourth applies a protective coating of clear plastic.) The drawback to this printer is that it will not print larger than 8X10, and not quite a true 8X10 at that. Personally, that has never bothered me. I don't do a lot of 8X10's, and when I do, I put a border around the print, put it in a frame and it's fine. The quality of the pictures continually amazes everyone I show them to. I think this is a great photo printer.

This printer does not come with any type of drivers. After receiving the printer, we discovered the Windows 7 operating system does not have drivers for this printer. There are some available on-line that are suppose work with Windows XP or Windows 2000. So far, my husband has not been able to get the drivers to work (he is a retired computer geek, so has alot of expertise). We asked for a refund, but the company refused because I choose the reason that the printer was defective or did not work. From my point of view, this printer does not work on the system I require so it is defective. Anyway, we made a mistake buying this printer. Save your money and do not purchase this printer. If you have a Mac system, you will also have issues with the drivers for this printer unless you are running old operating systems.

I purchased the printer many years ago and loved the photographs that it produced. It was a fantastic printer that my wife also used to print family and vacation photos for her scrapbooking. Sadly, we eventually wore the printer out, did not replace it and have not had a color printer since.I tried other photo paper but found that the Olympus paper worked best (for me).

Unfortunately, this machine does not work yet. Rather than hassle the return centers and all that, I am electing to take it to Olympus, down the street from me, and pay to have it fixed. Hopefully I can then update this review.Olympus claims the printer works, but it will not for me. I have a Mac, so probably that is the problem. It is gathering dust as we speak, and I will eventually put it in the dumpster.

Finally, a dye sublimation photo printer that gives you prints larger than 4" x 6"! The colors are rich, and the pictures are very sharp. There is nothing on the market today that is in this printer's class. If anyone is interested in quality prints of digital images, this printer is an absolute must have. I would recommend printing images that were taken with at least a 2 megapixel digital camera. I have an HP Photosmart P1000 printer that does very well, but it cannot compete with the P400. You can't achieve the same quality print with an ink jet printer.

If you intend to connect this to a computer, it will only work with Windows NT or older. There are no drivers available for newer operating systems.

This printer is amazing in its output. It is functionally equivalent to the P-440, which is newer.You can get good output from good inkjet printers, but only dye sub printers give you output that truly looks like it came from a professional lab. The DPI relative to ink jets is meaningless-this printer has NO DOTS. If you look at a print under a magnifying glass, you can't find the dots like you can with an inkjet print, because there aren't any. Dye sub printers are continuous tone, and the look they produce is stunning.I recommend printing from your PC rather than directly from the printer. Using Photoshop or any other program will give you excellent results. If you tell Photoshop what printer you are using, it will estimate the output on your monitor and help you determine if saturation is too low or too high. That's if you're being really picky. 90% of my shots print very well with no editing.The other cool thing about this printer vs. an inkjet is that there is no ink. There is a ribbon that looks like yellow saran wrap. It never gets your hands "inky" and it never runs out of one color. There is one ribbon-when it runs out you replace it. And there is ONE KIND OF PAPER - no nonesense about trying different papers to get the look you want like with inkjets. You can get a glossy ribbon or matt finish ribbon. Unless you really need matt, use the glossy only and you'll be perfectly happy.Regarding some of the negative comments about this printer, they are mostly due to a lack of understanding:1. The paper fits 8x10 or 4x6 frames just fine. It's actually larger than 8x10, so you want 8x10 or 4x6, get out your scissors or a paper cutter. Simple.2. Ribbon hard to load? C'mon - it's a roll of plastic. There is no messy ink or anything else to deal with. It's fairly easy to load and far less messy than any inkjet.3. Print quality is far better than any inkjet. If you're not getting better prints, I'd check the quality of your images.4. It does only support smart media, which is outdated. Who cares - I print from my PC and it works great. It's faster and I have a lot more control.5. Consumables are LESS than the cost for most ink jets when you factor in the cost of head cleaning, especially for Epson printers.6. Streaks on the paper - these are caused by dust. Dye sub printers hate dust. If you leave the paper tray in the printer it should remain dust free. If you leave it out, dust can get into it and may effect a few prints. Leave paper in the tray and leave the tray in the printer - problem solved.There's nothing more to say: this printer is cheap to use, makes amazing prints that are waterproof and look like they came from a lab, and the cost per print is cheaper than an inkjet.