Will color lasers ever approach the image quality of current inkjets?

[mikling]

I am wondering if anyone has seen anything that points to the inkjet being superseded by the lasers when it comes to photo imaging?
I see the current rush in the commercial photolab is to convert to inkjets via pigment inks but I haven't seen anything about laser?

 

[WhiteDog]

In general the answer is no. Going only by what is visible though. We have to realize that small-format inkjets from all the manufacturers are a spin-off of the sign-painting and flat-bed industrial/commercial market. Without sign-printing and commercial showcard and poster printing there would have been no consumer products adapted to photography and graphics. A similar process has not and cannot happen in color laser technology because mechanics and the image size demand a roller and fuser assembly of the exact size of the image, not a sliding carriage of virtually width/length as in inkjet. The office printing market is sufficiently large and financially robust to justrify the tooling of 8.5" x 14" color lasers, and the users of these machines mostly do not critically assess the output for color matching and resolution. Most of them are just printing notes for Powerpoint presentations, or marketing price lists with a little picture of the warehouse at the top of page one. I see no changes in this direction. The small color laser printers are good value though for what they do, and they must have impacted the quick-print industry greatly.