Get Creative offers a lot of fun options, such as adding frames, captions, making album pages, drawing on the images, color effects, and clip art. The frames span a range of themes and colors, but you can't customize them. The captions are more flexible: Choosing captions calls up a virtual keyboard. Using the stylus, you can tap out a caption, choose among five fonts and six colors, and resize, rotate, and change the placement of the text on the image. Draw lets you add your own creative touch to the image by drawing directly on the screen with the stylus. As it turns out, adding mustaches never gets old! The clip art option lets you drop in one of HP's preset images. You can resize them and even drop in more than one piece of clip art.
The album option is perhaps the most frustrating. It sounds good in theory, but your options are limited. You can start by selecting an album theme and layout and then populating the open spaces on the layouts, or you can select all the photos you want to use and then designate how many pages you want produced. At this point, the software limits the number of shots on a single page and the layout. You can reshuffle the images, though not manually--the software simply rotates the images through the available spaces; you can't drag and drop, which would make the process a bit easier and quicker.
Finally, you can make index prints with 24 images per 4x6 sheet (and file names) as a reference or you can create specialty printing projects such as panoramic prints, photo stickers, passport photos, and CD/DVD tattoos (assuming you have the proper paper, of course).
Performance
Though the Photosmart A826 is meant to be used in standalone mode, we tested it over a USB connection to a PC so we could make comparisons to other printers tested in CNET Labs. Most snapshot printers fall into a lower price point than this printer, however, so it's difficult to compare. The closest we found was a pair of Epsons, the PictureMate Snap and the PictureMate Flash. Both use the same print engine, so they gave the same performance. The HP beat both of them with a score of 2.37 pages per minute for 4x6 prints. The Epson PM Snap scored 1.24ppm for the same prints. For the sake of comparison, we also looked at print speeds for comparably priced non-snapshot printers (i.e., PC-connected general purpose printers with a photo emphasis), and the Photosmart A826 still came out on top. The HP Photosmart D7360 produced 4x6 prints at a rate of 0.54ppm, while the Epson Stylus R380 managed a rate of 1.83ppm.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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4x6 photo speed |
We really liked the photos produced by the Photosmart A826. The colors were lifelike, particularly the skin tones. The details were sharp and we could even make out the fuzzy texture of a peach. If you're an avid snapshooter and like to have prints of everything you produce, the Photosmart A826 should keep you happy.
Service and support
HP backs the Photosmart A826 with a standard one-year warranty. Toll-free phone support is available 24-7, or you can chat live online with tech support, also 24-7. HP's site has drivers, software downloads, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides, as well.
