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The in-app shift is just an animation, and you can still access all the features from either mode. The printer also has a motion sensor that detects its orientation: When the printer is connected to the app and standing up, the app displays in Print Mode, whereas if you lay the printer down the app switches to Fun Mode. In Fun Mode you can add frames and effects (like adding stickers on top of your picture). Within the app you can make changes to your images before printing: Print Mode gives you options for cropping or adding filters (such as turning the image black-and-white), and Correction Mode lets you edit the brightness, saturation, and contrast. The Instax Mini Link app ( iPhone and Android) is easy to use and connects quickly to the printer. Overall, colors in Instax prints were nicely saturated and did not become over- or underexposed as we saw in Zink prints. Though they were not as sharp or accurate-looking as the results from dye-sub printers, they didn’t suffer from banding, either, instead exhibiting the smooth look of film. Instax prints fell pleasingly in the middle quality-wise. Some printers suffered from this effect more than others, and all of the smaller dye-sub printers (those that made images around 2 by 4 inches) were the worst. Colors from dye-sub printers looked more neutral, and the level of detail was impressive, but most of these printers produced lines running across the image that weren’t in the source images (what printing experts call banding). Dye-sublimation printers produced much better results but with their own set of flaws.

#Polaroid portable wand scanner pro skin#

Colors almost always skewed too warm, to the point that skin tones looked orange. Zink printers consistently produced images with too much contrast-even slightly dark areas went straight to black, and detail was lost.

Zink prints, regardless of the device, were just not good. In our tests we found a few common threads among the various print technologies. Finally, we presented two sets of photos-with the edges covered so that only the image area was visible-to a test panel of six Wirecutter staff members and asked them to determine which images looked the best. We also noted any glitches or difficulties we experienced, such as apps randomly closing or taking a long time to connect to the printer.

(Spoiler: Most of the printers took about the same amount of time.) Because Fujifilm’s Instax film needs to develop, we timed how long each exposure took before it was fully finished. Along the way we noted how long the images took to print, starting the timer from the moment we hit the Send button in the app until the paper came out of the printer. Among the images was a linear resolution test chart to give us a sense of how well the printers handled detail, a color chart to tell us how colors reproduced differently on each printer, and a group shot of people to gauge how well each printer handled various skin tones. For testing, we printed the same set of five images on each printer.