The HP PSC 2210 is an affordable all-in-one printer, flatbed scanner, copier and fax device that's also a photo-quality printer. It can print directly from the majority of today's flash memory cards thanks to its four builtin card slots. When connected to your PC via the USB port, the PSC 2210 functions as a general purpose and photo quality color printer, a high resolution flatbed image scanner (with OCR text capability), a memory card reader and a color fax device.

The HP Photo and Imaging software suite includes: HP Director, Photo Gallery, Image Editor, HP Scan to Email, HP Scan to Web, HP Creative Photo Projects, IRIS OCR, DVD Creator.

HP PSC 2210 Features:

• All-in-One device that Prints, Scans, Copies and Faxes
• Photo quality printing with up to 4800 x 1200-optimized dpi
• Six-ink color printing with optional photo inkjet cartridge
• Print borderless 4 x 6-inch photos with HP Premium Plus Photo paper
• Print directly from CompactFlash (Type I or II including IBM Microdrive), SmartMedia, Secure Digital / MMC and Memory Stick
• Use the card slots to transfer images to the computer's hard drive
• 1200x2400 optical-dpi, A4 size, 48-bit color flatbed image scanner
• Optional black ink cartridge for faster, crisper black text for regular printing tasks.
• High-quality photographic reproduction using HP's exclusive color layering technology from Photoret IV technology
• Printspeed: 17ppm in black and up to 12ppm in color
• Up to 33.6 kbps fax transmission speed
• Up to 99 copies, reduce or enlarge 25% to 400%

The PSC 2210's control panel makes it very easy to use in standalone mode. There are dedicated buttons for the usual COPY and FAX functions. Press the BLACK button to copy or fax a text-only document or the COLOR button for text with graphics or a photo.

The SCAN and PHOTO CARD functions require the unit to be connected to a host PC with the HP Photo & Imaging software loaded on it. To make a scan just press SCAN followed by BLACK for monochrome or COLOR for a photo and it will auto-launch the HP Image Viewer to see the scanned image. Insert a memory card and press the PHOTO CARD button to copy the images to your PC's hard drive. After the transfer is completed the HP Photo & Imaging software is launched so you can view, edit and print your pictures.

The HP Director is the software "front end" for the other software applications. See below for screenshots of the HP imaging programs, the PSC 2210 comes with a complete suite of software.

The PSC 2210 uses two ink cartridges, shown here with the standard HP 57 tri-color cartridge and the optional HP 58 photo color cartridge that gives you 6-color photo-quality printing. The photo color cartridge should be swapped out with the HP 56 black (pigment-based) cartridge when printing only text documents.

As with all HP inkjet printers, the printheads are part of the cartridge so ink clogs are not much of a problem. The driver software has a maintenance option for head cleaning and everytime you change cartridges you get a new printhead.

The PSC 2210 like most modern printers has only a USB port for connection to the host computer. Compatible operating systems are Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000 and XP and Macintosh OS 9.0 and above, OS X v10.1 and above. On the top are two telephone jacks, one for line and a second for a telephone.

Flatbed Scanning and Faxing

On top is an A4 size flatbed color image scanner with 1200 x 2400 optical-dpi resolution. It can be used for copying, faxing, optical character recognition of printed documents and high resolution image scanning.

Fax features include color faxing, distinctive ring detection, fax auto-redialing, auto-fax reduction. 50-page fax memory, 300x300 dpi resolution, 40 speed dial numbers and 33.6 kbps maximum transmission speed.

The scanning software will launch automatically when you press the SCAN button or you can run it from inside of any TWAIN-compliant application. This is fully featured software with options for sizing, scaling, image correction, sharpening, color adjustment and scanning resolution (75 to 9600 dpi).

Print from Flash Memory Cards

The printer has four flash memory card slots on the front below the control panel. There are dedicated slots for CompactFlash (Type I or II cards including IBM Microdrives), SecureDigital or MultiMediaCard, SmartMedia and Memory Stick cards.

The memory card slots can act like a card reader when the printer is connected to a computer via the USB cable. It is -not- a Mass Storage compliant device, you must use the supplied HP software to transfer files to the computer. (see below)

Printing digital camera pictures is very easy. Insert a memory card, press the "Proof Sheet" button and then "1". The printer will output a proof sheet (shown below) for every twenty images on the flash card.

Other standalone printers require a lot of manual input (the numbers of each picture to be printed, the size and type of paper and the desired output format). This is usually a tedious process but not on the PSC 2210.

Using the PSC 2210's proof sheet it's a simple, 3-step process:

1. Select the photos you want to print by blackening the "bubble" underneath its thumbnail with a pen

2. Select the print options: number of prints, image size, paper size, desired border or frame - options are selected by darkening in the appropriate "bubbles"

3. Place the proof sheet on the scanner, press the "Proof Sheet" button and then press "2" to make your prints -- that's it !

To transfer digital pictures from the memory card to the PC just press the "PHOTO CARD" button and then "1" to launch the HP Image Unload Software. The "Unload" options are: (1) Images taken since last unload, (2) All images, (3) Images created in the last x [week, day, hour] or (4) Include non-image files. You can select to either automatically start every unload session with the current settings or start every session by prompting the user to change the settings.

The "Save" options let you specify the drive and folder to transfer the pictures to and then optionally creates a subfolder named on the month taken or the current date if desired. After the save operation is completed you can: (1) Delete files from memory card, (2) View images or (3) automatically create album page of all photos.

The COPY process can be controlled via the front panel or the PC. There are the usual copy features and special functions like preparing a t-shirt transfer, making copies fit the page, printing several copies on a single page or make a poster. There are options for the original (text, photo or mixed), select copy quality, number of copies, lighten / darken, reduce / enlarge and color or black copy.

This is the Photo & Imaging Gallery software which can be used as a graphical Explorer to maintain your images. From here you can launch the scanning software, the image editing software, the photo printing software (see below), do quick prints, generate email with images attached or create a "Memories Disc" with your CD-Recorder that has a self-running slideshow.

The image editing software lets you adjust the exposure, color and sharpness, rotate and scale or let the program automatically adjust the image. It even has a histogram function for sophisticated image analysis.

The Photo Printing Software lets you generate prints or album pages. Prints can be one-per-page or multiple images per page for trimming. The album pages let you place multiple images per page that are designed to be kept and displayed in albums.