That is a very complex subject as there are two types of printers, CMYK and RGB.  RGB is closest to what you monitor sees and CMYK is closet to printed material.  There is a great difference between the two as RGB RED, GREEN, and BLUE, is bright and colorful while CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW, BLACK is dull.

 

HP makes an RGB Based ink printer that prints material 13 inches wide with other brands to 60 inches wide, and most other companies such as Epson also have the same in CMYK but not RGB.

 

The differences between the printers are the construction.  Epson has the print head build into the machine and cartridges are separate.  HP uses a two piece affair with the print heads separate and changeable after several uses, with cartridges also separate, which means it can get expensive to operate.  BUT, if you need RGB versus CMYK then it does not matter.   There are other brands of course.

 

Then there are the inks, which there are two major types, photographic and another for print material that is archival.  The other concern is how thick and what type of material you will print on.  200 LB watercolor paper, versus 60 LB photographic?

 

You can do a lot of research on the web as to what type of printer to buy for what purpose and what each printer consists of, but the above info should give you a start.

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