This week, Dell launched three new Photo Inkjet All-in-One printers, the V105, V305, and the V305w. The V105 is a low-cost, ultra-simplified full color scanner, copier, and printer. The V305 offers a more flexible all-in-one printing solution and the V305w includes the option to connect the printer to your home office network wirelessly.
But one of the most exciting new features on these printers, from my perspective, is a powerful new piece of software that comes with them. It is called the Dell Imaging Toolbox and it not only offers basic print handling and maintenance features, it opens up a world of powerful tools to use with your digital photos.
The Dell Imaging Toolbox gives you extensive tools for editing the size, brightness, contrast, color balance, saturation and a host of other variables in your digital photos. Easy-to-use scaling tools provide a simple way to make your pictures look exactly the way you want them to look.
There are also some fun photo sharing tools built right into the software. For example you can create multi-page posters at the click of a button or two and turn your favorite shot into a wall-sized display.
There are also 89 different templates for the creation of customized greeting cards. The card templates match virtually any occasion and allow you to attach your own message in whatever color, font, and type size you prefer. It even has an e-mailing tool to let you send the cards in a variety of file sizes to all the important people in your life.
The V105 and both versions of the V305 are capable of supporting 6-color photo printing with the installation of the optional Dell Photo Ink Cartridge and the use of Dell Premium Photo paper.
I have more than a decade of experience with digital photography and I’ve used the top of the line in photo editing software, Adobe® Photoshop®, since 1996. Obviously, there are tons of things in Photoshop that you will never find in the Dell Imaging Toolbox. But if you want to quickly re-size, crop, and retouch your photos and either print them or distribute them to friends and family, I think you will be impressed with the easy-to-use software that comes with the latest Dell Photo Inkjet printers.
For more detailed information on the Dell Imaging Toolbox, you can find my how-to article in the Dell Solutions Network.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Looks good. I’m looking for a new printer/scanner. Do they work with Linux?
June 25th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
While several Dell printers offer Ubuntu Linux drivers, I’m afraid these new models, the V105, V305, and V305w do not.