Let’s face it. Printer ink cartridges are expensive. Even if you buy generic brands you’re still going to be spending a hefty amount of money, especially if you print a lot on a regular basis. Each time you print, you use ink. But there are ways that you can save your resources just by taking a few measures before you hit “Print.”

Make “Preview” Your Friend

In most printer driver programs there is a preview function that lets you see just what you’re going to be printing before you print it. This is especially helpful when printing things from the Internet. Images can be shifted around, whole pages can be blank and there can be just generally disorganized. A quick preview can help make sure all is well.

Only Print What You Want

If you want to print just a portion of a page, only print a portion of the page! There’s no use in printing out graphics and text you have no use for. If printing off the Internet, simply highlight the text you wish to print and then print it. You should end up with a print out that contains only what you want.

Keep The Cartridges Alive

Even though you may not have a need to print something everyday, try to use both your black and color cartridges once a week or so. Just print something small or run a diagnostic test. If you let your printer ink cartridges sit, they will eventually dry up, meaning you’re out of luck when it comes to ink. This applies to all brands so Epson ink cartridges will be just as affected as Brother printer cartridges.

Use Generic

While you won’t necessarily get more ink out of a generic cartridge than you would with a manufacturer brand cartridge, you will most definitely save money. And the whole point of saving ink is to save money, right? Well, you can definitely save money by using generic ink, especially for those bulk print jobs. If you need to print a lot of black and white copies of something, generic is the way to go all the way.

Power Down Right

Don’t just flip off the power strip switch each time you want to turn off your electronics. You wouldn’t just shut off the power to your computer without shutting it down properly, right? So why do that to your printer? Take the time to power down your printer the right way. Otherwise, you’ll be cutting off the power while the print heads are not in the right position, meaning the ink will dry up faster!

Organize Your Prints

Do a little bit of planning before you hit that print button. This means, proofread text, organize images and double check everything before you print. If you look over the copy once it prints out and are dissatisfied, that’s wasted ink, right there. Not to mention, wasted paper.

Use Black Ink

If you aren’t planning on submitting the print outs as a report or project, skip the color. Make sure your printer is set to print in monochrome and you can save your color ink for more involved projects later down the line. No use in wasting the color on simple text or web print outs, right?

Use the Draft Setting

The draft setting in your printer options is really one of the best ways to save ink. It makes it so the printer prints much faster than normal and the amount of printer ink used per page is much less than if you printed at a normal setting. You’ll also notice a difference as the pages just shoot out of your printer rather than leisurely coming out.

Use Helpful Software

There are a lot of programs out there that can help organize all of your printing endeavors. These programs work by eliminating empty space, removing images if you don’t want to print them and giving you the option to select what you want to print without having to go through a big process. Just do a quick search for “save printer ink” and “printer driver software” and you should come up with several choices.

Print What You Need

It can be tempting to print any old thing all the time, especially when you get a new printer or something. However, try to restrain yourself. You can keep most records on your computer these days, and as long as you back them up on a CD or an external hard drive, you don’t need a hard copy. If you print only when you need to, those printer ink cartridges will last a lot longer.