Printing photos at home with HP’s Sprocket Studio

You’re locked down at home, run out of things to do, and need a new project.

HP Sprocket Studio.

You’re locked down at home, sick of Netflix bingeing, you’ve vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the bathroom at least three times in a week, and now you’ve run out of things to do.

You need a new project.

HP’s Sprocket Studio may be that project.

It prints 4x6 inch photos, which these days may seem a retro activity. Nevertheless, there are reasons to print photos. You can put them in frames on your mantelpiece, create collages, photo cards and pinboards of shots of you and your family, little reminders of the good things in life as you pass by.

HP Sprocket Studio is a compact dye printer that offers decent quality colour images. To get started. install the paper in the tray and a colour printer cartridge in the side of the printer.

Then, to print, fire up the HP Sprocket smartphone app, select an image from your photo gallery, press the print button on the app, and you’re away. The printing request is sent to the printer by Bluetooth.

The printing paper darts back and forth through the printer multiple times as each colour layer is added. This does take time, so don’t be in a hurry. In virus lockdown mode, time shouldn’t be an issue.

The app includes a basic photo editor. You can add titles, stickers and frames to images before they are printed, adjust brightness, contrast and saturation levels, and apply filters.

The Sprocket Studio has some neat augmented reality features.

Using the app, you can point your phone at the printer and see a virtual image of the photo being printed at that moment, sitting on top of the printer.

If you print a frame from a video, the app will play the video when you point your phone at that image. The feature, called Reveal, is an AR feature similar to that on wine labels by 19 Crimes.

You can take old-fashioned photo booth photos, images as tiles and ID photos, and connect to Facebook, Instagram and Google Photos.

The printer with 10 blank prints costs $199 and is available from JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Officeworks and HP.

Refill packs of 80 photos and a fresh printer cartridge costs $59.