IF YOU are an avid photographer, a casual picture taker, or in between the two and who likes to print your own pictures, hold out your hands because the newly-launched Pixma iP4870 is clearly for you.

The printer is easy to use, delivers good printouts, is speedy and you'll never have to wait at a store again to see your photographic work on glossy sheets.

A photo printer such as the iP4870 has separate ink-cartridges - for cyan, magenta, yellow and black - as well as an extra photo-black ink to produce better contrast in the images it prints. It automatically switches between the two black inks, depending on whether a user is printing on photo or plain paper.

That said, we dusted off our digital photo collection and started printing some favourites to see what Canon's new Pixma could do.