Speaking of "laser" type printers.... avoid the Tektronix line of sub-dye printers. The image quality and color tone is terrible! Completely non photographic quality. It's extremely fast and more suitable for excel spreadsheets than photos. Kind of sad, considering the cost.

Just a thought.

Calvin

I agree with Loren. HP deskjets are the way to go. I have a 990Cxi and not only is it blazingly fast in draft mode -- ever seen a printer spit paper across the room??? In photo quality modes, it's truly stunning. Uses up a helluvalot of ink in photo mode though.

The only drawback to inkjet printers is they assume you are using white paper. If you put colored papers it comes out completely wrong. Also, if you do iron-on prints, you have to go with white t-shirts as there is no white ink in these printers. The only negative. -- which printers have white inks btw?

Calvin

No consumer-levels, to my knowledge, that is why you use iron-on "paper" to then transfer to the tshirt

My problem was printing out pictures of cartoon characters that have "white" eyes with black dots in them. When I transfer the iron on to a t-shirt that is colored, say, red.... you end up with the said cartoon character with angry red eyes!

Calvin

There are vinyl printing systems that allow you to print white ink or onto white backings. Not the same kind of thing, though.

Usually t-shirts are silkscreened anyway, it's starting to get to the point where this kind of printing is a commodity. Have you seen Cafe Press?

Speaking of printers.. How about RIP software. Does using RIP software give you better output on your photo printer?

I have an ALPS printer that can use white ink. It's a ribbon system instead of an inkjet, though. I got it because I was always getting printout run in the rain. Pretty neat system. The ribbon cartridges have a barcode on them and the printer automatically detects what cartridges you've got inserted. I've been pretty happy with it except for a couple of things. First, the print drivers that you have to use with Win9x are awful. It pops up this separate gigantic window showing you progress instead of just using the built-in print manager. This was fixed in Win2k. Don't know about NT or XP, though. Second, it's hard to find the print cartridges locally. Third, it uses a proprietary protocol, so I can't print to it from Unix unless I purchase a commercial printing system. I don't usually print out photos, so I can't tell you how well it works with that, but it does definitely print in white. And silver, gold, blue metallic and red metallic foil, etc.

I agree with Loren. HP deskjets are the way to go. I have a 990Cxi and not only is it blazingly fast in draft mode -- ever seen a printer spit paper across the room??? In photo quality modes, it's truly stunning. Uses up a helluvalot of ink in photo mode though.


That's the one I currently use at the house. Draft mode is awesome.. It's easily three times faster than my Hp4 laser and it's still good quality.

Speaking of the Iron-ons... That's actually something that we are working hard on...

We've got a Dye-sub process that can use either our inkjet inks on regular paper, or a toner we've done for color laser. You print it out reversed on a normal piece of paper, and then using a VERY hot press, you cause the ink to vaporize INTO the surface of whatever you want it on.

It's a really cool deal, as previous technologies have basically just been a film that is applied to the surface.... Wash it a bit and it cracks, or scratches, whatever. This stuff is embedded into it. I've got a luggage tag that has my business card embedded into.. for about a quarter of an inch. You can't get it off. We've cut sections of the tags off. Don't matter. The only way it's coming off of there is to get a belt sander and physically remove the top half inch. And it's in photo quality. Mugs, plaques, license plates... It's all good. And it's all done in about 4 minutes (on the lasers).

Maybe marketing will get it out to the vendors soon.

How well do your refill inks hold up vs. the 25 yr inks the oems are providing?


I couldn't give an estimate on the longevity of the inks. I'm not in that field. I'm sure the tests have been ran, hell, I KNOW they have, as I've played with the tools, but I just wasn't interested enough to remember. I've got enough on my plate without worrying about those.

Concerning the quality of the inks, I use them personally. But I'm not going to give anything more than my personal impressions. Color matching is very important, but I can't claim 100% perfection. It's 98-99% in my opinion. The ONLY way to get that is to use the exact same formulations as the OEM's... and that is not possible due to patent issues. And you can be certain that they are NOT going to license it to ANYONE. One of the better ways around that that is being explored (as well as getting around the chips on the epson carts) is alternate drivers. Most of the drivers that come with printers get stripped down pretty well. Plus they aren't updated as the newer printers come on line. We've been working with some people that produce a heck of a lot better driver than the older drivers that are out there. That allows for a color matching to PANTONE standards. Plus, based on the early driver I played with, it allows a better print quality on older printers. For example, I've also got an HP 660 that printed 'ok' in photographic mode. With the new driver instead of the HP one, it's ALMOST as good as my 990. With the OEM HP driver, it's not even close. It's in the interests of the OEM to keep you upgrading the equipment.

A cool example in the Linux world is the Turboprint.de guys. Ghostscript and GIMP can give a pretty good image, but when you look at the quality coming out of their print engine, it's a fair amount better.

Have you seen Cafe Press?

No, I hadn't... nice.

Peter

I was considering setting up a deal with printing Empeg t-shirts through Cafe Press and making a small profit off of it. Then I thought you guys might not be happy about it, so I didn't.

An Imation Rainbow Dye-Sub produces excellent prints. How I wish I had a digital camera back when I worked in a pre-press bureau...

I was considering setting up a deal with printing Empeg t-shirts through Cafe Press and making a small profit off of it. Then I thought you guys might not be happy about it, so I didn't.

I'd only be upset if there were no XXL shirts made...

I don't know if you already bought a photo printer or not but the Olympus P400 dye sub printer is really nice. It is fairly expensive ($799) compared to inkjet printers but very stable prints. I own one which I use with a Nikon D-1X, D-1H and 995.

I can print you out a sample and mail it back to you if you've got a image file.

Here's a review.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/p400.html

I haven't bought a photo printer yet, but I intend to step up my research during the next month and come to a decision fairly soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

Anyone else?

Epson Photo 870/1270/880/1280. There really is no other choice.

These printers are used by photographic professionals (instead of the old messy darkrooms) and for good reason: better resolution than most chemical-process photo papers.

Long life inks (10-70 years, depending on the paper), excellent driver software, and the newer models (listed above) are even quiet enough to share a room with.

I have the 1270, and absolutely love it (not that you could tell, eh?).

Cheers

My simple solution with my 1270, is to remember to turn it on one a month, rarely necessary since it gets used for a LOT of photo printing. (and you though hacking empegs was my major hobby.. ha!).

The older epson I had before the 1270 was crap, noisy, clogged up, printed beautiful pics, and noisy as hell.

Things improved considerably with the 1270. An excellent printer.

The 870 is the 8.5x11" version of the 1270 (13"x19"), both are 1440x720.

The 880 and 1280 are the newer 2880x720dpi versions of the same machines.

-ml

Make certain you understand the well documented problems with Epson on the orange color shift.

Here's a link to the problem

http://www.p-o-v-image.com/epson/

Epson heavily marketed the 1270 and 870 as semi-archival printers and shortly after introduction the problem became apparent.

The colour shift was only seen by a small number of users, but was pretty bad when it occured. But it was also very specific to Premium Glossy Photo Paper (PGPP) from Epson, and prints are fine on the other excellent paper choices available.

Cheers

I believe Epson decided the problem was related to certain environmental conditions and paper chemistry. If I recall, they made a reformulated paper but I am unaware of how it fared. You'll see color shift in even lab processed color photos.

Epson has a good reputation for photo printers (inkjet) but the reality of an archival inkjet printer is probably not there yet.

Price not withstanding, dye sub has unbelievable quality. The Olympus dye subs have indistinguishable output from the $5000 Kodak dye sub machines. I've not looked at the Sony printers (Memory stick). I suggest you send an image file to owners of each brand... HP, Epson and if you're interested I'll print out the dye sub print. You can then decide for yourself. There's almost no way to describe the difference except to use the word "continuity" or smoothness.

If price is an issue (not just the purchase price but the consumables as well - about the cheapest you can make an 8x10 dye sub print is $1.82), inkjets work well and most people feel Epson is better than HP for photo work. A real advantage to the inkjets is the availability of consumables.

Just having the option of an 8x10 (A4) dye sub now at $729 (near the cost of an empeg tuner on e-bay) is remarkable. I think Epson's current model is the 890 at $289.

Damn, Epson PGPP is what I've got at home. Is the problem in the PAPER, the PRINTER, or the INK? Which would I have to change to fix the problem?

It's mostly in the paper, since the same ink works well on their other papers. Best papers (today) are Epson "Matte Paper Heavyweight" (cheap, too!), and their new semigloss "ColorLife Photo Paper" (more detail, much more expensive).

But the PGPP is usually okay for most people. I still have some here that I reserve for scenes with a lot of tonal detail, like skies. I'm not buying any more of it, though.

Cheers

I've read somewhere it's a pH problem in the paper and only in certain atmospheric environments. That's why Epson recommendsit's use only under glass (framed).

www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductMediaSpec.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0220067955.1015355195@@@@&BV_EngineID=dadcdhefdmljbfdmcfjgckidnf.0&Zoom=Big&oid=-8776

click the link at the bottom for "Choosing the right photo paper"

The matte finishes are purportedly better than the high gloss but you lose high ends (brilliant whites) as in scintillations.

I have printed hundreds and hundreds of 8.5x11" photos (my "snapshot" size..), mostly on Matte Heavyweight, and some on Photo Paper, and some on PGPP.

I have no problem whatsoever with the bright white of the Matte paper. It produces brilliant prints with excellent detail, and is much easier to view than a more reflective glossy paper. But it doesn't do as good a job with large near-continuous tonal shading, as in skys. Other than that, I love the stuff.

Cheers

What did you notice in the continuous sky tones with the matte? Was it a noticable inkjet pattern or a step pattern as the tone changed slightly?

Just having choices is nice and there is no better learning tool for photography than digital - instant feed back.

As an aside. some photographers are exploring the opportunities of luminance that actual luminance (via a CRT) versus reflectivity off a paper can do for an image. You've probably noticed it in your screen versus the paper image from time to time.

If you're interested in some tips for displaying high gloss prints without the reflections send me a message and I'll forward some info to you.

The best way to see the difference in sky tones, is to make a print on both kinds of paper and then compare.

In my experience, the glossy shows a more continuous even tonal transition from horizon to near-field, whereas the matte paper tends to darken some areas more, showing fewer intermediate tones.

Reflections on paper are only an issue for hand-viewed snapshots. Anything that's framed is going to be far more at the mercy of the glass reflectivity than the paper.

Cheers

The darkening is likely related to the lower overall reflectivity of the paper due to the matte finish. Matte finishes by design reflect environmental light from all angles in a diffuse manner rather than directly like a mirror with gloss papers.

In practical terms, that means the blackest blacks of a matte print are lighter than with a gloss paper because environmental light from all angles hit the matte and reflect it to the eye equally from the entire surface area. To compensate when printing you have to lower the overall contrast of the image to raise the blackest blacks enough above the paper threshold reflectivity to still yield image detail in the areas just above black.

If you make two identical prints adjusted perfectly for the glossy finish to matte and glossy paper you will get fewer intermediate tones with the matte finish. Areas could be darker or lighter depending on how a particular paper absorbs the ink from the jet.

It's actually a phenomenon throughout the print but will be more noticable with continuous area like the sky.

Forgot to mention - Hijack is great. Thanks.

Reading the reviews around on this dye-sub ... man it looks right up my alley. My only wish is that it had ethernet rather than usb or parallel, but I can probably get a converter for that.

How is the maintenance on this? I've used some professional dye-sub printers back in the day, but I never had the opportunity to baby-sit one long enough to get a feel for it's maintenance and up-keep. Are there inks or distilled water to refill?

Does it mind if it's unused for a couple of weeks before the next print?

Are the drivers buggy, cranky, cheezy, cheap, or are they well made and invisible? (I'll mostly be using Photoshop as the source).

How does it do for black and whites and faked-sepia photos?

My wife has been trying to get me back out photographing again, but now that I'm back in school I don't have access to the free slide development and dye-sub printing services my previous jobs had. I tell you, that Fuji Pictrography 4000 is out of site ... but I can't afford the $8000.

I'm hoping that this P400 would deliver me back to my old glory days of photography.

Would you be open to sending me a color and black/white print? I'd gladly use paypal for the paper and shipping.

Greg

The dye sub printers at work are expensive to maintain. They use basically crayons, rectangle shaped crayons of different colors that go in the top. The dye sub process transfers the waxy material onto the paper. The ones at work at Tektronix dye subs and the resolution, color tone and quality is *horrible* compared to an ink jet.

Calvin

f price is an issue (not just the purchase price but the consumables as well - about the cheapest you can make an 8x10 dye sub print is $1.82), inkjets work well

Finally, someone addresses the issue of price.

Inkjet printers are *fantastically* expensive to run compared to laser printers, so much so that the price you pay for the printer itself is completely irrelevant, assuming that you are going to print in any reasonable volume.

I have a color laser printer at work that costs me about 11 cents a page for a 5% coverage full-color 8x10 print. A comparable inkjet print would be about 55 cents (the last time I looked, which admittedly is some time ago).

I can buy a decent ink-jet printer for $300. I can buy my color laser printer for about $1300. The $1300 printer is less expensive at the end of the year if I print more than 2300 pages, and every year after that I save $1000 a year.

I have yet to see an ink-jet print which matches the color quality of my laser printer in terms of brightness and saturation.

tanstaafl.