• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / Technical / Printers, revisited

Printers, revisited

December 19, 2010 JimK 4 Comments

Printers, revisited
Usually, we do a holiday newsletter, for which I am the designer, editor, and printer. This year, Betty suggested that I take one of my composite photographs and put it on the front of a more conventional card. I was flattered. It wasn’t easy to find a picture appropriate to a greeting card – most of this series are pretty edgy – but I picked out an acceptable one.  I looked at the custom cards that we’d been receiving, and was not particularly impressed with the quality of any of them. I went to the Modern Postcard website. As I reported here previously, I really like their quality. Unfortunately, the minimum order is 250; we’d have to throw half of them away.
So I decided to print the cards myself. I found what turned out to be some very nice scored paper at the Red River Paper website. It’s glossy on one side, looking a lot like the Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy; the other side is uncoated. They say it works well with both pigmented and dye-based inks; I can attest that the results are excellent with the pigment-based inks in the Epson 3880. The scoring is well done; it’s easy to fold the cards in half.
I fired up InDesign, and laid out the card. I was bored with all of the script fonts that I had so I took advantage of the instant gratification of the Internet and downloaded two new ones. What’s happened to font technology in the last 10 years is truly amazing. One of the fonts that I downloaded that I finally decided not to use because it was too ornate, is called Champion Script Pro. It is immensely rich, with over 4000 glyphs, plus incredible ornaments, flourishes and embellishments. It’s a hoot to watch it change the glyphs to beautifully connect the characters as you type.
Laying out the card was a cinch, even if using InDesign for a project like this is kind of like trying to kill a fly with a hammer. Printing the glossy side on the Epson 3800 was also easy. However when I went to print the inside of the card I ran into paper feed difficulties. Paper handling has always been the Achilles heel of the 3000-series printers, so I wasn’t too surprised, but that didn’t make me like it any better. I looked closely at the paper; it turns out that the first pass through the printer had introduced a slight curl. I bent the paper back against the curl, and that helped some. Then I took the stack of paper, put a few books on top of it, and left it overnight. The next morning it fed better, but it still wouldn’t feed right with more than 20 sheets at a time in the input hopper.
The experience, together with my previous difficulties feeding large sheets of paper through the 3880, made me think about getting a 4000-series printer. The 4900, just introduced, has the advantage of the new wider-gamut ink set, and probably has the excellent paper handling qualities of previous 4000-series printers. Epson says it’s a lot quieter, which is nice, since noise was a problem with the old printers in this class. The big drawback for me: the smallest sheet-fed media is 8 by 10. I use five by seven a lot; it’s a nice size to give to models, potential customers, and the drivers that I work with. I don’t want to give up the space required to have both a 3880 and a 4900. I suppose I could get a small printer for the fine by sevens, but I think what I’ll do for the time being is just live with the 3880.

Usually, we do a holiday newsletter, for which I am the designer, editor, and printer. This year, Betty suggested that I take one of my composite photographs and put it on the front of a more conventional card. I was flattered. It wasn’t easy to find a picture appropriate to a greeting card – most of this series is pretty edgy – but I picked out an acceptable one.  I looked at the custom cards that we’d been receiving, and was not impressed with the quality of any of them. I went to the Modern Postcard website. As I reported here previously, I really like their quality. Unfortunately, the minimum order is 250; we’d have to throw half of them away.

So I decided to print the cards myself. I found what turned out to be some very nice scored paper at the Red River Paper website. It’s glossy on one side, looking a lot like the Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy; the other side is uncoated. They say it works well with both pigmented and dye-based inks; I can attest that the results are excellent with the pigment-based inks in the Epson 3880. The scoring is well done; it’s easy to fold the cards in half.

I fired up InDesign, and laid out the card. I was bored with all of the script fonts that I had so I took advantage of the instant gratification of the Internet and downloaded two new ones. What’s happened to font technology in the last 10 years is truly amazing. One of the fonts that I downloaded that I finally decided not to use because it was too ornate, is called Champion Script Pro. It is immensely rich, with over 4000 glyphs, plus incredible ornaments, flourishes and embellishments. It’s a hoot to watch it change the glyphs to beautifully connect the characters as you type.

Laying out the card was a cinch, even if using InDesign for a project like this is kind of like trying to kill a fly with a hammer. Printing the glossy side on the Epson 3800 was also easy. However when I went to print the inside of the card I ran into paper feed difficulties. Paper handling has always been the Achilles heel of the 3000-series printers, so I wasn’t too surprised, but that didn’t make me like it any better. I looked closely at the paper; it turns out that the first pass through the printer had introduced a slight curl. I bent the paper back against the curl, and that helped some. Then I took the stack of paper, put a few books on top of it, and left it overnight. The next morning it fed better, but it still wouldn’t feed right with more than 20 sheets at a time in the input hopper.

The experience, together with my previous difficulties feeding large sheets of paper through the 3880, made me think about getting a 4000-series printer. The 4900, just introduced, has the advantage of the new wider-gamut ink set, and probably has the excellent paper handling qualities of previous 4000-series printers. Epson says it’s a lot quieter, which is nice, since noise was a problem with the old printers in this class. The big drawback for me: the smallest sheet-fed media is 8 by 10. I use five by seven a lot; it’s a nice size to give to models, potential customers, and the drivers that I work with. I don’t want to give up the space required to have both a 3880 and a 4900. I suppose I could get a small printer for the five by sevens, but I think what I’ll do for the time being is just live with the 3880.

Technical, The Last Word

← Selling prints by the square inch Technology hall of shame →

Comments

  1. chester says

    December 21, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    the 4900 has a very nice inkset. epson advertises this printer as having 98% of the pantone color gamut but i’m having a hard time reconciling this space with the adobe RGB color gamut. monitor manufacturers typically use the adobe RGB color gamut on their specs. can printer manufacturers not use adobe RGB? what is the relationship between the two color gamuts? i’m trying to determine how much of each color space doesn’t overlap.

    Reply
  2. Jim says

    December 21, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    Chester, any printer is not going to be able to print many colors that are in Adobe 1998 RGB: mainly the bright, chromatic colors. Monitors can achieve high chromas at high luminance because they employ additive color. Printers need to absorb light to have high chromas. You’re on a Mac, right? I think there’s software that comes with the OS that let’s you compare profiles. Have a look at this: http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/color/compare.html

    Jim

    Reply
  3. chester says

    December 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    Actually, I’m on Windows. Is there similar software for Windows?

    Is Pantone the industry standard space for printers?

    Reply
  4. Jim says

    December 27, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    Pantone is not a color space at all, but a series of standardized spot and process colors for offset lithography. Because of the inclusion of spot colors, its gamut is wider then the gamut for offset printing with CMYK inks.

    I have used Chromix ColorThink successfully under Win XP, but it doesn’t work right for me under Win 7, and it hasn’t been updated in years. Anybody have any suggestions?

    Jim

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.