Printers for artists - any suggestions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter a l l y
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Although I agree that fluorescent bulbs do not typically emit as much UV
as natural daylight, Livicks's statements that:

"FLUORESCENT LIGHTING DOES NOT CONTAIN MUCH OF THE NASTY SPECTRUM OF
LIGHT, ULTRA VIOLET RAYS, THAT CAUSE INK JET PRINTS TO FADE.
CONSEQUENTLY FLUORESCENT LIGHTING IS VERY SLOW, IN FACT FEEBLE AND
ARTHRITIC WHEN IT COMES TO FADING PIGMENTED INKS."

seems to me to be overstating (or understating) things considerably.

The way fluorescent tubes function is by exciting mercury and argon
gases which then causes them to emit UV which is then made into
something approaching white light through the phosphorescence of the
phosphor coating on the inside of the glass tube. All fluorescent
lights therefore give off UV light, and those which are not specially
filtered to limit UV give off a fair amount. Certainly more than
incandescent lamps do.

All light spectrums cause some fading, and indirect lighting of any
sort, including daylight, doesn't reflect UV to the source, so indirect
daylight reflected off walls, etc, has less UV in it than direct
fluorescent does.

No one should expose color images to direct daylight, and that is pretty
much a rule to live by. Further, even window glass filters out
considerable daylight UV.

Art
 
The R2400 and R1800 print to 13" wide.

Art
As Arthur stated, the paper size is the most significant thing. For A4 (8-9
inches wide) I suggest the epson C86, C88, D88, C66, etc ($100). But I think
A4 is small enough. It's better to move to a A3 printer (11 inches wide) I
suggest the epson R2400 ($500?).
Increasing the printed size the price increases much more. Both above
printers use pigment inks (archival). In all inkjet printers you can print
banners, the limit is the width of the paper. For A2 size (16 inches) the
price is about $1500, and so on.
Click to expand...
 
It seems to me no one lighting situation can represent average display
conditions, since display conditions can vary considerably in not only
the type of light involved, but intensity and manner of lighting.

Even making the very wrong assumption that daylight is the same world
wide (the quality of daylight varies massively based upon not only time
or year and latitude, but moisture content, pollution and other factors)
other than outdoor house paint and roofing, no image material should
ever be exposed to direct daylight, and typically it rarely is.

So, I very much question just what Livick is trying to prove. If he
were testing external house paint, I'd say he has a point. Otherwise,
he is whistling in the wind.

Not homes, nor office buildings, nor galleries, typically expose artwork
to direct daylight. It is filtered via glass, reflected light, and more
often than not, low lumens other than those provided by artificial light
sources. Phoenix is not New York City or Seattle.

I would much prefer looking at Wilhelm's numbers as a point of reference.

Art
 
I agree with most of what you stated, however, unless you are getting a
real deal on a SP4000, I'd suggest getting the newer, faster, better
designed, and with better in formulations, SP 4800.
 
I get the general feeling from all your very helpful replies, that most
people seem to be recommending Epsons of one sort or another. Other people
I've spoken to (though not on such a specialist forum as this one) seem to
prefer HPs, and one person said Epsons weren't so good for printing text
(which I'll also need to do). Any comments?

ally
 
I get the general feeling from all your very helpful replies, that most
people seem to be recommending Epsons of one sort or another. Other people
I've spoken to (though not on such a specialist forum as this one) seem to
prefer HPs, and one person said Epsons weren't so good for printing text
(which I'll also need to do). Any comments?
Click to expand...

-text quality-
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20041229/high_end_printers-07.html#text_quality
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20041025/printer-09.html

If your considering a photo printer, you're not likely to get as good
as text. For example canon has the ip3000/4000/5000/4200 which are all
pretty stellar in the text department. But... their higher end models
are less proficient at plain text and i've observed when printing
graphics or color it treats text as if it was graphics. Where HPs
generally speaking seem to be more object oriented.... this is a batch
of text and this is a picture and print it accordingly.

Canon has a line of printers that are pretty good in graphics and
excelent in text. Their dye ink on the right paper is pretty water
resistant, drys rather quickly, but isn't as fade resistant as others.
Painfuly easy to refill with 3rd party supplies.

Epsons are fickle creatures and if you consider one get the cleaning
manual from Author Entlich. There models that print dye and models
that print with pigments, which the pigments generally speaking are
going to outlast dye on most media, but some people don't like pigments
for they are flat. While limited in market, they support 44inch
paper. Not so easy to refill but tons of options for 3rd party
supplies including mutli levels of black ink.

The HPs on newer models offer vivera dye inks which on the right media
are pretty stellar as far as longevity goes but have a high dry time.
You have the Photosmart 8250 that takes six individual tanks (cyan
magenta yellow black light magenta/cyan) or the 8450 while not taking
invidual tanks offer a cartridge with three levels black.

Under normal conditions i'd say load up your digital camera with images
you desire and go to your local retail shop and print off some samples
with your favorite paper. Most shops are agreeable so long as you
leave the prints there. You get an idea what the output is, and they
get free samples to show others who want to buy printer. Uploading
your own images to a camera's memory card isn't a problem, but the fact
of the matter is the epsons that you might be look at dont support
pictbridge (direct camera printing) or memory slots, with the exception
of the r300/320/340. We can all give you personal experence, facts,
and opinions but only you know what you want.
 
It seems to me no one lighting situation can represent average display
conditions, since display conditions can vary considerably in not only
the type of light involved, but intensity and manner of lighting.
Click to expand...

Have a read of what he says about lighting. He agrees with you. However,
as you said, you have to start somewhere. In my opinion, a reasonable
starting point is to use full-spectrum lighting. That way, you end up with
a worst-case figure. Fluorescent lighting isn't a good starting point in
my opinion, nor in the opinion of many other people.

Jon.
 
You'll find that 24 inchs is a typical limit on your average a4
printer.
Click to expand...

Using Qimage will allow you to print panos longer than allowed by the
printer drivers.

Jon.
 
Am Tue, 18 Oct 2005 10:20:29 GMT schrieb Arthur Entlich:
I agree with most of what you stated, however, unless you are getting a
real deal on a SP4000, I'd suggest getting the newer, faster, better
designed, and with better in formulations, SP 4800.
Click to expand...

Well, that depends...
The SP4000 has all 8 colors [CcMmY(Lk)(Pk)(Mk)] at once so switching from
glossy to matte media is no problem. On matte paper you have to use the
matte black otherwise the print isn't that good.

The SP4800 is the better printer and has the better inks but you have to
make a decision on what kind of media you are going to print because you
can't have the photo black and matte black at once. And the exchange
procedure is complicated and still eats up quite an amount of the other
inks. This is in my eyes a serious design flaw of the new K3 ink generation
printers, well, not from Epson's point of view, though...


\relax\bye % Viktor 8-)
 
...

That sounds like good advice. My partner refills his ink tanks with those
cheap refill outfits (yeah, I know the quality's not as good, but he's only
printing photos...), so maybe he has the know-how to help me on this one.
Click to expand...

Take a look at http://www.jondokken.com/Epson2200/Epson2200.htm
There you find a very good advice on how to refill the cartridges of an
Epson Stylus Photo 2100/2200.
Whatever I get, it has to be able to cope with day-to-day stuff as well - I
don't want to be paying huge sums for specialist inks when the majority of
the output will be letters to customers or downloaded web pages... (I need 2
printers, don't I?)
Click to expand...

For this kind of output I'd buy a cheap b/w laser printer or one of those
cheap canon inkjets. You can do this with an Epson 2100, but it's cheaper
the other way.


\relax\bye % Viktor 8-)
 
Arthur Entlich said:
I know of no consumer color laser printers which can print banner size,
other than by breaking the image up into sections legal size or smaller
and then adhering them together. I also know of none that will print on
heavyweighted stock or canvas other than via a transfer process
involving laminates, adhesives and a heated press.

Most laser printers produce contrasty images still, relative to inkjets.

Art
Click to expand...
The OKI range of colour lasers print banners up to (I think) about 2 metres and
also print on heavy card, this is because they have a flat paper path. Not sure
about canvas and the quality is an entirely different matter, depends on the
customers's needs.
Tony
 
a l l y said:
I get the general feeling from all your very helpful replies, that most people
seem to be recommending Epsons of one sort or another. Other people I've
spoken to (though not on such a specialist forum as this one) seem to prefer
HPs, and one person said Epsons weren't so good for printing text (which I'll
also need to do). Any comments?
Click to expand...

You might take a look at the HP Photosmart 8750. Install the black, color and
photo cartridges and you can print very good 6 ink photo's and still print
excellent text without any fuss. This will print up to 13"x19" and banners.

See http://www.wilhelm-research.com/hp/8750.html for lightfastness information
and
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/e...1-64340-15100-64340-426170-426143-440219.html
for specifications. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2005_reviews/hp8750.html
and http://www.art-photograph-gallery.com/HP-8750.html have reviews.

In another post you mention permanence is important, but you later mention
using aftermarket cartridges. Be aware that aftermarket inks may have very
different fade characteristics as compared to the OEM's. See
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/PCWorld_Cheap_Inks_2003_10.pdf.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging
 
a said:
Hi

Most printers these days seem to be targetted at photographers, and although
I do use a digital camera, most of my photos stay on the computer or on the
net, rather than getting printed out. I am an artist, and I want to make
prints of the artwork I produce on the computer. I want to use good quality,
acid-free, heavyweight, artists' quality paper with non-fading inks. Is this
a pipe-dream? I also need to do bog-standard, day-to-day printing as well,
of course, and I also print little books on craftwork so I need something
with fairly large ink tanks, as I hate having to change them in the middle
of a print run.

Any ideas, suggestions or comments will be carefully considered. Thank you.

ally
Click to expand...
If you want to really dream of whats possible, dream of the Epson 4800.
Frank
 
Tony said:
The OKI range of colour lasers print banners up to (I think) about 2 metres and
also print on heavy card, this is because they have a flat paper path. Not sure
about canvas and the quality is an entirely different matter, depends on the
customers's needs.
Tony da Tiger in da business
Click to expand...
 
Color laser printer is another consideration. The minimum averag
amount of C/M/Y/K cartridges for low end printer will be over 60
prints at least for full A4. The laser printer has 600 dpi resolutio
plus PostScript or PCL printing language is enough. PostScript and PC
printing language is possible to increase gray level. There has no
standard for paper weight of photography, however, we can refer t
the weight of photo paper for photographic development system i
around 180 ~ 220gsm. Regarding to the photo paper for photograph
printed by laser printer, the paper material is PP synthetic paper
0.22mm (equal to 200gsm pulp paper) and 153gsm. Due to toner is dr
powder, it is possible to acid-free, without turn-yellowish for lon
term exposure in air or under halogen lighting in gallery. You ma
use key word “laser printing photo paper”to search more informatio
on Google and Yahoo as follows

http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv...y&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=1

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=image

If the time for communication does not take into account, the printin
time is less than one minute whatever the size of your image file. I
is very usefully to save your time for high resolution artwork

The printing color for laser printer is accumulated by C/M/Y/K toner
The thick color will be accumulated more toner than light portion an
it is possible improve cubic effect. Particularly, it is th
remarkable printing quality for the portion of hair and feather o
animal with high resolution image
 
Color laser printer is another consideration. The minimum averag
amount of C/M/Y/K cartridges for low end printer will be over 60
prints at least. The laser printer has 600 dpi resolution plu
PostScript or PCL printing language is enough. PostScript and PC
printing language is possible to increase gray level. There has no
standard for paper weight of photography, however, we can refer t
the weight of photo paper for photographic development system i
around 180 ~ 220gsm. Regarding to the photo paper for photograph
printed by laser printer, the paper material is PP synthetic paper
0.22mm (equal to 200gsm pulp paper) and 153gsm. Due to toner is dr
powder, it is possible to acid-free, without turn-yellowish for lon
term exposure in air or under halogen lighting in gallery. You ma
use key word “laser printing photo paper”to search more informatio
on Google and Yahoo as follows

http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv...y&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=1

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=image

If the time for communication does not take into account, the printin
time is less than one minute whatever the size of your image file. I
is very usefully to save your time for high resolution artwork

The printing color for laser printer is accumulated by C/M/Y/K toner
The thick color will be accumulated more toner than light portion an
it is possible improve cubic effect. Particularly, it is th
remarkable printing quality for the portion of hair and feather o
animal with high resolution image
 
Do they transfer the toner directly to the paper bypassing the
electrostatic drum or belt? I wonder how much memory is required for
something that large to be rasterized into the printer?

Art
 
I just did a bit more research on the Oki color printers, and heck is
they can't print banners up to 47+ inches. That's quite something. Now
I'm gonna need to research how much memory is required to do that, and
the technology behind it.

Learn something new every day... thanks Tony!

Art
 
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