How do I know when my 9600 is dying?

I common question I've been getting recently is...
How do I know when my 4000 is not fixable?
When is my 7600 need to be replaced?

Epson printers and their permanent print heads come with both advantages and disadvantages. Advantage being they're perfectly calibrated when they leave the factory. Disadvantage being they cost more to replace then the printer is worth. Typically, after three to five years, depending on print volume, noticeable quality loss we begin to appear on your 4000/7600/9600. Replacing printheads will cost at least $1,000. Having a certified technician visit your place of business: $500 minimum.

This $1,500 is not worth it to save one of these printers, even for a 9600. Time to upgrade. Maintain your current workflow by getting a 4800/7800/9800, or consider a 12-ink from the HP Z series line.

Once quality begins to decline, expect to start doing a LOT of head cleaning. You can still get up to a year or so of use out of the printers from this point on before they really eat the dust. I recommend upgrading at the first sign of quality deterioration and saving you old printer for banners/posters/signage (anything that can get away with a little less than perfect output).

Winning the war against Double Management (part 1)

One of the dreaded terms often heard between tech's and artists alike is double management. While a good RIP software (or CS3 or a good printer plugin) will eliminate this problem, I figure I'll add my two cents before it becomes an obsolete issue. For all of us not lucky enough to afford a RIP or CS3, which has been me in the past, here we go...

There are just too many places where you can select the same options for your prints. Depending on your printer manufacture/model, I count up to four. Yes, four. (I assume Photoshop CS2 or below for the rest of the article) For starters, there is the Print Preview and associated Page Setup. When you select your printer in Page Setup, it will give you the nice "preferences" button next to it. Click on that and you'll be brought to a place to select seemingly identical info. Don't think that choosing the correct settings here will let you neglect to set the preference from the actual "PRINT" dialog box. Once you have all your settings correct up through the PAGE SETUP>>PRINT PREVIEW, we are brought to the actual PRINT dialog.

Now in Print, you will see the list of printers as well as the preferences button again. Depending on how well your computer runs/what you've done since Print Preview, some of the settings may have decided to change back to their default. This ruins prints quite quickly.

The fourth place for some of us is on the LCD display of the actual printer. Some, such as Canon's iPF series, prompt you for information such as the media type and media size. One more place to double manage/make a mistake. One advantage of CS3 is that it will merge the past 3 dialog boxes together to a single screen, making it about three times easier to print with the correct settings...

(Continued Tomorrow)

Adobe CS3 Creative License Conference -- Review

On Wednesday (5/16/07) I was lucky enough to be at the HP Booth sponsering the Adobe conference for the release of CS3. Overall the show was very impressive, CS3 looks very promising. One of the most impressive benefits I saw was Photoshop's new 3D ability. The demostrations really showcased some inovative things. I was also excited about the new combination of "Page Setup" and "Print Preview," finally making printer settings more intuitive and powerful. This should really take a lot of the guesswork and prevent the dreaded "double management" for issues from Portrait vs. Landscape to Printer vs. Photoshop color management.


Lots of great people at the shop, I would highly recommend going if one is coming near you (8 city tour, 1 or 2 day events). Also a great networking opportunity for anyone involved in creative professions.

http://www.adobecs3conference.com/

Giclee Seminar - Tomorrow in Chicagoland (Free!)

IT supplies is hosting a Giclee seminar tomorrow (May 16th, 2007) in Schaumburg, (NW suburb of Chicago). Its free, appears to be sponsered by Epson, and will feature local artists showing Giclee tips, tricks, and a basic overview of the Giclee process. Its running from 1PM - 7PM, I will try and catch the end of it if I can get back from the Adobe CS3 Conference in time (unfortunately, not Free). Should be a good time.

More info - http://www.itsupplies.com/GicleeInvitation.html

Review of Photo Tex (Repositionable Printable Fabric)

After seeing a profile for Photo Tex on Colorburst's website (looking for 3800 profiles...), I remembered reading about this product a few months ago and meaning to try it. So I tracked down two sample rolls, 24" by 5' each. This product, invented by South Korea, is similar to a standard 2 ply inkjet printable fabric crossed with an industrial strength post-it note. They claim that photo-tex will never lose its stickiness. Now never is a long time, but from my 30 day test, they don't seem to be lying. I repositioned the printed square I had cut (approx. 12" x 12") twice a day for 30 days on a wide variety of surfaces, and it is still sticking. It picked up a little debris from my brick wall, but not enough to negate its sticking power. Impressive. Even after being submerged in water for 3 days, it still stuck to anything I placed it on. With no damage. Even more impressive. Photo-tex states it will not damage anything it is placed on, making it an ideal product to place on your late 18th century library's wooden walls.

As for the printing, it doesn't 'pop' as much as I was hoping, but overall color is good. Bright reds seem to be effected, I printed my samples on a Canon ipf8000 which usually does well with signage. The printing does not seem to wear off over time or fade, another plus. The blacks are moderate. I would not print any sort of fine art on this material. Worth checking out if you have any type of POP or instore marketing clients.

Overall, I was very pleased with the material and am anxiously awaiting a chance to use it commercially (it is a bit on the expensive side). Much like Post Its when they were first released, Photo-tex aren't sharing their adhesive secrets or any of the technology behind this product.

-Michael

Photo-tex website - www.phototexgroup.com
picture from photo-tex website

Need a web designer?

If anyones in need of a web designer, I would highly recommend Jesse Crouch (jessecrouch.com). As well as being a talented photographer, he is an excellent designer and coder. He designed my current site (elevateprinting.com) as is in the process of writing all of the code for a custom shopping cart. He also has some interesting articles on low budget photography (a few of them we're on digg) as well as a gallery of his work at ifakedit.com. Examples of his webdesign and coding are at jessecrouch.com.


-Michael

Bert Monroy's Photoshop seminar

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Photoshop seminar being taught by Bert Monroy, who turns out to be an amazing speaker as well as teacher. One of the best seminars I've been to on a technical topic, definitely worth checking out if you live near one of the major cities. The price is a steal at $99 for an all day event ($79 for NAPP members). Bert Monroy also has great prints of his work for sale on his site, check them out.

www.bertmonroy.com
www.photoshopseminars.com

Why don't you take my fine art paper?

My Epson 3800 will not print on any type of fine art material that must be loaded through the separate fine art paper selector. That two dollar piece of flimsy plastic that Epson decided to include for me to slide onto the back of my printer is not really living up to the dreams I had for it. I made one successful 8.5x11 print on it after a mere 15 attempts to load from the back. No kidding, at least 15. Now I have been unsuccessful to load any bigger sheets into the back. I have been able to run it through the straight through path (designed for boards), but this isn't the easiest thing to do either.

Bottom line, 3800 is no fine art cranking machine and will be a hindrance to your workflow if you plan on mass printing on anything other than photo paper. Off to call Epson...

WEBSITE FINALLY UP!

I finally got my website up. http://ElevatePrinting.com . FTP up next week! Best of Articles I've written will be posted soon. If anyone needs prints for custom work, let me know... Its some of the most affordable printing you can get from people who actually understand color management (OK, does anyone fully?) and artistic views...

Michael

HP Announces Z6100, set to replace 5500

Being a faithful 5500 owner, I was anxiously awaiting its replacement. As I've mentioned earlier, the 5500 is based off a printer thats over 5 years old now. The HP Z6100 printer claims to print up to 1134 sq ft/hr, almost 10 times what the 5500 was capable of. And on top of that, much better quality. This is a big stab at the iPF8000 and ipf9000, obviously, and we'll have to see how it does. Its supposed to be shown in Vegas tomorrow, can't wait for the reviews.

Only info I've found so far...
www.itsupplies.com/static/HPZ6100.html

Epson 3800 Review

I received my 3800 today, they seem to be wait listed at most places still. Anyway, it does not seem to be anything special. It is significantly smaller than the 4800 or the Canon ipf5000, the 3800 clearly comes across as a desktop printer. This would be great if I only had a small studio. The 3800 doesn't seem to like my sheets of fine art paper, especially if they are not perfectly flat. This is very inconvenient, sometimes I've had to try to load a sheet multiple times to no success. With it only taking sheets, this would be a huge hurtle to overcome for your work flow. This was clearly not designed to be a production or high-volume printer. The prints, however, look absolutely stunning. They even surpass the 9800 when viewed under a loupe. More about color and other issues later.

Epson says 64"

I guess that the printer will be 64", not 60" as I had previously thought. We should be looking for it to come out around this fall. No doubt this will take a lot of business away from Canon's 60" iPF9000, which I believe right now sells for around $10,000 - 12000 depending on your part of the country.

New Epson Printers

It appears Epson has a new printer coming out, the Stylus 1400. Finally something to replace the 1280. Has a new set of Claria ink, I wouldn't mind seeing how they compare against my R1800. I heard rumors of a 60" Epson printer in the works, something to replace the 10000 series of plotters they had, but with the 9800 printheads. We will see.