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.