New Uses for Printers – Posters

Printing  Comment
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For years I’ve used Epson printers to print custom promotional materials in limited quantities.
Recently, we just finished printing posters for my Annual Open Studio Exhibit. I post them regionally to promote the exhibit and I sell a limited number of signed posters during the event.
Owning your own inkjet printer is like having your own offset press – only better. While each item takes longer to produce and costs more, the quality is better; resolution, color, and durability are exceptional. While this approach isn’t optimal for high volume production (thousands of copies), desktop printers are great for short runs. Because you don’t have to produce a large number of units to make a project cost effective (you don’t have to invest in the materials to produce a project or the time and space to warehouse a large inventory), inkjet printers make it possible to make certain things that might never have been made before.
Like what? Come and see! And stay tuned for more posts.
What do you use desktop printers to produce? Comment here.
Find out more about my Annual Open Studio Exhibit here.
Find Epson printers here.
Check out the Epson Professional Imaging website here.
Check out my Printing downloads here.
Find out about my digital printing workshop series The Fine Digital Print here.

Epson Printers – Cash Back

Discount Limited Time, Printing  Comment
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Now, for a limited time only, you can get cash back when you purchase select Epson printers.
Get …
$200 back when you buy an Epson Stylus Pro 4880
$300 back when you buy an Epson Stylus Pro 7880
$500 back when you buy an Epson Stylus Pro 9880
$3000 back when you buy an Epson Stylus Pro 11880
It takes 4 easy steps.
1  Make Your Purchase
2  Attach Your Receipt and UPC Code
3  Check Product Name and Code
4  Write Your Serial Number Down
5  Mail in your rebate form.
Claims must be postmarked 30 days from purchase date.
Get more information in PDF format here.
Find Epson printers here.
Check out the Epson Professional Imaging website here.
Check out my Printing downloads here.
Find out about my digital printing workshop series The Fine Digital Print here.

2880 vs 2400 – Gamut Comparisons

Printing, Store - DVDs, Workshop  Comment
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Today, Mac Holbert and I started teaching The Fine Art of Digital Printing at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, MA. Epson shipped in new 2880 printers for this special event. Epson’s new 2880 uses UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta. How much does Vivid Magenta expand the gamut? Check out these diagrams – 2D, 3D, and 3D looking at Dmax. The 2400 is in white and the 2880 is in full color. Both are graphing Epson Premium Luster Paper. The graphs indicate warm blues, magentas and greens are where it pays off. Slight increase in Dmax. It’s not a dramatic increase but in specific images (polarized skies and saturated foliage, it can be significant. There are also slight tradeoffs in other areas of the spectrum (wherever the white volume extends beyond the color volume).
Words and pictures can work together to tell a fuller story. These diagrams were made with Chromix’s ColorThink. I use it to graph ICC profiles and compare substrates and to compare inksets. Doing this more clearly illustrates the pros and cons of each.
It’s something I do in all of my color management sessions (like the whirlwind tour of color management participants in the FADP workshop got this morning and the sessions you’ll find on my DVD 6 Simple Steps to Color Management).
Check out my Review of Chromix’s ColorThink used to make these graphs.
Check out Chromix here.
Check out my earlier post on the 2880 here.
Check out the 2880 here.
Check out our workshop the Fine Art of Digital Printing here.
Check out my Fine Digital Print workshop series here.
Check out Hallmark’s post on today’s session.

On Press – Banding

Event - Exhibit, Printing  Comment
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We’ve been finishing the last prints for my annual open studio exhibit where I unveil New Work from 2008 for the first time. We ran into subtle banding in a few prints. So how do we trouble shoot it?
First check the file at 100% screen magnification. If it’s in the file add a touch of noise. If you need to use more noise than you’d like, use Noiseware afterwards.
Second check the printer. Is the data transfer fast enough? (Don’t perform other calculation intensive operations while printing. Close other programs if necessary. Make sure your cable connection isn’t too slow or too long.) Are the heads aligned? Are you sure it’s banding and not nozzle clog? (Nozzle clogs are tiny light lines. Banding is dark lines, often thick with soft edges.) Are you printing at high speed? (Try printing it slower.)
Third, as a last resort, rotate the image 90 degrees and try printing it again. Huh? Right! Many of my files are particularly difficult to print – semi-neutral fields with very smooth gradations. These types of images display incompatibilities with printer drivers and their screening frequencies that just don’t happen in most images. It has to do with screening frequencies. Why does rotation help? I don’t have an explanation for it. But it works.
Hopefully all of this will help you with your prints.
Get information on my Annual Exhibit here.
Check my blog for the most up to date information on the event.
Check out my blog during the event to see video of my new installation events.
Check out my Gallery to see more images.
Check out my Gallery during and after the exhibit to see new images.
Check out my workshops series The Fine Digital Print here.

Appropriate Scale – Fine Digital Print Expert Workshop

Printing, Workshop  Comment
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One of the many things that it’s valuable to test is optimum scale. Images affect us differently at different scales. Small prints draw you close to them providing an intimate experience. Large prints envelope you in an immersive experience requiring a greater distance to see the entire image. One of the things my workshop students do is find optimum scales for their images. While there are many practical considerations that may modify their final choices (like final presentation space), determining an optimum scale reveals an artist’s intention and the nature of their work more clearly. How do you determine optimum scale? Test it! There’s no substitute for fully experiencing the effects of changing scale. Make different sized prints and compare them side by side. Alternately, projecting an image on a wall at different scales can be similarly revealing. Here, again, side by side comparison reveals more. Then, put your impressions into words – verbally or in writing.
Here veteran professional landscape and garden photographer Roger Foley shows two prints of the same image at different scales. While he feels a larger scale is ideal for his imagery, he’ll sometimes make smaller prints to accommodate smaller presentation spaces and client requests.
Find out more about Roger Foley here.
Look for my upcoming article on Scale in Photoshop User magazine. Find out about PSU here.
Find out about my Fine Digital Print Workshop series here.
Find out about The Fine Digital Print Expert workshop here.