good printers

[nature boy]

dunc wants to know.
discuss.


lol.

[nature boy]

like i said in the other thread, the canon mp something is excellent for our needs. it has a scanner/photocopier built in, optional network capabilities and can do double sided printing.

the thing about inkjet printers is that you have to use the colour like once a month or it'll dry out. but the quality is top notch. check out the cards that we gave out last year (not this year), those were done at home on our printer and i thought they were pretty good.

[jeSteR]

To answer his other question... Costco is 15¢ per 4x6 but their colour management SUCKS. I don't spend all that time in Lightroom only to have some geek blow it. Custom Colour downtown is awesome, but heck expensive, around 35¢ per I think. I now use my Canon Pixma Photo printer and Canon PP-201 paper. The Canon Chromalife100 and 100+ system is supposed to be almost as good as developed paper.

Read up on it hear

http://www.canon.com/technology/canon_t ... alife.html

Works out to about 11¢ per page for me I think, but only cuz I get to buy ink and paper at cost.

Anyways, here's a helpful xls if you have the time to work it out.

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/12/15/cal ... g-service/

[Duncan]

if you get it at cost, does it mean i can get it at cost via you or gordon? lol

[joel]

i have some pretty hardcore printer at work. don't know how it is with photos, but with everything else it's good. It's a Ricoh C5000. I think they things are pretty pricey though.

The printer I have at home, i got for like 20$ (maybe less, don't remember exactly) so that one is probably crap.

[nature boy]

just don't buy the house brand photo paper. we haven't found any that we like so far.
so we just use them for testing stuff.

[Duncan]

ran the idea by alicia yesterday about buying a photo printer and she seemed pretty disinterested... i guess it's costco prints for now... and yea, they pretty much botch my prints too so time spent in lightroom is rendered time wasted... lame...

[nature boy]

i don't get why it's so hard for them to print properly?
if we can do it at home, shouldn't their high tech equipment be able to handle it?

[geForce]

London Drugs has an option where you can retain colour settings in the picture. They'll just print it as is, so their techs don't adjust it at all, no matter how good or crappy it may look to them.

When I printed my wedding photos, it looked pretty true to the colours on the digital file... but then again, my computer monitor isn't the best for displaying the true colours either.

[nature boy]

that's where we went and they turned out to be crap.
we had to go back and all they could do was scan the one that we printed at home. and it still looked like crap.

[jeSteR]

That's because your printer probably took the liberty of assigning it's own RGB profile on all your attached computers and displays. This will help cheaper home systems acheive a decent result from home printing.

The only way you can get truely consistent colour from multiple displays/print sources is to standardize on the Adobe 1998 RGB Color Profile. The prints I used to send to LD were exactly what I saw on my screen, they were just heck expensive. But that's cuz I have all my devices running of the Adobe RGB profile, If your monitor's color gamut isn't that great though, it won't give you a decent representation of what you're going to print. ie, if you paid less than $500 for your monitor, it ain't gonna have a very wide / accurate gamut.

[Wetundies]

Dell had a 22" IPS monitor for $250 at one point.

[tyson]

it was a 23" and i picked up two of them. still colour gamut isn't super awesome, but it's better than all the other TN panels i've used in the past.
the canon home print solution is what i would do too. they make some really good photo printers.

edit: in fact that monitor is on sale today: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/product ... vyNwjIt6IA

[nature boy]

the monitor we're using is winnie's 24" imac. it cost a little more than $500. but then, i got a cpu and a keyboard with it.

[Wetundies]

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_s ... e=WW&=&=&=

it's normally a $500 photo printer for 199.