for those of you who print

Calina

As a few of you know, I bought a printer before Christmas and for whatever reason, despite my original intentions, bought a HP Photosmart printer. I've since had a lecture from someone who said I should have spent ten times as much on an Epson printer capable of printing A3 which I have actually not got any space for and anyway I specifically needed the printer to print letters not photographs.

Unfortunately, I discovered that it was rather excellent at printing photographs and now I have a printing addiction problem. But that's not the point of this post.

What I was wondering is how owning a printer changed your approach to printing.

I've found that now, where possible, I'll print large photographs at A4, but the fact that I can control how I print stuff means that I also now have the freedom to print at different AR provided the dimensions fit inside an A4 sheet of paper.

I've been playing with different types of paper, between the satin, the gloss, high gloss, etc, mainly Canon, HP and Ilford. I'm developing a taste for Canon's semi gloss.

What have other people been doing?

bigeoino

If you ask my wife what changes having a printer has made - an HP one bought roughly the same time - she'd say that now she actually gets to see the photographs!:) whereas before they used to live in folders on a hard drive never to see the light of day.

mikeanywhere

Calina wrote: »

I discovered that it was rather excellent at printing photographs and now I have a printing addiction problem. But that's not the point of this post.

What I was wondering is how owning a printer changed your approach to printing.

Best money I ever invested in the business was getting an Epson 4800. I do all my own prints now except for albums etc I use a lab in the UK for them.

I have complete control over what I provide to my customers.

City-Exile

mikeanywhere wrote: »

Best money I ever invested in the business was getting an Epson 4800.

Blimey, how much did that set you back?

mikeanywhere

City-Exile wrote: »

Blimey, how much did that set you back?

A fair few quid for sure but trust me its soo worth it!!!

City-Exile

mikeanywhere wrote: »

A fair few quid for sure but trust me its soo worth it!!!

I'm not quite there, yet.
Need Cork City FC to increase their global profile, before I would have demand for prints, to justify that outlay.

Arciphel

I agree, I have a cheap Canon printer i bought from Argos, I refill the ink cartridges myself with Tesco ink (for shame!), use cheap & nasty gloss photopaper from Lidl, and i am now printing out loads of stuff!

Its v. cheap, and i can see what works mainly because i also invested ~€100 in a Pantone Huey colour calibration widget. So now i can decide what i send out for lab printing, and what looks good on a screen as opposed to printed out & mounted. (Indeed, even though my home print set-up is probably quick and nasty in some peoples eyes, i get good quality prints and have even entered some of them in competitions where they have been commended on the print quality. I really think the key is the colour management!)

stcstc

I have an epson 7800 printer

and although it costs a lot of money to purchase etc


the cost of running it would you belive is much less than your average desktop printer


as for using cheap inks, they are actually a false economy if your doing anything more than one offs that are for like a comp or something. if your selling prints they are a big no no.

main reason, they fade in no time at all. i have some prints that were printed with cheap inks they had faded to no colour in less than 6 months

RCNPhotos

Got an Epson Stylus Photo R265 in PC world recently for 99 quid, love it. I usually just print 7x5's at the moment, now and then A4's. Saving the big ones for a book I'm working on. but it's great. I print a lot more now I must say.