Looking for a good photo printer

[Doug_Kiesling]

I'm looking around for a good photo printer. This is not for commercial use but for printing the best of the thousands of photos I have taken over the last 15 years to hang up around the home. I am not looking to break the bank but would like to get something that when I edit a photo in photoshop and get it looking the way I want it to look, that is the way it will come out on the printer.

Anyone have any thoughts. Price limit is $300-$350 since this is for home use only since I have a ton of my storm photos on the computer but not much hanging from my walls.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Hey Doug,
If you have a COSTCO membership you can just have them print them for you and pick them up in a few hours. You can upload your images to thier site and do it all online. You never have to buy ink or paper and they do a pretty good job. 8" x 10"s are only something like $1.49 each. Another route to consider...

http://www.costco.com/PhotoCenter/PhotoCen...av2-_-Top_photo

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Hey Doug,
If you have a COSTCO membership you can just have them print them for you and pick them up in a few hours. You can upload your images to thier site and do it all online. You never have to buy ink or paper and they do a pretty good job. 8" x 10"s are only something like $1.49 each. Another route to consider...

http://www.costco.com/PhotoCenter/PhotoCen...av2-_-Top_photo
[/b]

Hmmmmm, never thought about that but my concern would be the color matching. Are they good with that stuff? If they are good for it, I'll save my money and just have them print the stuff.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Only thing I do is bump up the brightness a little in photoshop on the versions I upload to them. They tend to come out a bit dark if you don't but I think that's a problem with any digital printing you do.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Only thing I do is bump up the brightness a little in photoshop on the versions I upload to them. They tend to come out a bit dark if you don't but I think that's a problem with any digital printing you do.
[/b]

Is your monitor calibrated? That could lead to monitor-printer mismatches. There's a website that I was on a few days ago that had ICC printer profiles for many different commercial printers used by WalMart, CostCo, and other printers, but I can't remember the address.

 

[Greg Campbell]

The local Costco is quite good. They have a color profile available for DL that works quite well. (Root around the Costco site to find it.) Make sure you specify "no auto correction" and the prints will be very consistent. I needed a few trials to get the 'feel' of how well the print matched my image as shown on my computer, and now have a very mild three channel luminance curve that I apply to anything I send them. With that minor adjustment, the prints are spot on.

-Greg



p.s. Here's a good quick-and-dirty monitor calibration site.

http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/evaluation/gamma_space/index.htm

Do this, if nothing else, before trying to match anyone else's profile.

 

[fplowman]

Hmmmmm, never thought about that but my concern would be the color matching. Are they good with that stuff? If they are good for it, I'll save my money and just have them print the stuff.
[/b]

Photoshop has settings as i understand it to match the machine that is printing the pics.. You will need a calibrated monitotr for true adjustment.

Costco i am told is the best place. the machine they use has the best quality i am told. In photoshop you set it to output for that machine particularly.. Wayne Sclesky has more info on this if he is around??? As he does it for a living..

 

[John Diel]

Doug,

Most places that do the one hour or one day photo thing are using the Fuji Frontier systems. They print digital pretty well. When you take in a photo make sure they don't "adjust" it any from your specs. Then you can take a look at it as opposed to what you think it should be. Alternatively, you can ask if they have a color profile for their system. There are a few places on the net that will allow you to download a color profile target ask the photo place to print it per the instructions included and send that back to the place you downloaded it from. It's usually about $25 or so to get it done, but it works woinders when using a commercial printer system like the Frontier.

Profiling your monitor does help in the final process, but it's just as important to profile the printer system to the monitor as well. The ICM profile will help you do this as well. It's a complicated process, but it will certainly work to your advantage and the Costco's and Wal-Marts can certainly print cheaper than you will be able to.

Otherwise, take a look at the Canon i900 or i9000 series of inkjets. They use individual ink tanks (the new ones use like 8 or 10 different inks) and the color is outstanding. Under glass and the right paper, they last for quite a long time. I've got a print that gets a couple of hours of direct sun everyday in the living room and it's been on the wall for 4 years now. I printed up another one just to do a comparison (and my mother in law wanted a copy) and I saw no visible fading. This is under standard glass, a cheap frame and matted.

I have the canon s9000 and I can print a 13X19 print in 6 minutes. The newer ones are better color quality and faster in printing and will print up 13X9 full bleed photos just as fast or faster.

The other option would be the Epson printers. They were dog slow in printing, but were generally accepted as having the best print for an inkjet style printer. Last I heard, Canon closed the gap with print quality against the Epson pigmented inks. Canon just works better for me and I print quite a few proofs and team photos, Entertainer head shots, and the occasional portrait.

 

[B Ozanne]

Chances are the weak link is your monitor profile. If its not properly calibrated you will never get your photos to match. I use Pantone's Colorvision profiler and it works great.

I'll agree with everyone else and say use Costco to do your printing. Their prints are amazing and if there is anything wrong with it just tell them and they will print another one while you wait (typically a few minutes or less). They also take great care to make sure their machines are properly calibrated.

I agree with bumping up the brightness a little. Even a good profile wont make up for the fact that a printed photo reflects light while your pc monitor emits the light.

Back to your original question...I am using an Epson R800. I believe they make a large format version of that printer now. Print quality is amazing. Ever since I discovered Costco I am just using my printer for random shots I want right now.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Ok cool, thanks everyone. I think the weak link is the monitor or laptop. It's just been so dang long that I have focused on the still photography side of things since there has never really been a market for it and now trying to print this stuff for the living room has been kind of maddening to get the colors to look right.