On Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:43:18 EST, PCACala@xxxxxxx jammed all night, and by
sunrise was overheard remarking:
> > There must be a middle of the road way to get prints that are
> > quality and price between competition/professional (ie $12-$20 each plus
> > proof) grade and poor to useless (ie $12/roll).
> Sure. Go for Wal-Mart processing, but invest in a digital film scanner, Adobe
> Photoshop or Corel PhotoPAINT and a photo quality ink jet printer (or even a
> high end Epson 720/1440 dpi printer. You (and/or your employees) WILL get so
> good you can turn them out in no time flat - at the size YOU want, cropped the
> way YOU want and with the color correction YOU want. Plus you can shoot
> prints, slides, B&W negs, or B&W slides. It doesn't matter.
That's good advice, but I would like to add a few caveats.
While I think it's been discussed here before, don't go "on-the-cheap"
for a film scanner. While quite a few of the super-affordable flatbed
scanners around today will a wonderful job scanning 5x7s or 8x10s, and
may even have adaptors or drawers for transparency scanning (which
includes slides and negatives, sort of), the optical resolution isn't
good enough. You really want something in the 2400dpi range for scanning
35mm film, 36-bit or better color-wise, ideally (more on that next).
Then there's the editing factor. Tools like Photoshop, Corel, Photoimpact,
Kai Krause's various things, etc. are excellent -- they give you
darkroom at your fingertips, with "undo". But like adjusting for a new
paper, it'll take some doing to get your screen and printer colors in
sync. Pro-quality monitors actually have feedback sensors to track the
actual colors being displayed.
You'll also find that, if you don't start with a good scan, your image
will be substantially degraded by the time you're otherwise happy with
it. This is an unavoidable fact of life with digital processing --
you're limited in "headroom". While you may not be able to print even
close to 24-bit resolution, layered effects may cut your effective
resolution down to well below that, faster than you think. This exactly
the same reason why most pro-audio work is moving to 24-bit sampling and
32-bit floating-point for editing.
Then there's the printer. While the printer industry would have you
believe otherwise, there's no such thing as "photo-quality inkjet"; it's
fairly close to an oxymoron today. It's quite true, they're much better
than they used to be, so you can get "near" photo quality, not a bad
match for 3x5-5x7 from the old digital camera, but nothing you're going
to confuse with a real photo process. Though some less photo knowledgeable
folks might. I have a Canon BJC-7000, one of the best about a year or so
ago. This one prints at 1200x600 DPI, which sounds great, until you
realize that, using "photo" ink, that's only 6 colors (CD, CL, MD, ML, YD,
YL) plus black. I have printed 8x10s (scanned from normal 8x10s) that
look nice enough, and pixel-wise, even pretty sharp, but the color detail
is definitely missing. The other popular printers include:
Epson: These guys make two lines, the 400-600-800 series, which
print a up to 1440x720 in 3 colors (C M Y) plus black, decent
"photo" quality for a traditional ink jet, but not as exciting
as it used to be, since this level of resolution is no longer
rare. There's also the Epson Photo series, which I believe was
just upgraded to 1440x720 (from 720x720). This uses five colors
plus black (CD, CL, MD, ML, Y), it does better photos than the
normal line, but it's more costly, especially since I think the
black is still in the single cartridge.
HP: They have some pretty cool technology in "PhototRET II",
which is in the 700 series and the 800 series printers. This is
3+1 printing, but they do overprinting or something to deliver
really good results, even with "only" 600x600 DPI printing. They
also have a "PhotoSmart" printer, which does a better job,
though really slowly. My Dad has this; on some stuff, it's
better than my Canon, but it's clearly lacking in pixel
resolution by comparison. HP doesn't talk too much about how it
works.
Canon: They have a few with 6 or 7 color printing. The BJC-7000
is interesting in that it uses separate color and black
cartridges. The black also has a prep-coat, which goes on before
the rest of the inks. This can deliver surprising results on
non-coated paper, since it slows the ink bleed. It also makes
the ink resistant to water ("waterproof" is stretching it, but
it doesn't instantly blur when wet). I'm a bit worried they may
have obsoleted the higher-end 7000 series by releasing some new
5000 series printers with similar ink and resolutions, but it's
worth checking out.
Lexmark. These guys have a printer that's supposedly 1200x1200,
which would make it the highest resolution ink jet this week.
They get real high marks in monochrome printing (that's like
magazing resolution), color is basic 3+1, but also highres. The
older Lexmarks had real troubles with paper feeding, which may
be cured by now. The Lexmarks use some sort of dry ink, so their
prints come out dry.
If you already have a printer, you might consider a photo printer
specifically for photos. Certainly the Epson and HP "photo" printers are
low-cost examples of these, but they're not as far ahead of the
general purpose ink jets as they once were.
Alps Electric has a real interesting line of printers, still within the
inkjet price range, called "micro-dry". These use either thermal dry ink
or a thermal dye sublimation process, which delivers true continuous
tones (eg, the inks are translucent, and the printer can deliver just as
much as necessary for the color desired). These claim to be waterproof,
they do look very good on normal paper, at least from the sample I have
seen. This is 3+1 with normal ink, 3 color only with photo ink (the dye
sub stuff), so I'm a bit leery about blacks that way (the store I
examined the MD1300 at claimed not to have any photo ink for demos, but
they could get it in if I was serious). The other thing that's a bit
unnerving is that these things are either a mechanical marvel or a Rube
Goldberg contraption, I'm not sure which. They print with ribbons,
rather than cartridges, and make lots of mechanical noise, at least by
modern standards. Resolution in pixels is 1200x600 for ink, 600x600 for
dye sub -- but 600x600 continuous tone should go a long way.
There are, of course, much fancier color printers, like traditional wax
and dye sub printers, color laser printers, etc. All way out of my price
range (probably starting around $1500 for a decent thermal printer, more
like $3K for a color laser printer).
Like all technology these days, it's rapidly advancing. The Canon I
bought last year, which at least give you "double-take" quality photos
(I do my Christmas cards with it, rather than buying photo cards, and on
glossy paper in 6+1 ink, it's potentially something to be proud of).
This replaced an HP 870ce, which did 300x300 color in 3+1, not good
enough to be confused with a photo, no matter what you did. Rarely good
enough for anything but illustrations.
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
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