On Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:38:34 -0800, Joe Sutherland
<joesutherland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> jammed all night, and by sunrise was overheard
remarking:
> SNIP
> >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.
> SNIP
> I agree with Dave about the oxymoron. The manufacturer's tantalize
> us with claims of photo-quality, but it takes a lot of work to produce
> a really good print.
And what's funny is how the term "photo quality" changes with the
technology. Here I have a brochure for the ALPS MS-5000, which is the
closest to "photo quality", so far, I have seen at a consumer price.
Here's how they play with words:
"Photo-Quality" 2400 dpi color and grayscale
"Photo-Realistic" 1200 & 600 color/black & white/grayscale
"Photographic-Quality" Continuous-tone color (optional)
Now, maybe I'm confused, but I thought "Photo-Quality" was short for
"Photographic-Quality". Then I have this Canon flyer, which assures me
that "Photo-Quality" is achieved on their BJC-4400 at 720x320 using the
"Photo Ink" cartridge, Of course, when they wanted to sell me a BJC-7000,
I needed 1200x600dpi with photo ink for this.
The only conclusions one can draw from what printer vendor says is that
"Photo-Quality" is "Our Top Resolution". Unless we're better than the
next guy, in which case we'll make up a new buzzword :-)
The only real test is YOUR eyes.
> I've never used a darkroom, so I don't know if
> that also happens there; but I usually make several poor prints
> before finally getting a good looking print.
Oh yeah. In fact, it's worse than that, because printing is a real
artform, and the better you get, certainly the better your prints get,
but you also learn to do more. Kind of like photography in general -- a
beginner takes a roll of 24 and loves them all, I take 24 rolls of 24
and I'm happy for a few real keepers.
The fabulous thing about computer-driven photo work is that you can get
at least 800f the darkroom work done in Photoshop and other tools
before you have to make a print (probably more if you can mate your
monitor and printer better than I have). And even if that 132MB file I
scanned the other day is a challenge for my ~300MHz systems, next year
I'll have something faster, memory is so cheap these days I could
upgrade to 256MB of RAM without feeling the pain if I did this very
often, etc. Printing is the weak link today.
> It amazes me that the computer industry can get away with this
> level of service. If Olympus built cameras with such poor
> performance, they'd be laughed out of the business.
But look at how long cameras have been professionally made. I learned to
program computers (at age 12, I'm not quite as ancient as this implies)
before one could buy any sort of personal computer. It's only been
fairly recently that any kind of color printing has been something
consumers could afford.
> Excuse my ranting and raving, but I guess I'm naive enough
> to expect that a $250 inkjet printer will actually work.
They work to the extent consumers demand that they work. Much as
everything else on computers these days -- things improve slowly where
there's little demand, and very fast where there is. If Canon will sell
more printers by adding colors or pixels than by improving their paper
handling, have not doubts about what they're doing in the next model.
--
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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