Exhibition grade prints from Epson 2200 and D70

[steve_wring3]

This forum has been a great help in guiding me through the steep

learning curve of the D70 and PS CS. With only a little more than a

week's experience I'd like to seek advice on workflow towards high

quality 11x14 prints from the 2200 and D70.

 

I use the D70 in RAW using ACR into PS CS. Monitor (Trinitron) and

printer are calibrated and color agreement is excellent. To date I've

been printing at 500dpi to Epson Premium glossy using the Epson ICC

profile. However my prints, even at 4"x6" lack the crispness I'm used

to from film.

 

A search of Photo.net indicates the paper choice is not ideal (I do

see bronzing) and some ambiguity on printing dpi. I've ordered packs

of Ilford smooth pearl and Epson Lustre - but no experience with them

yet.

 

I'd be grateful for thoughts on what dpi I print with for overal best

prints, and a general workflow around which I can experiment. At

present the number and breadth of variables make experimenting a

little overwhelming.

 

Lastly, and thanks for reading this far :-), there have been several

posts indicating that it takes quite some time to find the

D70's 'sweetspots' and discover how to make it perform to its

maximum. Any 'in-side' tips on this would great.

 

Many thanks,

 

Steve

[mark houtzager]

Some suggestions:

 

- keep the PS workflow the way it is for now, but you may want to consider your sharpening technique, as that may have an impact on contrast and apparent brilliance of the prints. Also, 500 dpi seems a bit much, 360 dpi as a maximum should do fine.

 

 

- go to the D70 forum at dpreview.com - many good and relevant tips and hints there. Also many references to other relevant websites (such as luminous-landscape.com)

 

 

- develop your own preferences on the D70 by indeed experimenting - as an example, I found that for my purposes underexposing 0.7 generally gives the best RAW file as a starting point of my PS workflow. Others are better off with 0 or 0.3. Use the on-camera

histogram as a guide.

 

 

- shoot lots under different lighting circumstances and fine-tune shooting technique on the D70.

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Mark

[mark houtzager]

Sorry, I forgot:

 

- read the manual of the D70 often - this camera does not always work as intuitive as it should (think AF areas, color spaces).

 

 

M

[marshall]

A search of the forums will produce a bunch of information on printing dpi for use with the 2200, but suffice it to say that most people have 'standardized' to 300 or 360. However, especially with digital capture, good results are often had at 240 or so. My suggestion is this: take the same file and print it to the same size at different dpi so that you can compare for yourself. Well worth the investment in time and paper. This is how I came to use 300 as a default, as that's where I personally stopped seeing much improvement, printing my scanned images onto a 1280.

 

Mark mentioned sharpening techniques, and he is absolutely right to do so. There are multiple steps in the process where softening occurs, including choices made for in-camera settings, and the inkjet process involves a dither pattern that necessarily affects our perception of sharpness. By learning appropriate steps and amounts for sharpening your images, you will improve your results, often dramatically. Good luck.

[beepy]

I point to an article in this <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=008rwN">photo.net thread on sharpening</a> that may help you get your head

around how to view this - I am thinking you may want to dive deep there.

[eric friedemann]

Steve-

 

1. I turn off the sharpening on my D100s and use PhotoKit Sharpener to do capture sharpening and then paper-specific and print-size-specific output sharpening. I really think this makes a noticeable difference- without PKS and relying on the camera to capture sharpen and with me guesstimating on output sharpening, on 6x9 inch and up prints, I tend to get images which are either a bit soft or look over-rezed.

 

2. I have found that I get my best results rezing up or down to 772 Pixels Per Inch for the 2200 which seems to print at something less than 400 Dots Per Inch.

 

3. For prints up to about 8x12, I use the 1440 d.p.i. setting. For larger prints, I've been using the 2880 d.p.i. setting.

 

Regards, E

[ted_kostek]

I'd like to shed a little light on the 300 dpi number. When people have studied the question "What is the smallest detail the eye can see," they typically come up with about a 300 dpi number. Obviously, this will vary with your eyesight and how close you hold the photo. The standard assumption is a 10" viewing distance, I believe. Thus, it is not surprising that most people settle on a number in the 250-350 dpi range.

 

Now, for your printer to create a single dot at the 300 dpi size of say, pale green, it must mix together many dots of much smaller size. Your naked eye cannot see the smaller dot structure (dither pattern), and they get smeared together into a single dot of pale green. The individual dots of ink are the ones at the very tiny size (2880, 1440, whatever). Thus, those numbers have more to do with the ability to create subtle gradations in colors, and not so much to do with sharpness.

 

There's really no benefit in sending more than about 300 dpi files to your printer, even though the printer is actually making a lot of much smaller dots.

 

Hope that helps.

[eric friedemann]

Ted, ideally, I'd like to send a file to the 2200 with the same number of dots per inch as what I'm printing. Unfortunately, Photoshop CS will only give me this number in Pixels Per Inch. As there seems to be no agreement on how many Pixels equal a Dot, through trial and error, I've found 772 Pixels Per Inch to be at or just beyond the maximum resolution of the 2200.

 

I think we are in agreement that the printers use of "1440 D.P.I." and "2880 D.P.I." is confusing and represents, I assume, the micro specks of ink the printer is able to disperse. However, this doesn't change the fact that prints from the 2200 have an apparent resolution of 300-400 D.P.I.

[ilkka_nissila]

I always print the whole file, leaving the interpolation to the printer because I really believe Epson knows how to process the files into ink best. I always use the highest available dpi on the printer and paper and dump the whole file with no decimation or interpolation in photoshop. At A4 size (8x12), the D70 auto sharpening yields marvellous prints which generally put my prints from scanned film to shame. No possibility to ask for more sharpness really - it looks very natural. I use an R300 for printing.

 

Decent analog glossy prints from color neg film at 4x6 inch will definitely look superior to anything from an inkjet. But at 8x12 the situation turns upside down.

[gary m]

I thought I would add my 2 cents worth on the dpi question. I've run a few experiments with my epson 1280 and came to the conclusion to print at 360 dpi. It was pretty hard to tell the difference between the 300 dpi and 360 dpi for most prints, but for some photos it seemed like the 360 setting was a little better. The phots where this showed up had a lot of blue sky - the color transitions seemed a little smoother at 360.

[ecarter]

Glad to see you're looking at Ilford smooth pearl paper - it is VERY good on the 2200, and I get excellent prints from it with a great reduction in bronzing. Also, you may want to take a look at Pictorico Photo Gallery Glossy - it also does not suffer nearly as much from bronzing as do the epson gloss papers. Epson matte papers are fine, but their other stuff just doesn't quite make the grade.

[steve_wring3]

Thanks everyone.

 

I used the Ilford pearl over the weekend and agree with the feedback of others that this paper yields very impressive reults with no visible bronzing.

 

Printing at 300dpi to 360dpi improved resolution over higher settings.

 

The unsharp mask: Still experimenting here. It does appear that prints are a little softer than the image displayed on the monitor. So using a little more unsharping on the monitor maybe required to get the ideal print. I need more experience here to find the optimum settings.

 

Thanks again everyone,

 

Oh! As a P.S. I framed my first all digital print on the weekend - not a bad milestone after only 3 weeks experience...

 

Steve