bill_t__new_mexico_

On my 2200 I see hints of this on Premium Luster when printing at 1440 DPI, but only if I look really close at the darkest areas. For prints made at 2880 DPI it's not visible, but the printing is much slower.

Nice looking website Brad! The web style and your imagery work really well together.

When you remove a cartridge shake it next to your ear. If you can still hear ink sloshing around, it wasn't fully empty. Over time you'll get a feel about how far you can push "ignoring the light." As someone already mentioned, sooner or later the printer will simply refuse to print, but this happens well after you start to get those warnings.

 

When I do a lot of printing or large prints, I try to estimate the percentage left in the cartridge based on the bar graphs both before and after a certain amount of printing. This will give you a feel for how fast each cartridge gets used up, and act as a rough guideline for how far you can push it.

A lot of people use programs like "Microsoft Frontpage 2003" or others to create web sites. For at least that program you can get "templates" which are pre made web sites. These pages contain sort of place holders for text and photographs. To simplify a little, you can just substitute your own text and pictures for those in the pre made examples. This is not a zero learning option, you will have to learn just a few basics. But the truth is that most people who design web pages use these templates themselves. Unscrupulous people have even been know to download the "source" for other peoples sites and modify the contents (but not the overall form) to be their own.

 

Google something like "Frontpage template photography". You can get them for anything from free to a few $1000, most seem to be around $50. Before buying experiment with some of the free ones to see if this is the route for you. But ultimately if you plan to maintain a web page your will probably have to get something like Frontage or one of those.

 

Photoshop can create a canned web photo gallery for you, although not a full web site. Put all the pictures you want to present into a single directory. From Photoshop click File->Automate->Web Photo Gallery and fill in some information such as where to put the generated webpage, which should always be a new empty folder. You'll see a working preview on screen. You can "just" upload all the generated files and folder to the www folder of your web host and it will become a sort of instant, but limited, web page. Once again, it will help to have a certain amount of web page savvy here, but not very much is really needed.

 

I think the free photo-viewer program "Picassa2" can also generate such pages, no doubt it's even easier and definitely cheaper.

Conrad, is it true that if a filter stops working I can polish the CD with Brasso and an old t-shirt to restore it? How about those DVD cleaning packages from BlockBuster Video? I have some old filters that don't work with CS2 and am hoping this will work.

Yes Adobe Gamma and lots of test prints and experimentation worked for me too...sorta.

 

You may not want to read further... HOWEVER, the biggest photographic revelation of my not so young life occurred when I bought a Gretag EyeOne2 colorimeter. Trust Me Here, that's the way to go. At the very least it will save you a pile o' useless (and costly) test prints.

 

OK, to put a $ sign on it, figure you make one NG 8.5x11 print per day because you are "winging it" on calibration. A $220 colorimeter will pay for itself in not too many days, and you will save a lot of time and frustration. Personally I'd take money out of the budget for camera equipment if that's what it took to get a colorimeter. PS get a good one that can program the video card's DAC table, not an entry level device that only addresses RGB settings.

There is more to the equation than cost per square foot.

 

The cost of NOT doing your own printing is that quality, scheduling, lead times, and other practical issues of that kind are not fully in your control. A lab can do great work most of time, but once in a while be late or give you a lousy or damaged print. If your reputation is based on quality or fast turnaround, those are compelling reasons to do it yourself. If you live in a place where shipping is the only way to get prints (especially large ones), that is compelling too.

Hey that's fun!

 

1. Open the image.

2. Crop it square.

3. Rotate it 90 degrees so the sky is on the bottom

4. Filter->Distort->Polar coordinates with "Rectangular to Polar" checked.

5. OK

 

That plus a great deal of seam blending is all it takes!

A place to start...

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=15978071

Don't count your chickens too soon. I recall a similar scheme to run Windows programs under Linux a few years ago, that ended with a series of court fights. Guess who won.

For exactly the same pixel dimensions and bit depth, compressed file formats like .jpg can be many 10's of times smaller than an uncompressed .tif or a losslessly compressed .psd Photoshop file. Files scanned in formats that allow 16 bit depth (this is rare) will be at least twice the size of a files scanned at 8 bit depth.

 

You can save yourself some confusion by specifying the pixel dimensions of the output file you're after. This sidesteps many confusing issues, such as what constitutes "100%." If you want to print an image at 13" x 19", ask for a scan or approximately 3900 pixels by 5700 pixels, a huge file! That assumes 300 DPI (dots or pixel per inch) is a reasonable printing resolution, which it is since this approximates the practical on-paper resolution capability of most inkjets. 300 pixels/inch * 13 inches = 3900 DPI in that dimension. Well, 450+ DPI might have minor advantages, I know somebody will point this out, but 300 should do the job in almost any case.

 

.jpg files with the minimum compression settings (such as Photoshop Quality "12") will for all practical purposes print as well as much larger uncompressed files, while still being dramatically smaller in file size.

 

BTW, a 35mm slide or negative scanned at 300 DPI "on the negative" will look pathetic if printed. The *minimum* reasonable pixel dimensions for scanning a 35mm piece of film for printing is about 2000 dot per inch of the original piece of film, or about 2000 x 3000 dots or pixels in total for 35mm. For 4x5, you would want 8000 x 10000 pixels to start to do justice to a technically good transparency or negative.

This paper is different, do not automatically use the Matte MK cartridge. For this paper Epson provides separate profiles for both the "Photo Black PK" and "Matte Black MK" cartridges. With limited testing I felt the profile named "Vevlvet Fine Art 2880 PK" for the Photo Black cartridge gave superior results when printing photos with lots of tonal range, using the Photo Black cartridge of course.

Oops, that was the URL for Helicon Focus, here's the URL I intended...

http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZ5/combinez5.htm

Here is a less well polished but free program that does the same thing. Some geekiness required...

 

http://heliconfilter.com/pages/index.php?id=509

I'm still trying to figure this out after going through 6 rolls of 13" x 100' paper through my 2200 over the last few months. But I'm thinking it's about US $1.50 per square foot of printed area for the 2200. So considering the slightly higher price of R2400 cartridges, your 13x19's will probably use no more than $4.00 worth of ink depending on border sizes, absolute worst case. Some cartridges go much faster than others. Your pile of empty Light Magenta cartridges will reach the roof first, and the local stores run out of these more often than any of the other colors.

 

Be a little cynical about about the dire warning dialogs that pop up about nearly empty cartridges...you can milk them longer than these suggest.

 

Helpful tips...when you remove a cartridge, shake it next to your ear. If you can still hear ink sloshing around, you took it out too soon. You'll get a feel for this after while. At least for the 2200 I have in a few crunch situations re-inserted a nearly empty, but dirt-free cartridge (usually LM!) that had sat around for a while. These worked fine in every case.

I have made just a few prints with this paper on an Epson 2200 using both black cartridges and the proper Epson profiles. The PK Photo Black cartridge and profile may be a better choice it you want good shadow detail. On the same full range photo image the Matte Black cartridge and profile produced relatively blank, gray looking shadows compared to the Photo Black. If you try this paper and you have a Photo Black cartridge installed, don't automatically take it out without trying a print or two.

 

It's very interesting, kind of hard to describe, somehow richer looking than Enhanced Matte, but with a sort of graphical rather than photographic feel. It reminded me of high quality art book printing on matte stock. If I had to do classic b&w portraits this might be my choice. It's extremely delicate, the slightest rub will burnish the surface.

 

 

From the Epson web site you can download printing profiles for this paper designed for each cartridge. The Matte Black profile has MK at the end, the Photo Black profile has PK at the end.

I just reprinted an image I first printed 24 hours ago on an Epson 2200, Premium Luster Paper. Same cartridges, same paper roll, same everything. If anything, the still-wet print right out of the printer is just barely perceptibly darker than yesterday's well-dried print. I'll keep an eye on it over the next day or so, but it's so close now I would feel comfortable about disregarding drying issues, at least for this printer/paper/ink combination.

 

Well, doggone, just looked at the now ten minute old print again, and now I have to say that there is zero difference! If anything, it literally "dried up" by a smidgin. Will have to test Enhanced Matte next ime I have the matte black cartridge installed. I have long thought wet Enhanced Matte looked dark coming out of the printer, but thought that was just a light direction issue, the print always seemed lighter when held up for viewing.

Yes, a local artist uses an elaborate, large volume ink system on his 2200 and the results look great. There are long lines leading from bottles to a printing adapter things where the cartridges normally sit. Can't remember the name, it's something like easystreet or such, they're pigmented inks and apparently much cheaper than Epson. I'm waiting for the 9800 to arrive, and if anybody from the local Walgreens Drug Store gets anywhere near it with their gummy econo-inks, I'll clip their toenails, which is something those guys can understand. I'm going to stick to the Epson inks for now, at least it gives me a moral leg to stand on when I make promises about longevity.

You can right-click on most photos displayed on the Internet. A menu will displayed. Click "Properties" at the bottom of the menu, and that will usually tell you the pixel dimensions and number of bytes of the image. This will help you get an idea about how to size your own images. As a general rule, images should be downsized using Photoshops "Save for Web" so they are no more than 100k or so for a large image, otherwise they will take too long to load.

Drug store refills may be OK for bulletin board notices, business letters and shipping labels, but forget it for ICC profiled printing! A local art club switched from Epson to ebay-special cartridges in the middle of printing a newsletter run, the change in quality was enormous, the ebay cartridges print like the Sunday comic pages. That's not to say they couldn't be tweaked using the printer controls, but fine art printers might wish to stick to the manufacturer's product so as to take advantage of profiled printmaking. And there are doubtless lifespan issues.

I would second the recommendation for PTGui 5.6, it is truly outstanding, with great output quality and impressive speed. It just now automatically stitched and blended 57, 4200x2800 pixel images into a 390 megapixel composite in about 35 minutes, which is amazing!

 

A beginner might also like to try Autostitch.exe, which can be downloaded for free (google it). It requires almost zero operator intervention, other than to specify a location for the files to be stitched together. It produces a result much better than you can get from hours of toil in Photogshop, but only outputs .jpg's and sometimes gets confused by frames that contain only sky.

As an approximation, the 2200 cartridges contain 19ml. I have both a 2200 and an R2400 working here, and it seems like the R2400 uses up cartridges a little faster.

We have a Viewsonic P815 which has individual RGB controls, along with brightness and contrast. There aren't knobs, but on-screen indicator bars accessed through a lot of button pushing. We also have a Lacie Electron Blue IV. Both give great color, but the Lacie is a little better colorwise and has a much more even illumination and consistent color across the screen. But you can't go wrong with either, I'm be happy to use either one. I have an Eye One 2 colorimeter which can calibrate the Lacie completely automatically, whereas with the P815 I have to punch a lot buttons.

 

I looked closely at an Eizo L997 LCD recently and have to say it is as good as the Lacie CRT, and possibly a little better, but way more expensive!

I've used Photoshop for several years. I tried gimp a few weeks ago. It's not a Photoshop clone, which is to say anyone who thinks they can step easily from one to the other is seriously mistaken. It may or may not be a viable alternative, but for my own part the learning curve and approach seemed so different I was willing to buy another copy of PS for the application rather than invest the learning time. I saw many glimmers of things that looked very promising. But one of the main issues for me is that it seemed slow on basic operations, even on small images, and I often edit files 500 mb and larger.

 

But maybe I just was coming at it wrong, would like to hear a good PS vs. Gimp comparison from somebody who really knows both.

Movies are usually shot with fairly controlled lighting ratios that guarantee facial modeling both from predictable shadows and often the use of moderately hard key lights, which along with subtley glossy makeup increases facial contrast by creating more highlights. And you see the model in motion from many directions, which builds a dynamic image of the model in your mind. Try freeze-framing some facial closeups on your DVD and you may find the look is less dramatic than when the film is rolling.

 

In real life we usually photograph is either very low lighting ratios (indoors) or very high ones (outdoors). Both of these kill a nice skin look. For "found" lighting, you are best off with situations with moderately high lighting ratios like window light, or when the lighting is somewhat restricted from one direction.