alan_goldhammer

<p>The other possiblity is you did not change the print driver settings which are independent of Photshop. </p>

<p>All manufacturers supply profiles for their papers and current printers. In general the profiles are quite good. If you are inclined to do profiling you can get a ColorMunki that can be used for both that purpose as well as monitor calibration. You don't need profiles to do B&W work with the Epson 2880 printer as it has a dedicated print driver for that purpose. At a minimum that is the printer that you want from what you describe. </p>

<p>Heinz, ColorMunki works great with Windows. I use it on my Win7 machine to calibrate both the monitor and paper. They have just updated the software. Also, make sure and read the Epson manual. One reason for bad color is that you are double managing color both via your application (Lightroom or Photoshop) and the printer. The default in the Epson print driver is color. You need to turn this to "no color management" (can't remember exactly as I'm at work right now but it's something like that). This could be your problem. For many papers the manufacturers supplied profiles work fine. You should download a test print to confirm (a good test print and explanation is <a href="http://www.outbackprint.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html">here</a>).</p>

<p>Alan</p>

<p>The R2880 permits you to print until the cartridge is bone dry.</p>

<p>A lot of distributors have already sold out the 3800 since the announcement of the 3880 and the resultant discount pricing of the 3800. The technology of the 3880 is superior and those familiar with the 3800 acknowledge as much (I have a 2880 and the prints from that which have the new ink set are richer than those made on a 3800). IF money is a concern you need to get the 3800 ASAP if you can find one, otherwise get the 3880 (which because of the better reds and improved algorhythm will give you nice landscape prints).<br>

Regarding papers, I have settled on two gloss finish ones, Ilford Gold Fibre Silk and Museo Silver Rag; excellent products for both color and B&W. Matte finish papers are Museo MAX (wide color gamut of all matte papers), Hahnemuhle Bamboo, and Museo Textured Art. One can go crazy with all the choices out there.</p>

<p>See Thom Hogan's article <a href="http://www.bythom.com/printsizes.htm">here</a>. Pretty straight forward how to figure it out.</p>

<p>Get a copy of the Bruce Fraser book as just revised by Jeff Schewe, "Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom" It provides all the information you will need to achieve optimal results. </p>

<p>The best reference on this is Jeff Schewe's revision of Bruce Fraser's semnal book, "Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom." It answers all the questions and provides the workflow needed to achieve optimal results. You can get it from Amazon for about $30. </p>

<p>The NEC has served me well and the size is right for my set up.</p>

<p>The other thing to note in addtion to what John mentions, is what paper setting would you use? These are likely to require the matte black cartridge and in the absence of any guidance from the manufacturer, you would have to test out all the settings and examine each print to see about Dmax, color gamut, etc. Only then would you consider either preparing an ICC profile yourself (if you have a ColorMunki or similar tool) or have one made for you. It strikes me that this is quite a lot of work to do to get a satisfactory print. On the other hand, you will learn a lot about your printer and the paper's response to the ink.</p>

<p>The NEC P 221 is outstanding. It's a wide gamut monitor and with the NEC SpectraView software profiles quite easily. You can use the ColorMunki to profile the monitor AND your paper for a relatively modest price. </p>

<p>If you plan on sticking with Lightroom, Martin Evening's book is the best one that I've come across. "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book" is the title. Has just about everything you will need to do the needed processing. Don't worry about saving to other formats. Lightroom is non destructive and all your changes are kept in a separate file (this does argue for a good backup strategy). Tiff files will be about four times the size of your RAW files which will require much more disk space.</p>

<p>Ansel Adams (were he alive today) would probably be disqualified from entering! It's unclear to me what they consider "appropriate modifications" as I can't find the rules on their website. I presume that they clarify this in the e-mail to interested parties but there must be a pretty fine line.</p>

<p>Have not downloaded the beta and don't have much free time to test it out. However, why couldn't you just go to the Print module and print to pdf, adjusting the quality slider. Am I missing something here?</p>

<p>Any of the software/hardware combination solutions should run on Windows 7. I use ColorMunki and SpetraView to calibrate my NEC P221. The update from Vista to Win7 was done on Saturday and the color calibration was unaffected. I don't think you can calibrate a monitor adequate without this as you will be relying on eye sight.</p>

<p>Apple software may be inexpensive, but they kill you on the hardware. The two key Adobe products for photo editing, Lightroom and Photoshop run equally well on both software platforms (this should be the real question and not whether the Apple or MS operating system is better). I have three HP computers at home (one a laptop) and they start up everytime and have not had one problem. Also, with Windows 7 now officially out, one doesn't need to deal with Vista quirks any longer. By the time you figure in software costs, the HP still probably is the better buy price wise.</p>

<p>ColorMunki can do both monitor and printer calibration and is a good investment.</p>

<p>The 2400 is no longer available and has been replaced by the 2880. I have it and it makes great B&W prints. There is a $200 rebate on the printer here in the US through the end of the month.</p>

<p>Spend about $100 and get the new <a href="http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?id=1257&tab=videos">Passport</a>. this way you will always have the correct white balance. In addition you can easily profile your camera as well. I've used this on several shoots already and it works wonderfully in the field.</p>

<p>Why not save even more money and buy a cheap PC and decent monitor. Presumably the OP will be using Lightroom and/or PS, both of which are platform independent. I have found it amusing that despite all the bad press PCs seem to receive, that lots of Mac users were hung out to dry for a period of time following the OS update to Snow Leopard.</p>

<p>Paul - I have the 2880 and have never had a clog or nozzle problem. Ink costs are high because of the small cartridge size but only you can judged based on your printing volume whether this is going to be an issue (you can always move up to the new 3880 that should be coming out soon which has much larger cartidges). The printer gives superb B&W prints using the Advance Black & White (ABW) print driver. For color paper profiles I use Color Munki, which is super easy and gives great results. You can also use it to profile your monitor (an absolute necessity). For the ABW driver, I had <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/photos/">Eric Chan </a>do profiles that even out the linearity. I don't have any experience with the HP or Canon and can only say the Epson works wonderfully.</p>

<p>I started off with Elements over a year ago when I was moving from film to digital. When I got Lightroom (try it for the 30 days) I found that I really didn't need Elements at all since I could do everything in Lightroom a lot more easily. I added Photoshop over the summer when Adobe was running a "secret" discount on it (you had to go way down into their website to find the $299 price). Elements strips things down to 8 bits from 16 which loses information (whether this is visible in prints or not is questionable). Only you can make the decision but note that all three programs come with 30 day free trials.</p>

<p>I think you want to set the color handling to "no color management", Photoshop should manage the colors. What is likely happening is that the printer color driver is altering what you have sent to it.</p>

<p>You will be hard pressed to meet a $500 budget. The best entry level printer is the Epson R2880 and that has a rebate until the end of October. It's a little over your price range. You can print 13 inches wide on roll paper as well as cut paper. I have this printer and regularly print on 13x19 paper. You would also need a spectrophotometer to calibrate your monitor and do paper profiles. Color Munki is great for both tasks but that will set you back another $450 or so. You would also have to add in the paper cost and ink supplies. For modest printing you are probably looking at another $300-400 depending on volume. I don't think the learning curve is that difficult. Lots of help is available in books and on the Internet.</p>

<p>Brett,<br>

The manual discusses this as I recall. I had the same problem when I first calibrated mine. It will use a default contrast ration unless told otherwise. I set mine to 450:1 and the Delta E goes down.</p>