OT Printer

[JoeJoe]

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[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I have yet to print out a photo. I've still got a packet of photo paper that came with my first colour printer in I think 1996. Canon something or other. I think it cost ?250. I have just stuck the Epson in the garage. Taken the ink carts out of course - yer never know........ Even if I got it to work, the print head would only clog up again/the ink carts would dry up. And I think one of the carts is nearly empty. The Ricoh printer is on the way. Thanks to all that replied.

[alan_m]

+1 - Buy the laser

Around 2 weeks ago I invested in a Brother laser for £40 (wireless capability) after spending 3 hours attempting to get the black and yellow working on an Epson inkjet.

Brother want £35 for a replacement toner cartridge but compatible 1000 page toner cartridges can be found on-line for as little as £7 incl. postage.

I did eventually get the inkjet working using the various instruction videos on Youtube (resting the print head on on a water soaked pad made from kitchen roll)

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

Been there, read it. Whilst looking for fixes for my Epson a chat window opened. I thought I was on some Epson website. Paul wanted to chat to me. Then I realised that I was not on a Epson site. Okay then, I told him the problem and what I'd done. He asked me what I'd done, so I told him again. Long delay. Buy this Mr Pounder, it will pull you out of the shit.

I mentioned that the printer is 13 years old. Paul said that the fix will still work. Bye Paul.

[newshound]

Bypassing the rather predictable set of arguments below, IMHO the trick with laser printers is to get a standard office laminator and some 75 micron pouches.

Laminating prints on standard 80 gm paper adds a decent amount of gloss, and seems to brighten up the colours. No, it won't match studio quality but it is more than good enough for average domestic use.

Laminated prints are pretty durable, just what you want to pass around at a wedding / funeral / party or similar gathering. Gravy, cake, and red wine just wipe off.

You can laminate two single sided prints together in one pouch. If you then trim off the pouch overlap you have a "print" which is nearly half the original thickness, you can write on the back, and it takes up less the filing space in a ring binder, or whatever.

I do most of my printing at A4. More impact, less eye-strain than traditional "snaps". But I only print the better images to prevent boredom.

[Dave Liquorice]

Inkjets, as they use ink, end up with better blended dots than laser.

[Martin Brown]

Not true. At least if you want high gloss finish on the print.

Some lasers will do a very good colour print if you match the paper to the toner carefully so that both paper and dense toner have the same lustre. But you can't go past semigloss or pearl lustre finish.

All the ones I know use Fuji Crystal Archive paper and wet chemistry for top quality gloss prints to modest sizes and their large poster printers are all inkjet based.

Colour profiles will only get you so far even with a calibrated workflow. Lasers cannot manage the same colour gamut as a top quality inkjet with umpteen inks. Even a relatively modest inkjet printer will comfortably trounce a colour laser for producing high gloss prints.

Colour lasers can do photoreal output but most of them are quite poor at their default settings which are often optimised for dense saturated colours. (the sort of things that occur in office documents)

[Bert Coules]

Many thanks for all the additional replies and opinions.

Bert

[The Natural Philosopher]

All the ones I know have dumped wet chemistry for laser printing

[Huge]

[20 lines snipped]

BTW, "modest" can be up to A0. I've had a print done this size and they asked if I wanted wet chemistry or inkjet and commented this was the largest size they could do "wet".

The problem with domestic inkjets is the intermittency of use, during which time they dry up and clog. I've had 3 from different manufacturers and they're all shit. I get photo prints done commercially now, and have a HP LJ5 for home day to day printing.

[John Rumm]

They are much better than they once were, but quite can't match the top end photo colour inkjets on full glossy stuff IME.

(toner without a finishing coat never quite looks the same in surface lustre)

[John Rumm]

Depends on your laser. With the workgroup class machines you can get semi glossy "magazine" quality colour photos out of them, but its difficult to match the tonal range with 4 fixed colour toners that you can get with 7 colour inkjets.

(There may be specialist photo printing lasers, but its not a market I have looked at).

[whisky-dave]

They used to use amazon poisonous frogs and anything else with bright garish colours to show how good a colour printer is, that doesn't fool photographers who would perfer to see delicate skin tones as a test. Like my cheapish 24" monitor looks fine for playing games but skin tones look crap as do most delicate hues and colours.

[whisky-dave]

that was just asking to be snipped. :-)

[Richard]

.. said the mohel.

[Vir Campestris]

That's exactly the model I bought when I got bored with clogged jets.

Andy

[Chris J Dixon]

How are you finding consumable costs?

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its quite high esp. if you use HP toners.

A couple of hundred full color A4s will see the toner gone, and around £60-£90 for a new set of 4 colors

The way I was using it when in semi-pro capacity was to proof with it, then take the PDFs down the print shop for any length of run over about 20.

You can adjust toner intensity by color on this machine. It takes time but you can in the end get better colour.

As long as you stick to the same toner manufacturer.

Change toner? start again

[charles]

That depends on the printer - for my HP A3 laser, toner are about £200 each!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ahem "HP-Color-LaserJet-M252dw-Printer"