A P7000 to look at...

[keithcooper]

I've just been lent an SC-P7000 (with light light black) by Epson UK for a review (with plenty of spare ink! ;-) )   I'll be trying a range of papers and profiling them.

I've got it here for a few weeks, so if anyone has any specific questions, I'll see if I can answer.  It happens to have a Spectroproofer unit attached, but I don't have any software to make use of it and as the name hints, that's not something you'd splash out on for photo printing (my main interest in the printer).

It's been a while since I had a large Epson printer here (I last had a 7880 in 2010), so I've had a read of the manual ... I'm wondering how best (if?) to make use of the custom paper settings for a 3rd party paper?

When I had the P800 here to look at, for example, I'd pick an appropriate media setting and make a profile for colour, whilst for using ABW I might also look at 'linearising' it with a QTR profile. 

Whilst I can certainly take the same approach with the P7000, I'm wondering if there is any mileage in the custom paper route - that and are there any gotcha's such as the way with my Canon iPF8300. that if I adjust ink limits for a custom media setting, it won't work with the B&W print mode.

It's good to get a printer like this to experiment with - it's the sort of thing that lets me look again at my whole approach to preparing and printing my work, which is never a bad thing ;-)

[Mark D Segal]

Keith, my understanding of the ABW route is that it bypasses custom profiles and uses its own ink lay-down algorithms all under the hood. From looking at specs a while back I would expect this printer to perform - in terms of print quality - very much like a 4900 but with better black ink density. Will be interesting to see what you come up with. If you can get your hands on some of the new Epson Legacy papers (in particular Baryta and Platine) it would be most interesting to see what it can do with those.

[keithcooper]

I suspect the ABW will be a similar to smaller printers I looked at, I was just curious about the custom paper options (they have a density adjustment along with a thickness check).

As to the papers - I believe they currently are a US thing, no sign of them via Epson UK.   We have 'Digigraphie' and the 'Signature Worthy' range ;-)

I do have quite a few interesting papers to look at though...

[asch]

Keith, interested to see what densities the blacks reach, on mat and baryta papers. Could you print the K stripe from the inkseparation file of QTR with the calibration ink limit slider at 100 % ? If you have some Hot Press Natural it would be perfect.

[keithcooper]

Keith, interested to see what densities the blacks reach, on mat and baryta papers. Could you print the K stripe from the inkseparation file of QTR with the calibration ink limit slider at 100 % ? If you have some Hot Press Natural it would be perfect.

The P7000 is not listed for QTR that I can see? However I note a response in the QTR forum that mentions renaming an install script - just tried this and it worked. That said it's many years since I used QTR for printing, so I'll leave this until I've done a load more with the Epson driver.

I'll be printing my normal B&W test image as part of looking at using ABW and profiles for B&W - I've a roll of cold press natural with it - just going through my papers stocks at the moment to see what else to run through it ;-)

[JRSmit]

Keith, interested to see what densities the blacks reach, on mat and baryta papers. Could you print the K stripe from the inkseparation file of QTR with the calibration ink limit slider at 100 % ? If you have some Hot Press Natural it would be perfect.

The Dmax on matte papers are a little better. On glossy papers the increase is about 15% or so. I use a 7000 and 9000 in production. Also experimenten with ABW on non epson papers.
There is a curious behaviour. The Dmax improve with reducing color density.  However in the a-b plan the icc profile sort of shrinks in the lower 25%.
They also make more use of the orange and green inks.
All in all i am quite happy with the 7000 and 9000.

[asch]

Ok, thank for the infos. It gives a starting point.