Just getting to grips with my new Epson R2880 and I am wondering..
What is better/most sensible; printing at Photo 1440 dpi or Superphoto 5760 dpi ?
I am printing on Epson Matte at A3; at this size is there a real difference between the two that makes the extra ink (I am assuming 5760 uses more ink) worth it?
What do others print at and why?
Many thanks
Phil
DPI
Unless I am doing “quick and dirty” proofs, I usually do not print below 2880 DPI.
On images that I really like, I print at the maximum DPI that the paper will allow and I uncheck High Speed. I feel that going to 5760 DPI is in, most cases, a waste of time since it seems to take more time to finish a print even though I have heard that it does not take much more ink per print; the dots are just smaller in the detail areas. I have seen some really detailed scenes on glossy paper where I can convince myself that there is an improvement with the higher DPI, but with matte papers, I don’t think that you could tell the difference. Testing will tell.
High Speed
This really means that the printer head prints in both directions with a paper advance in between passes. Therefore the print appears in approximately half the time. When gears change from a driver gear to a driven gear as the direction changes, sometimes there is slack and the print head could be off somewhat on the reverse stroke, but Epson seems to have solved this problem, so I use high speed most of the time. Even so, with glossy-type papers where I want as much detail as possible, I uncheck high speed just to be safe. Normally, the only reason that you would not want to use high speed is if the printer head pauses frequently during printing indicating that it is waiting for data from the computer or the network. BTW, both high speed and normal speed use the approximately the same amounts of ink, the high speed prints in both directions while the normal speed prints only in one direction; on the “back” stroke, it does not print.