Some help for someone new to printing

[slowframe]

I've become interested in printing good quality output at home and am now somewhat on top of the basics behind colour management and a few of the possible options for black and white printing. However, understanding the facts about hardware is beyond me, and I wondered if I might ask for even some purely speculative help from those of you with more experience.

Once one is working with a fairly good A3 printer, how much does the choice of printer affect the quality of output, as opposed, just for example, to working appropriate calibration for different paper types and ensuring that one's monitor is well calibrated? There are good offers available on the Canon Pixma Pro MK II, but then I see that it will soon be replaced by the Pro 10. Or alternatively there is the dye based Pro 100 (at less cost). But the printer outlay is small compared to lifetime expense on inks. And then, of course, there is Epson.

To put this more in the form of a question. I'm an amateur who works hard on his photography (colour and B&W), and I would like to have more of a hand in the printing process than I get working with labs. Is the printer I choose (for example, from those mentioned above) likely to have a significant impact on the quality of prints, or does that depend more on my (eventual) skill at managing the printing process from screen to paper, so to speak?

I am sorry for the no doubt naive question, but this is a very different from film printing, which I understood a little better. I don't want to make a costly mistake unnecessarily, but I'm also at a point where not having actually done much printing is making it difficult for me to understand just quite what issues ought to affect my choice and which ought not to.

[Mark D Segal]

Buy the Luminous Landscape "From Camera to Print" download video tutorial. You won't need anything else.

[slowframe]

Buy the Luminous Landscape "From Camera to Print" download video tutorial. You won't need anything else.

That's very helpful. A tutorial is very much what I need; I didn't realised they produced one on printing. I knew about the well-reputed lightroom tutorials.

Thank you!

[francois]

That's very helpful. A tutorial is very much what I need; I didn't realised they produced one on printing. I knew about the well-reputed lightroom tutorials.

Thank you!

I can only second Mark's suggestion regarding Camera to Print to Screen. Excellent tutorial, easy to understand…

[slowframe]

I've in fact put in an order. I'm greatly relieved to discover a tutorial on this!

[Mac Mahon]

Hi Slowframe

To answer your original question:  assuming you're managing the process well (+1 to the tutorial advice) then all of the Canon Pro series printers or the Epson x800, x880, or x900 series printers are capable of stunning results.

Tim

[slowframe]

Great- thank you, MacMahon, for the direct answer. That's very helpful. It sounds like the difference in printer choice will change various thing at the margin, but the impact is small compared to managing the rest of the process correctly.

I've started watching the tutorials (From Camera to Print to Screen). At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, they're thus far very well organised and clear. I particularly like the emphasis on thinking of the printing and display process as beginning even before capture and at preparation and set-up.