Officeprinter for pictures

[jaol]

I was asked by a friend who is thinking of trying to make a small projekt of fine art prints, what I think of using a Epson Workforce printer with Durabrite inks. He can buy one of this in a3 size for 25 – 30% of the cost of a R3000. What the differense in runing cost are he has no idea. But it`s not a larg amount of prints.

I have no answer so I talked to another friend who had been using a Durabrit printer for about 10 years ago. He said that he got good prints from it but he had not made any direct comparison with a photoprinter and, as he recalls it, he only could use printer manages color with it.

I went to Google and the The Red River Paper site were there was profiles for some Workforce printers. Is there a difference between  Pc and Mac here?
They also had made longevity test and say that DuraBrit and K3 is about the same. 50 years.

If anyone has experience of how big difference there is between an officeprinter and a photoprinter  when printing photographs and care to answer I would be grateful. I suppose a photoprinter will deliver better prints but how much?
Is it a feasibly idea or not?

Jan

[mstevensphoto]

when printing photo prints use a photo printer.

if you are doing a small project and not wanting to regularly print I would outsource it.

[Tim Lookingbill]

I use a $50 Epson NX330 "All In One" I bought at Walmart to print personal 8x10's for home display on Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Paper. It's clearly a step down from the Epson Workforce printer "All In One"'s but I get excellent print matches using "Printer Manages Color" printing out of Photoshop or OS X's Preview with a bit of reduction to the blue channel middle slider in PS's Levels. All that while keeping the image in ProPhotoRGB color space so I don't have to convert. I set Epson's printer driver color handling to Epson Color Controls (not OS X's Colorsync) and choose AdobeRGB space/2.2 gamma in the color handling menu with the corresponding Epson paper.

The cost of the ink and paper starts to add up so you might want to do some math on ink coverage for larger than 8x10 which for a little over $50 I can get about 25 "8x10's".

Durabrite inks are pigment based so they'll last long enough. And I have business cards of full bleed prints of my photographs printed with the Epson NX330 that stay in my wallet for months and they don't get scraped up or even fade.

[rgs]

I have used an Epson 13x19 Workforce 1170 printer recently. I think the model is now discontinued. It did a fine job as an office printer and works well with spot color and graphics. It was not prone to clog and overall was a good office printer. It  DID NOT print photos well at all. If your friend needs a dual purpose printer, the one I would recommend is a Canon ip4920 (or the equivalent all in one model). Canon uses a 5 cart system that is CMYK for photos and a pigment black for text. Photos print almost as nicely as with a dedicated photo printer and text is better. Red River paper does a good job of providing profiles for the Canon 5 cart printers. If your friend were to contact them, they could advise him well and might even have the printers for sale. They are a very helpful company. It should be pointed out that the office inkjet market has gone almost entirely to all-in-ones. It is difficult to find pure printers in retail outlets. Your friend will probably have to either order a printer or by and equivalent multi-purpose model.     

[jaol]

Thank you for your answers.

I can tell you he bought a Epson Work-Force because of its pigment ink. We tried to match a the new printer to a few prints he had made with the Epson P50, a dyebased ink printer with six inks, that he used before.
And a difference we saw was a little less density. Not much but clearly visibly when compared. I made a profil for the Workforce with my Colormunki on a matte paper he is thinking of to use and he had bought a profil from a vendor on the net for the P50. He had with out doubt a more expensive instrument and I wonder if it could be the reason the difference in density?

When it comes to color I would say the result is equal. Can´t se any obvious difference in color quality when comparing this pictures.

Jan