Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: Mike Raub on May 29, 2014, 06:05:39 pm
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Called PrinTao 8. Here's a link:
http://www.printao8.com/
I haven't seen this program discussed here and I'm hoping some of the printing experts here will download the demo version and let us rank amateurs know if it is worth its high price.
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Stay tuned.
But regardless of what a reviewer says, in this business, value for money is a subjective matter: any product is only worth its price if the product and the price are worth it to you.
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I have a 3880 but can not see a $299 advantage to using this software. What is the plus??
Martin
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I have a 3880 but can not see a $299 advantage to using this software. What is the plus??
I dunno, but if you were thinking about running QImage on your Mac -- and there's a lot of commonality to the feature set -- but had no other reason to set up a Windows virtual machine, this will do the job without your having to do that.
And maybe the GUI is better than QImage, which, IMHO, wouldn't be a particularly difficult challenge to the software engineers. OTOH, QI is very mature, pretty bulletproof, and offers a huge choice of scaling algorithms, including some very good ones.
Jim
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I watched their video. Seems pretty crude for the $300 price. Not even a means to adjust brightness or contrast within it that I found. Seems like a crude Canon printer software package (i.e. Canon Easy-Photo Print) that comes for free with some of their printers.
Seems Qimage is worlds ahead of it for the price. May as well buy a copy of Windows to run in Parallels on a Mac for the price difference.
Nice thing about Qimage is it seems to be a labor of love by the author/owner. He seems to update it within 24 hours if a bug is found. Whatever he does for print sharpness seems far better than what Adobe comes up with in their software too. Plus, others take months to years to fix a problem in their software. Took DxO about 3 years to fix their Epson printer bug which they finally did last month.
SG
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I used QI until I switched to Macs. It did a good job but had the most confusing UI I've ever seen, except maybe the UI on early versions of DXO (but they are French, after all). As is his right, the QI developer steadfastly refuses to create an OS X version.
As far as scaling goes, I follow the advice someone on this board suggested a few years ago: I send the print at whatever resolution it happens to be to the printer and let the printer do the scaling. It sounded like a crazy idea, but I compared prints done by that method to one's I'd made with the best scaling program I could find and they looked identical. I've learned never to fight an idea that makes life easier.
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Called PrinTao 8. Here's a link:
http://www.printao8.com/
An alternative to Mirage Pro?
The pricing seems equivalent...
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Hi all, I ended up going the Parallels/Windows route when I made the change to the Mac platform as I was not able to find anything like QI for a similar price. I wonder if any here have used Image Nest, it seems rather pricey but will work with printers other than Epson
http://www.bluecubit.com/imagenest-product-features-page/#.U4h-kBZqnOg (http://www.bluecubit.com/imagenest-product-features-page/#.U4h-kBZqnOg)
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As far as scaling goes, I follow the advice someone on this board suggested a few years ago: I send the print at whatever resolution it happens to be to the printer and let the printer do the scaling.
Hi Mike,
Unfortunately, it's pretty bad advice by todays standards, and if you want top quality it's even worse advice.
It sounded like a crazy idea, but I compared prints done by that method to one's I'd made with the best scaling program I could find and they looked identical. I've learned never to fight an idea that makes life easier.
If easy is your goal, money no objection, and quality not a top priority, why even ask? If on the other hand you want better quality, and not spend more than you need, maybe getting some up-dated suggestions might be wise ...
Maybe it's as simple as using the correct printer driver settings for better quality, maybe there are tools to improve the output image, maybe there are applications that can play a role in managing the lay-out and re-purposing or re-printing of images. Depends on what you are trying to achieve.
The program mentioned in the OP seems a bit pricey for what it does.
Cheers,
Bart
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Bart,
It has been a few years since I tried my experiment. I think my basis for comparison was whatever the current version of Genuine Fractals was at the time. These scaling programs may well have improved greatly since I did my test. What would you suggest as a SOTA pre-printing scaling application or plug-in? A lot of these programs have a trial or demo mode, which will let me run my experiment again. My criteria is very simple--if I can see an improvement in the final print with a scaling program or plug-in, I'll probably buy it, if the price is fair. If I can't see a difference, then I'll stick to the simple method.
Thanks. I guess this thread has drifted a bit, but since I started it, I'm not griping.
MIKE
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This software came up a couple of months ago and Mark Segal indicated he would be reviewing it (I think) on LuLa. That's why he said "stay tuned."
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Bart,
It has been a few years since I tried my experiment. I think my basis for comparison was whatever the current version of Genuine Fractals was at the time. These scaling programs may well have improved greatly since I did my test. What would you suggest as a SOTA pre-printing scaling application or plug-in?
Mike, It depends a bit on from where you start, and where you want to go. When you start in Lightroom, it offers a decent upsampling quality, but there are better options available such as the modern version of GF called 'Perfect Resize', or Photozoom Pro. Both offer the capability to enhance edge contrast that remains sharp and not jagged when upsampling to e.g. 600 or 720 PPI, and large output sizes at that resolution. If your image content consists of such detail, you should be able and make good use of that. In addition, there are additional Photoshop Plugins (some can be called from a generic host program), that can significantly enhance structural detail and texture detail, without generating halo artifacts, which can be used before and/or after resizing. IMHO, Topaz Labs Detail is one of the more sophisticated ones, and there are usable ones in the Nik/Google suite as well.
Depending on you printer hardware and drivers, the correct settings (e.g. 'Finest Detail' for Epsons) will allow to use the higher printer resolution settings and allow to use sharpening at those levels.
Cheers,
Bart
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Thanks, Bart. It looks like both Perfect Resize and Photozoom Pro have trial versions, which I hope to play with as soon as I have some free time not devoted to pushing a lawnmower.
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I dont understand
is Printtao some kind of a RIP or does it utilizes the OEM Printerdrivers to communicate with the device?
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If you have ever printed anything from a 3880 and had it not come out the way it was supposed to then you appreciate why you need a RIP. I use Mirage but this appears to be similar.
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If you have ever printed anything from a 3880 and had it not come out the way it was supposed to then you appreciate why you need a RIP. I use Mirage but this appears to be similar.
You don't need a RIP to get good tone and colour matching between your display and your printer. You need good colour management.
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You don't need a RIP to get good tone and colour matching between your display and your printer. You need good colour management.
Exactly. And the term RIP is getting some mistreatment too. There are substitute print drivers and there are true RIPs and they are not necessarily the same.