Surecolor P400 printer resolution 5760 x 1440 dpi for Nik Output Sharpening plug

[FrankG]

The Epson specs say the printer has a resolution of 5760 x 1440
"MicroPiezo AMC one-inch-wide print head with a 1.5pL minimum droplet size and ink-repellent coating, the P400 can produce finely detailed images with a resolution of 5760 x 1440 dpi"

My question is - where in the printing workflow where I would enter this resolution ?

I have NikSharpener Pro Output Sharpener plug-in for Photoshop where one of the fields is  to fill in is the printer resolution (see screenshot).
Is there any reason not to enter 5760x1440 ?

Other fields are
1. printing type - inkjet, contone etc
2. viewing distance (specific or auto)
3. Paper type (matte, gloss etc)

[Rand47]

I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding influencing your question.

Read this:

https://support.finerworks.com/help-my-prints/printer-resolution-vs-digital-image-resolution/

Then buy Jeff Schewe’s book, “The Digital Print.”

https://smile.amazon.com/Digital-Print-Preparing-Lightroom-Photoshop/dp/0321908457/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Digital+Print&qid=1560431482&s=gateway&sr=8-1

All the best . . .

Rand

[FrankG]

For printing, I always size my prints to the desired dimensions at 360 dpi for epson printers. For c-prints (& inkjet) prints at lab they usually want 300 dpi.

My question is specifically what printer res to fill in the 'printer res' field for Nik Output Sharpener, where the drop down menu choices are like 1440, 2880, etc

See new screenshot with menu

[Ryan Mack]

Hi FrankG,

Yes, you are correct. That field is for the actual printer resolution. I'm not sure it makes much of a difference it will make compared to just putting 1440x1440 but it should be easy enough for you to run it on two identical input images compare the results with the two settings. I'd be curious to know the results.

I think what Rand47 may be concerned with though is that there's a second thing that's more important you may be missing which is the image resolution you are sending to the printer driver. You should size your image to the correct inches and specify the correct image pixels per inch in photoshop using the Resize Image function before running Sharpener Pro. I generally will resize using Preserve Detail to my printer's maximum image resolution of 600ppi at the desired output size. Sharpener Pro relies on the pixels per inch data coming from photoshop in a significant way to configure the sharpening parameters. Some people may argue it's not worth interpolating the image to a higher resolution (you can change resolution without scaling the image) but going from 300ppi to 600ppi on my printer I can see a reduction on stair stepping on angled edged when looking through a loupe (not that anyone else will ever do that).

Hope that helps, Ryan

[Ryan Mack]

Hi FrankG,

Your second message came in while I was typing my response. It sounds like you've got the resize bit down too. Just be sure you do that before you run Sharpener and do make sure that you have the inches/PPI set correctly, not just the total number of pixels.

-Ryan

[nirpat89]

Various quality levels in P400 correspond to what dpi the printer will be printing at - the highest being 5760x1440 at level 5 (SuperPhoto) and high speed un-checked.  So my guess is you have to match the  printing conditions that are going to be used. 

[FrankG]

"Various quality levels in P400 correspond to what dpi the printer will be printing at - the highest being 5760x1440 at level 5 (SuperPhoto)"
Not clear about this ? I also think it's different on Windows as I don't see that on my Mac.

[nirpat89]

"Various quality levels in P400 correspond to what dpi the printer will be printing at - the highest being 5760x1440 at level 5 (SuperPhoto)"
Not clear about this ? I also think it's different on Windows as I don't see that on my Mac.

Yeah....just to torture their customers, they probably call the same thing by a different name on Macs.