[spooge demon]

Also the last of the knight series.



I also have a question, and I don't rely on the search because this stuff moves so fast.

What is a best printer for printing my kind of work for under 500 bucks? i know some here have much experience. never owned a printer. Thanks!

[iska]

Dont you dare stop posting these knights

About the printer.. I can recommend Canon BJC-8200 Photo bubblejet printer.. I recently bought one for work, it cost around $600, but I'm pretty convinced that it's $50-$100 cheaper there in the states.. It prints A4's and does really good job.. Specially if you buy special high gloss paper for it, it rocks. Check out this link for more information about it.

--iska

[Danny]

Hey Spooge...

Loved your ObiWan picture. Lovely polishing considering your detailing 'impatience'. Pleased to see some more subtlety in the texture. (As I wrote in that previous Monk thread) Anyway.. this is the wrong thread for this.. Onto your printer question.
I've been highly interested in quality printing for a very long time and have been gathering info on the matter for ages.
I've come to the conclusion that for output quality vs. price there is no beating current generation Epson printers.
I don't know exactly what you're looking for in a printer cos there are some things to consider. One of the most important things is print longevity. The problem with most current day digital prints is that they fade unacceptably quick when exposed to (sun)light. Epson has (amongst others) taken note of this and are now coming out with solutions to this problem. Recently they released the Epson 870 (a4) and the 1270 (a3) both with claims of 25 years lightfastness. Shock went through the printer community when reports started flooding in on colourshifting problems with the 1270. According to Epson themselves this has to do with the Paper/ink/Ozone combination in certain parts of the world and are working on a solution.
Anyway.. a few months ago they released the 2000p. A DIN A3 printer with an independantly tested (Wilhelm institute) print longevity claim of atleast 200+ years (provided you use the recommended Ink/paper combo). Reports so far have been excellent.
BTW.. all these printers are 6 colour devices which is cool as they have extra light Magenta and Light Cyan inks to give smoother transitions in bright areas. 6 Colour printers are however more subseptible to fading than their 4 colour cousins.
You should know however that you'll only get the very best quality from current day desktop printers if you use the right paper and ink combination. These printers prins dots with 1440x720 DPI resolutions. Using ordinary Xerox paper will result in puddles of ink. Usually the printer manufacturers provide the best ink and paper for their printers themselves. And this is actually where they make their profits. They know you need this paper and ink and they'll make you pay for it. You don't wanna know the gallon price for Inkjet inks, it's like buying liquid gold..
Best advice I can give you (on Epson printers atleast) would be to check out these following pages.
http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/index.html (good site with very objective tests)
http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/news/dot_comp.html (same site, VERY visual comparisment of multiple generation printers)
http://come.to/digitaldarkroom
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ Independant lab that tests longevity of paper ink combinations of printers
http://www.egroups.com/group/epson-inkjet Archive of the Epson-user mailinglist.. HIGHLY informative if you're really serious about your printing..

Let me know what choice you'll make. If you're interested I can send you a few prints I've done on my old Epson 740. I'm currently waiting for Epson to release a follow up to their 3000 so I can do archival full bleed A2 prints. Can't wait..

Hope this helps

Oh.. ps.. Word has it that 2880 x 720 DPI Epsons are soon to be released.. go figure..




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[LeChuck]

Its too flat. It needs more definition. At first all you see is a big dark blur, you need to stare at it for a while before you realize what you are looking at.

[Chapel]

Nice spooge. Your metallics are looking better and better.

[n8]

cool...a big fat ugly mask!!....hey spooge...u coming down to sydney nytime soon for car whores??...
fred is just full of wonderfull info aint he??

[This message has been edited by n8 (edited September 01, 2000).]

[mantis]

I must agree with LeChuck. This pic is a bit too sketchy. Adding color might help or taking out all the jagged sketch lines out of the armour and the shield would differentiate the bg and the knight itself.



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[Rinaldo]

Spooge- nice dented metal you've got going there. It could do with a bit more contrast, I'm lossing comprehension in places. Danny's info is very good so I'll not reiterate. I have an Epson 1160 and While it gives good results I yearn for the sighteless dots that the 1270 and 2000p suposedly yeild.

Danny- Do you have any info on colour calabration for print. I saw what Loki wrote a while back on calibration but he didn't really go into print. (top stuff anyway loki ) I am mostly interested in inkjet results but the problem is also that I need to be able to print profesionaly both offset and digital. This involves a lot of ICC stuff and I've been looking into it but was just wondering if you had any tips/info/placese to go on the subject.
Good info on the printers btw. some stuff in there that I wasn't aware of

Cheers

[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited September 01, 2000).]

[phreaknasty]

no disrespect intended but i couldn't disagree more with the assertion that this painting is too sketchy...

i have to run to work but.... i'll be back with a full scale diatribe.

[beekay-]

I have a very very nice printer... check out http://www.alps.com ... i have the Alps MD-5000P MicroDry printer... the ink is fade proof, waterproof, and prints photographic up to 2400dpi ... works on 4 color process .... my 2c..

beekay...

[arioch]

I would have to agree about the epson printers. Although I havent done any research in a couple of years so there may be something better out on the market. Ive had good luck with epson photo stylus printers.

Your images are always inspiring. In addition from lurking on the forum and watching the posts from you and fred I have learned A LOT. Thanks for sharing.

[Frost]

Craig: We love seeing your sketch work. Don't think for a second they are not appreciated.

cheers,
frost.

[Danny]

Hey Rinaldo,

yeah.. the calibration issue is quite something. An endless struggle if you ask me. Basically what you want is colour reliability. What you see on your monitor is exactly what you want to see when the paper rolls out of the printer. Tricky stuff really. So many diffirent devices come into play, diffirent types of ink, paper and everything changes the equation and therefore the output.
There are several software packages outthere than let you 'remedy' this. Basically what it comes down to is that they create a profile for your specific system taking into account what type of monitor you have, what kind of printer, scanner, what paper you're using, ink.. etc. This profile plugs into the colourmanagement part of your printer drivers and adjusts your printer's colour-application so that your prints look like you want them to.... In theory.. In practise it's a totally diffirent story. I'm by no means an expert with Profiling, but what it comes down to is that you print your image on the printer of choice with paper you intend to use and then scan in the printed image with your flatbed scanner. Then the software compares this scan to your monitor settings, your scanner settings and calculates the diffirences and offers a solution in the form of an ICC profile. You apply the ICC profile, reprint and you should end up with a satisfying result.
As I already said, there are quite a few packages out there that'll allow you to do this. Apparently the best Software at the moment is 'Matchlock' from a company called Horses. Inkjetmall sells it. Go to http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/ or to http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/Matchlok.html for a direct link.

This is basically all I can say about the whole procedure as I don't have any hands on experience with it myself. I just usually tweak the Color Balance sliders in PhotoShop to manually get the desired colours I want. Not the most accurate in the world, but still good enough for me.. I intend to take this more serious in the future.

Beekay, the Alps is a nice printer yeah. The reason I won't buy one is that I hear a lot of complaints about users that get banding errors. Also the gamut their pigmented ink ribbon system offers isn't as big as dye inks. And I prefer the inkjet-look over the somewhat Laserprint looking Alps.. There's also not a very big market for Alps supplies. Epson seems to be the most supported printer with the paper, ink, gadget manufacturers. Nonetheless, the Gold, metal printing option is *very* cool indeed.. I wish Epson would offer something similar

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[Rinaldo]

Thanks Danny, much apreciated.

Ok this is how far I've managed to get with the whole thing (if anyone's interested)
I recently got the corel draw Premium colour edition, and it comes with one of those Monitor Luminance sensors that you put up to your screen and it measures some colours that are flashed across the screen. I tried it out and it gave ok results but I screwed up my settings messing with adobe gamma and lost the profile I'd been using for ages. Then I chose some option in Adobe gamma that is recomended for preepress. BAM everyhing was screwed, my stuff looked totaly different couldn't get it to look right. Heh..I got it looking ok in the end but the thing is that the Monitor Luminance sensor gives results that don't match up with the rgb squares in Adobe gamma. (don't know what this signifies but anyway)
I mean in the end it's ok becuase It looks good on my screen and the few others that I get a chance to use. But the Profesionsal printing thing is scary. I thought that Adobe press ready looked good becuase of the way it could put out a PDF that could be used by a print house. but The printers it supports are stupidly limmited.
Coerel Draw PCE comes with some hiedleberg software. what it does is sets up yuur screen via the method I mentiond above (it may not be working in my case for a number of reasons that I have not yet checked out)
Then it sets up your scanner. You scan a colour chart provided by agfa. save as tiff and use it with the software. it reads some data provided by agfa that says what colour the chart is supposed to be. and then checks that against the one you scaned. sees whats wrong and then makes an ICC profile to correct it. Simple. I haven't really got any need for thins tho becuase I don't really scan that much.
Ok second thing it does is gets you to print out a chart on your inkjet (don't know the specifics becuase I have't done this part yet) and then you read the printed colours with a spectrophotometor (blah) and put them back into the software. it then works out the difference between what it knows the values to be and what you have given it. makes an ICC for your printer. But you don't get a spectrophotometor with CD. Why? becuase it costs about a grand! Damn.
All I really want is to be able to see the correct colours on my screen. then I can just print out a shit load of tests and adjust it to give me what I see on screen in the Epson software and save the settings.
Unless you go to a fancy offset house they are'nt going to give you any sort of colour managment service anyway. It all depends on what colour ink they put in the press to begin with. Digital offset or otherwise Digital pro printing is a bit of a worry, but I'll just have to grin and bare it .
Anyway If I have any luck I'll tell everyone about it. I think the next step will be geting a stable working envorment with proper lights etc.

It just gave me fright when I stuffed up the settings. I mean how do I know that my stuff doesn't look like that on other people's machines? I mean it COULD and you would all be thinking I totaly suck instead of being just crap

Rambling again *sigh* just thought it might give you a few more ideas or something. If anyone has THE answer to this then don't hesitate to jump in.

L8r

[Anthony]

I tend to think that Spooge wanted the effect of not seeing what it is instantly. After all, it is a knight in a dark forest, so it's supposed to be a tad scary, which means confusion, unknown, etc. Then again, he could have just screwed up.

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[jeStaGuy]

Hi Craig. I enjoyed the picture. If I had to critique, I would recommend deviding the planes of space a bit more. The shades of gray for the background plane, middleground plane (the knight) and the foreground plane (the shield) all seem to share values. It would be great for those values to focus us to the face(if that's the major point of attention) letting the shield cradle the lower half of the painting and the trees resting backward.

As far as printers, I can't recommend the Epson 1270 enough. It's the best printer for 500 bucks--period. Six colors with the opportunity for archival paper. I hope that helps. Take care.

jesta. http://www.digitaljester.com

[milano_j]

Ok for people pointing out things like:

"It's a big dark blur I dono what it is!"
ect.

I'd like to see you do that in 10-15 minutes.

This is (I assume) what spooge considers his 'sketches' and it's just a quick sketch with the wacom, it's VERY NICE - not the attention to detail (that too) but how he does it so fast with no photo reference.

Spooge, keep posting your stuff !

[Worthy]

spooge! there is a dye-sub printer made by ALPS (dont know the model number) that is 500 bucks or less. it rocks! i dont have it..but my good friend does..and..it produces top shelf stuff. course..if yer jsut printing out emails or something..uh..thats another matter entirely

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Viewpoint Digital

[Flexible Elf]

It just looks different because it's visually busy.. but it's in black and white and there are far less tones (obviously) to work with.. if it was in color I think the pic would have 213049730 replies already

But I think the black and white gives it a more eerie feel.. reminds me a little of 'Seven Samurai'. Great stuff as always spooge.

-Flexible Elf

[Gambit]

Yea, I like this one Mr. Spooge. Great stuff. Thanks for putting it up. Good luck on finding a printer. Danny had great suggestions, he did his homework

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[Sergenth]

As far as printers go, I have a Lexmark 3200 from Staples. It was only $100 and prints at 1400x600 dpi I believe. The ink is very expensive though -- $30+ for a litle Black or CMY cartridge, so go the refill kit route if you like needles and ink stains all over.

It's good as a beginner's printer I think. Friendly software as far as changing the printer settings, but not dumbed down.

I printed scanned 4x5 photographs for my dad on fun glossy film and it has really nice contrast. They were printed at 455 dpi or so. I can hold it 18' away from my eyes and I don't see ink dots at all. Any closer though and my eagle sharp near-sighted vision picks up trace vestiges of ink-jet dottage.

I don't know if it really goes past 600 dpi though, photoshop doesn't show any numbers greater than that. I think this would be a good, inexpensive printer to show your work to the "Bar S'mores - PreppieSoda 2" folks :P

Anybody else out there have something good or bad to say about this printer?

[AliasMoze]

Don't go, Spooge. Keep posting! Your work is the reason I got into digital painting, and your presence here is what got me to sign up. Thank-you for your many kindnesses.

I like this image allot actually. There is a simple graphic quality to all of your stuff that baffles my primitive mind. This image looks like a cross between an old b & w sci-fi movie and a medieval movie.

Regarding printers, I like the new HP printers. Don't know the model numbers, but the series has a brown flipup lid on the front. And an 8.5 x 11 one is about $400. The print quality can go to photo quality. Check it out if you haven't already.

[Danny]

Perhaps one final word before I ship myself to the UK for the weekend.
For those not too experienced with printing.. all those DPI numbers can be somewhat confusing. 720dpi, 1440, 2880.. That doesn't automatically mean your image in PhotoShop needs to be the same DPI. Thank god.. What those numbers indicate is how accurately the printer is able to position it's ink drops. It has nothing to do with ink droplet size or pixel size. I've found that for printing your images without actual pixels visible (not ink drops!) your image should be set up in PhotoShop at atleast 220-240 DPI. Preferably 300 DPI. This is the DPI setting in PS's Image->Image Size menu.
I did a test once to see if there was a quality diffirence between printing a 300 DPI image and a 720 DPI image. Both scaled down from the same source image. Letting the printer operate at 1440x720 HQ setting on special inkjet paper. Conclusion: 300 DPI is high enough. So no need for outrageous resolutions.. (look who's talking.. )

Right.. I'm off.. back in a few days..

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