Inkjet vs emulsion printers

Charlie Gast · April 14, 2005

I have been getting great results with a profiled Epson 2200. I spoke with the owner of a local lab who uses a printer which uses emulsion film. It prints from digital files to actual color photo paper. He said the Fuji frontier is inferior to what he uses. He also said his prints have 200 year longevity. I asked if it was acid free paper and he didnt know.
I do know that when I print on 100% cotton acid free buffered paper like epson ultra smooth it will last quite well with a thin laquer coating.
Anyone hear have any experience with digital photos printed to emulsion paper?
I think his printer is made by Toshiba.

Charlie

pathfinder · April 14, 2005

Charlie Gast wrote:

I have been getting great results with a profiled Epson 2200. I spoke with the owner of a local lab who uses a printer which uses emulsion film. It prints from digital files to actual color photo paper. He said the Fuji frontier is inferior to what he uses. He also said his prints have 200 year longevity. I asked if it was acid free paper and he didnt know.
I do know that when I print on 100% cotton acid free buffered paper like epson ultra smooth it will last quite well with a thin laquer coating.
Anyone hear have any experience with digital photos printed to emulsion paper?
I think his printer is made by Toshiba.

Charlie

I have heard good reports about the Epson ultrasmooth fine art paper. What are you using to coat it with after printing? What laquer do you use, and does it change the color/tint at all?
To date I have not coated my matte prints, but the can be marred easily with handling and a protective coating would nice.

Charlie Gast · April 14, 2005

pathfinder wrote:

I have heard good reports about the Epson ultrasmooth fine art paper. What are you using to coat it with after printing? What laquer do you use, and does it change the color/tint at all?
To date I have not coated my matte prints, but the can be marred easily with handling and a protective coating would nice.

I use Premier Art Print Shield from inkjetart.com. It slightly increases the saturation. On matte papers the difference is less and barely noticable. It is more noticable on semi gloss papers but still only a slight change. I spray it on in three light coats about 10 minutes apart. It dries very quickly. The matte papers seem to soak it right in . I want to seal in the ink to protect it from oxidizing and UV light.
I switched from Hahnemuhle 308 to ultrasmooth 325 because of flaking with the 308. I recently printed some images with alot of flat black background and found small flakes in a few places on the 325. I had to reprint three times to get one without any flake in the black background.

If you want to go to the absolute extreme in protection of your prints take a look at this http://www.livick.com/method/inkjet/pg2d2.htm

Charlie

mercphoto · April 14, 2005

Charlie Gast wrote:

I have been getting great results with a profiled Epson 2200. I spoke with the owner of a local lab who uses a printer which uses emulsion film. It prints from digital files to actual color photo paper. He said the Fuji frontier is inferior to what he uses. He also said his prints have 200 year longevity. I asked if it was acid free paper and he didnt know.

Hmmm... not sure how much trust I would put into some who says their thing is leaps and bounds over a Fuji Frontier, and yet doesn't know if his paper is acid free or not. I'd be leary.

Anyone hear have any experience with digital photos printed to emulsion paper?

No, but I'm not certain with that reply either. I'll admit I'm a bit confused by the various types of hi-end printers. For example, ofoto.com, which is now Kodak, actually uses a silver halide process for digital prints. I think this is what you mean by emulsion paper, no? I have done a few photos that route, and it is impressive. I have not, though, tried a Smugmug (i.e. Fuji) print and did the same through Kodak to compare. On the other hand, all the Kodak prints get their "perfect touch" processing, so I'm not sure what the results would be.

If anybody has a good, clear explanation of the difference between a Fuji "lightjet" and a silver halide type print I'd love to be informed.

Charlie Gast · April 14, 2005

The printer I am asking about is made by Noritsu. It prints on silver halide paper. Kodaks super endura paper. They give it a life expectancy of about 200 years. It prints from srgb color space. I shoot in adobe98 since it is supposed to give larger gamut.

Charlie[/QUOTE]

mercphoto · April 14, 2005

Charlie Gast wrote:

The printer I am asking about is made by Noritsu. It prints on silver halide paper. Kodaks super endura paper. They give it a life expectancy of about 200 years. It prints from srgb color space. I shoot in adobe98 since it is supposed to give larger gamut.

But you convert to sRGB before printing, correct?

I believe the Noritsu is what CostCo uses. I've used that printer a lot, and it is quite impressive. CostCo's printer can go to 12x18, and at a very attractive price of about $4.

As far as color gamuts go, that is a religious debate to be sure. Search the DGrin forums and you will find a wealth of information. Long story short, adobe98 is definitely a wider gamut than sRGB, but that is not always a good thing. I shoot almost entirely in sRGB space. I'm seldom out of gamut for the things I photograph, and I don't do a lot of image manipulation. For those reasons I see no reason for me to photograph in anything other than sRGB from the get-go.

I wouldn't tell everyone to shoot in sRGB. For some types of photography it isn't ideal. Then again, those who say everyone should shoot in adobe98 are being foolish.

Charlie Gast · April 14, 2005

Bill,

I always shoot in adobe and raw. I convert to 16(12)bit and after color adjustement go to 8bit. I print from adobe98 too. I doubt that for 9 out of 10 images I would be able to see a difference anyway. I don't shoot professionally so I have lots of time on my hands to be a perfectionist.
I'll need to compare some epson vs noritsu and make up my mind. The new r1800epson does not look that much better than the 2200 I am using now. The yellow colors come up noticalbly short in tests I've seen published and they waste on ink cart position with a clear coat cartridge. I just spray them 24 hrs after printing. I think 10 ink positions are what would be needed to get me to upgrade.

mercphoto · April 14, 2005

Charlie Gast wrote:

I always shoot in adobe and raw. I convert to 16(12)bit and after color adjustement go to 8bit. I print from adobe98 too. I doubt that for 9 out of 10 images I would be able to see a difference anyway.

Sounds as if you are printing from home. If you are printing from home, and printing from a color-aware application such as PSCS, then as long as you have the color spaces consistent then you won't notice a difference. However, if you have a file in Adobe98, and ship it off to a sRGB print provider, your colors will be wrong. There is no way around that. That is what color spaces are all about: what color does the tuple (107, 32, 217) map to? They are different colors in different color spaces.

Charlie Gast · April 14, 2005

I was planning on setting my colorspace to sRGB to get the color correction before going to a lab. What I meant was that I doubt I would see much difference between the two when printing at home. I am not sure how much of the extra gamut provided by adobe98 would actually show up on paper.

mercphoto · April 14, 2005

Charlie Gast wrote:

I was planning on setting my colorspace to sRGB to get the color correction before going to a lab. What I meant was that I doubt I would see much difference between the two when printing at home. I am not sure how much of the extra gamut provided by adobe98 would actually show up on paper.

Ah. Understood. And I agree with you. In fact, one justification for sRGB's creation was that aRGB was wider than monitors and papers in the first place, so what good was a wide gamut? I believe paper and ink technology is advancing beyond sRGB now, but I'm not sure how many of my photos are outside of sRGB, so I'm still not sure what benefit I would get from it.

Inkjet vs emulsion printers

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