Triggerhappy

We have HP printer that we were told would print good photos. Never has. We calibrated the HP with no good results. Yes, we have new inks in the printer.

We just purchased an EpsonWF3620 to print out some photos from the camera. We also calibrated our Mac monitor with a new colormunki Smile by x.rite Pantone.
Px is that neither the old or new printer is printing out any decent photos. We used photo paper. In fact, the new printer photos were more grainy that the old printer's photos.

Does anyone have any advice. I'm very frustrated with not being able to print any good photos.

blackest Loc: Ireland

The epson wf3620 is not really designed for photo printing more for office work. The reviews showed quite grainy pictures.

However if your pictures are not grainy on screen at 100% and don't need noise reduction try printing at 360 dpi that should be optimal for the epson.

If your pictures are too low resolution you will not get good results either.

really you want a printer not a multifunction machine usually with 5 or 6 inks.

Triggerhappy

Thanks for that information blackest. We may be returning it.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Calibrating your system means every step of your print process needs to be coordinated.

In general, these are your main points to printing photos in a calibrated way.

You don't calibrate your computer, you are calibrating the monitor to a specific color standard. Everything else you do after that relies on that calibration, because you are basing your print by what you see on the monitor.

The processing/printing software you use should be set to manage the color printing to the printer. Do not set the printer to manage color.

The software must have the correct ICC profile for your printer and paper combination, so the computer can give the printer the correct printing instructions.

The printer manufacturer will have ICC profiles available for download for each printer model and their branded paper.

If you are using third party paper, major photo paper manufacturers will have ICC profiles for their paper matched with most photo printers. Not so much for general purpose office printers.

Remember a photo on screen is usually brighter than the resulting print, because the screen is light coming from behind the image, prints are reflected light. So make brightness adjustments accordingly.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

:thumbup:

Don Fischer Loc: Antelope, Ore

I just checked B&H for that Epson printer. Yep, that's an office printer. I stay away from any printer that has the all in one stuff in it. If you spent the same money on a printer designed for photo, the extra money must be used for something other than all in one stuff. I am not an Epson fan but had a few of them. Also had a few HP's, HP used to make a good photo printer, I think they called them Photo Smart. I use Canon now and love my Canon. Both of mine are photo printer's and do a great job IMO. You spent some where around $150 for the Epson all in one. I don't see where B&H has an 8 1/2" Epson photo printer. But they do show a few Canon 8 1/2" photo printers. My iP100's only draw back is it doesn't seperate color ink cartridge's. But that didn't matter with that one to me. Highly portable and takes up very little room, make's great photo's. My other Canon is a 13" wide. Have had it three or four years now and it's been super. Has eight tanks if I remember right and probably a bit cheaper on ink, you only change the color your out of. The Canon iP7220 has individual tanks, four color and one black. List's for about $100 normally but B&H has them for $75 which includes a $15 rebate. See that Staples has them about the same price. Probably Adorama has about the same price. In it you only change the color you run out of. I have never calibrated a computer and have had good photo's. Have no idea what calibrating could do for me. I do lighten up print's some as I did notice the were brighter on my screen than what come's out of the printer.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

BTW I have an Epson Pro Printer for my Photos and an Epson all-in-one for the business use I do not print photos on the All-in-one. Also the reason I use the Epson All-in-one is that it is great on ink compared to my old HP all-in-one

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Trigger, there IS the possibility that, THAT is as good as your pics are going to get!
Why don't you post one here in the "store original" mode.
Not much use in getting printer after printer if it's the pic!!
Have you tried having one printed, at say Costco, to see if the result is better?
Good luck!! ;-)
SS

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

There are a lot of factors that could cause this. Monitor calibration is just one. Printer calibration is nice too. But then there's color space used during editing. What software you're printing from and whether it's printing using Windows color control or software control. Plus whether you are saving the file to be printed at enough PPI to provide enough data for the printer to spray ink at high enough DPI. If not, and the file is too small in resolution, your contrast in the print will be lacking because some dots that should have been printed on the paper were actually not printed and white is showing through because there wasn't enough data.

And as someone else said, you bought an office printer not optimized for photos. There are certainly Epson printers that are for that purpose and Epson is considered the best for that purpose if you buy the right one. They use 6 colors of ink that are separate cartridges so you can replace one at a time. All-in-one printers are compromises and not ultimately suited for photos.

Personally I packed mine up and put it in the garage. I have two Costco stores within a few miles of me and they use premium calibrated machines to create real photographic "wet" prints of my files up to "poster" size and then use an inkjet system for that. They also print for less than the cost of materials I have to buy to do it myself. And I don't print often enough to keep my printer ink jets from drying out and clogging up.

I just take an SD card with a 300 dpi 8X10 or 11X14 pre-sized JPG file that is barely compressed (level 11 in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro), and it may be 6MB in size. I have them print it while I suck down a Berry Smoothie at the deli (oh-oh, there goes my cost savings!) and that's it.

To calibrate myself to their equipment, I start with a single sheet of small shots that are edited with various brightnesses and contrasts and color saturations and find out which one prints closest to what I see at home. If your monitor is calibrated, their systems are calibrated daily, so it should be pretty close already.