DICK32

Harry: If you're a good photographer you'll go to heaven. Keep shooting!

bebop22 Loc: New York City

I do like that pro 100 and have used for 5+ years. Just make sure to give it a run through every week. Nothing worse than clogged heads.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

I always send my wall hangers out to meridian pro labs so the can mount on double thickness board. I NEVER use mats on my photos

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

I always send my wall hangers out to meridian pro labs so the can mount on double thickness board. I NEVER use mats on my photos

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

Why not save all the costs associated with buying a printer, including the expensive inks and constant cleaning use of additional ink in that process and costly paper sizes you would need to keep stocked, and simply use a good quality Pro Lab that offers archival ink printing?

That saves you space, money and bother. It would be several years into the future before you came to a break-even point, if you ever do make it that far, over printing yourself compared to using a Pro Lab to do the work.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

"Lucian" That is just one of your choices in photography.

eric from Maine now Washington State

Please tell us where you saw the rating of Epson Claria inks at 100 years. The best I've seen is 30 to 50 years, but if we could honestly tell print buyers that our prints could last for 100 years that would be a "deal-breaker" (for pigment inks). My experience with the 8550 over the 6 months I've had it has been very positive. I suspect that earlier examples of the printer may have had bugs that were corrected by the time I bought mine. I believe my prints to be every bit as good as those I got from the 3800, and shrinking my ink cost by 80-90% has done wonders for my wallet. It seems essential to keep one's monitor well-calibrated. This can be done at no cost by downloading Monitor Calibration Wizard and using it once a month (more often if you notice drifting). I think that my new-found ability to make cheap - but still high-quality prints has helped make me a better photographer and printer after all these years.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

To truly calibrate a monitor, you need a colorimeter type HW calibration system such as a Datacolor Spyder Pro. No way to correctly do this with no cost SW only.

eric from Maine now Washington State

Sorry, but if one wants the images on his monitor to fully match the production from his printer, he does not need to spend large amounts of money or any money at all to achieve this. I happen to know this because I've used Monitor Calibration Wizard for 20 years and to this day I feel a sense of satisfaction when I see a newly made print match the monitor image in every respect. There is a learning curve after installing MCW; one mainly needs to fully understand the need for precision when using it. I do understand that some people want to believe that solving photographic problems requires lots of cash. But there are others who take pride in the quality of their work when, and particularly because, it is produced at a fraction of the cost with a little bit of learning and experimentation.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If your method satisfies you, that’s fine, but for accurate calibration, you need a device to actually measure the brightness of various colors projected on a screen and then create calibration parameters which are stored in the graphics card LUT. This is not something you can accurately do with your eye. It’s not about the need to spend money, it’s about accuracy. Again, if your method works for you, fine and well, but it’s not the recommended procedure for anyone who wants accurate prints.

eric from Maine now Washington State

You do have a cat at the top of your page which indicates that you're one of the good guys, but otherwise - I'm sorry to tell you - you're wrong in your assessment of the method of calibration that I described. It does work very well, and I'm certainly in the habit of making prints that match the monitor image, at least so far as it is possible for the two different sorts of images to match each other. You really ought to download it and try it out...you wouldn't be risking any of your current settings so long as you didn't click the button signifying acceptance of the new balance. You wouldn't necessarily get it right the first time, but after you get the hang of it I promise you'll be very surprised.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Thanks for the compliment about my Abby, but I think you’ll find the the professionals among us who have run printing businesses for a living disagree with you. The standard steps are: calibration of the monitor with a HW device, downloading and installing the correct ICC profile for the paper/printer involved, and perhaps most importantly, soft proofing, THAT is the industry standard practice. We will have to agree to disagree.

Cheers