I just got a picture printer; you got tips?

[Philip]

Birthday present from my wife: an Epson PictureMate printer.  Nice, and it will help reduce my costs of obsessive picture-taking. . . I hope.  

I've now got a full complement of tools for the (chemical-challenged) person who wants to keep shooting film in the 21st century: a flat-bed/transparency scanner, a 35-mm film scanner, and a photo printer, decent at least for 4x6 colour proofs.

I've got it running and am pleased with the preliminary results although I haven't tested its b&w capabilities yet.  But I'm wondering if anyone has any off-the-top-of-your-head tips for using a printer like this.  Are there things with the levels in PS (or what I use: PaintShop Pro mainly) that I should always do, or avoid?  Any must-dos and must-nots?  Cheaper ways to get ink/paper? ...

[cenelson]

I've got one that died on me after roughly 750 prints. Not died, but the head is gummed bad, can't get a good print.

Clean it, keep it closed and covered when not in use. It's a fine little printer, but if you got a dusty house, be warned. There's no way that I can see to self-service this thing.

[Philip]

Clean it, keep it closed and covered when not in use. It's a fine little printer, but if you got a dusty house, be warned.

Ikes. That's good to know. I've got a cat and had cat-balled-Toshiba-laptop syndrome (like you) a few months ago. Thanks.

[Don Day]

This printer defines the standard scanning workflow that I do--I usually start with the 4x6 target size first and try a test print before I go for any larger scan.  

There is not much prep for the PictureMate other than to use a 300dpi scan in a 4x6 preset frame to best match the scan to the printer. I use the histogram and contrast tools before each scan to improve on the default settings in my Epson Scan software.  After the scan, I often use the noise/dust filter in Elements first to just null out the smallest motes (so as not to affect sharpness) and thereby make the remaining spot removal go more quickly with the clone tool.  After I save this version as a 10-quality JPEG, I do a resizing to 100dpi for a clean web version which I save with a -web suffix in the filename (at 7-quality to make the download reasonably smaller).

For the PictureMate, I find that I get far more than the standard 100-sheets worth of output from each reload package. It has had much less head clogging than I've had with my Epson 820, which will be my next upgrade project.

[Philip]

There is not much prep for the PictureMate other than to use a 300dpi scan in a 4x6 preset frame to best match the scan to the printer.

That's something I'm pretty sloppy about -- matching the scan with the output.  I guess I better fix that.

Thanks, too, Don, for the work-flow suggestions. I tend to follow through the idiot-proof but not-very-subtle things that Paint Shop Pro offers the simpleton/newbie user like me. I'll start trying to pick up the histogram etc. as tools.  

Are there sources of non-Epson paper to use in an Epson printer?  Or is it all really just "the same"?

[Kin Lau]

The best/most economical 4x6 paper I've used, is Epson Premium Glossy in a 100 sheet value pack...that's considering that my printer is a Canon i860.

For larger sizes, I use Canon Matte in 8.5x11 letter size and cut it down if necessary. This stuff is _very_ cheap.

Generally tho, I use an online service to print my 4x6's, it's actually cheaper than printing myself.

[Don Day]

It's true that Epson charges a premium for their own paper and inks, but so does everyone in the printer business. I played around with "Great Quality" brand paper and refill cartidges from Fry's, but the colors were off.  I decided too that if my prints were good enough to go into someone's scrapbook, they may as well be the best quality. When you use the Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper in the 4x6 size, its the same as the initial stack that comes in the PictureMate Print Pack. This combination is rated, according to Epson's tests, to last longer than I'll be around. For papers that feed into the Epson PictureMate, I'd stick with the pre-cut 4x6 again... like Craig, I am suspect of feeding slivers or off-size material into a place that I can't get at for cleaning.

Truthfully, I'm not an Epson rep... regardless of the printer, its just good sense for long life prints to use the manufacturer's recommended materials, and not to cross brands of ink or paper, as the two are often formulated to have maximal absorption and consistent tones. For office printing onto cheap repro paper, any ink will do.

My wife and I took my PictureMate on vacation this summer, and we enjoyed selecting pictures in the hotel room and printing them each day. Later, we visited our relatives and scanned and printed old family pictures right then and there. That convenience aspect made me feel much better about outlay for materials. And since I have experienced getting over 150 prints per cartridge, the cost per print is closer to that of other services (other than not being real photo prints).

I think you have to weigh your own cost vs convenience vs quality factors and decide. These are just the reasons why I basically factored Print Packs and extra paper into my photo consumables budget.

[MichaelHarris]

Phillip I had one and it made nice prints, even some pretty good B&W ones.  The only problem I had was resizing images, they all tried to zoom in to fit.  That wasn't the printers fault it was mine not reading the instuctions and stuff.

[Philip]

Phillip I had one and it made nice prints, even some pretty good B&W ones.

Michael, I've tested a couple of b&w prints now using the Epson PictureMate's Greyscale versus Colour settings.  The Greyscale setting seems a little more neutral, but both have a colour cast.  The cast was bluish as Greyscale, and greenish as Colour.  Did you find this, too?  I'd like to be able to make a "truer" b&w.

The only problem I had was resizing images, they all tried to zoom in to fit.

I haven't figured out the edges of the pictures yet -- there seems to be a slight mismatch between what I see on the screen and what actually appears on the print.   . . . learning, learning, learning.

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[Don Day]

Philip, Make sure the prints are really dry before you compare them--takes about 10 min or more in an open room.  You might also follow the process for testing and possibly then cleaning the heads just to ensure that you are firing on all nozzles.  My black prints come out quite neutral--never had a color cast if I chose the B&W option.

If you are using borderless option, use the bottom layout choice in that final screen (which I think comes from Windows, not the Epson software)--this will  literally image all the paper regardless of aspect ratio. The fax layout tends to ensure that the entire image is sized down to fit on the paper, so if your image is short in one direction, those edges will be white in the fax form.

My digicam produces more of a 4x5 aspect ratio, for example, so when I produce true borderless 4x6 output on them, the long sides of the image are partly cropped off. When I use the fax option, I get the whole image, but the 4x6 paper has white strips at the ends that the image did not stretch into--I just trim these off, and the result is very close to 4x5.

If you print with borders, the same behaviors seem to apply, except that the minimum 1/8" edge is always present--its as if you are just printing to slightly smaller paper size. In graphics terms, it is printing to a smaller viewport centered on the paper's "world coordinate system," and the behaviors within that viewport are the same as when in the borderless option (where the viewport is the same size as the paper).  I hope this helps explain some expectations of the output from the printer.

[Philip]

Just a note for those interested: I have tested my new Epson PictureMate photo printer with both Epson paper and "Fujifilm Premium Photo Paper." The Epson paper gives surprisingly higher contrast and saturation than the Fuji paper.  This of course is not necessarily a bad thing....
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