To remind, EPL brings all the settings needed to make a print into one handy user-interface.
My summary judgment on the whole B&W story, as to what plays better between CB ON versus CB OFF and ABW ON versus ABW OFF, boils down to two simple observations: (1) Where the maximum Black density the printer can deliver is considered desirable, do use CB with the papers that it supports.
The first bit of specialty tape one encounters is outside the box, having the name Epson imprinted throughout. ABW provides a bit of contrast boost in this tone area, but not much. So, if you are in the market for a new printer and you were thinking of either an SC-P900 or an SC-P5000 and space were an issue, this gives you an idea of how they compare. The Profile Black Point (CB ON) for the SC-P900 is about one L* level less Black compared with that for the same paper in the SC-P800 printer, but within a range of L*2 to L*3, its insignificant and please see the more important evidence of printed results just below.
In the case of Hahnemuehle Bamboo, the company recommends Epson Velvet Fine Art paper as the appropriate choice (Figure EMI 3). I happened to have recently completed a photo-shoot of another fabulous Nick Sweetman mural in downtown Toronto and thought his violet warthog with the swathes of blue paint through it may do the trick (Figure 60).
By the way, working in ABW mode, there is also access to CB for gloss/luster papers. I selected borderless printing because I wanted to see whether this printer would really do that accurately and without making a mess. Figures 35 (Case H) and 36 (Case I) provide a graphical comparison of the difference between highly satisfactory and less satisfactory outcomes respectively. So here goes.
I selected the case of CB OFF and High-Speed OFF, using Epson Legacy Platine (Figure 49).
However, the manual provides no guidance on how to move from a USB installation to a wireless network installation; its doable as Ill demo at the end of the review. Much as I appreciate the artistic feel and non-glare surface of the finer matte papers, normally I dont print on them because I prefer the larger tonal range (deeper Blacks) and larger gamut volume of, say, luster coatings.
On the main site, look for more visits with some very well-known photographers where well share their vision in our series Shooting with the Masters. There will be exclusive, behind the scenes segments where well bring you things you havent seen before. The two primary sets of considerations are relative print quality and feature sets.
Contrary to the ambiguity in the manual, we should load all Epson fine art papers less than 0.5mm other through the top sheet feeder. I also printed the Onsight target on Epson Legacy Fibre in SC-P900 and I was truly impressed with how closely the results resembled those from the Platine paper, insofar as Legacy Fibre is a matte paper (Figure 67, a photograph of the printed target, unadjusted). The only difference this causes is that printing from the SC-P5000 is faster.
I shall be examining that with real photographs below. Generally speaking, a profiling result will test more accurately when the same instrument and printer are used to both make and evaluate a profile, compared to when they differ between making the profile and evaluating it. As with all matters of the heart, youll know when you find it. So, Ill do that here, because roughly is more information than nothing. I tried to replicate their demonstration with my own test, making one print with CB ON and another the same but with CB OFF, and comparing (Figure 58). But with a couple of assumptions and a bit of work we can figure it out roughly.
Paper with edge curl can skew the page toward the end of the print, printing the remainder at an angle. So the remaining question is whether Dark would be a satisfactory mid-point setting not too dark, not too bright.
The printers small footprint will be handy for those with serious space constraints. I include several comparisons from SC-P800 data.
Your support is critical to the success and future of photoPXL. Well get to that.
The faint blue and faint orange sections of Figure 33 indicate how these profiles and the varied printing conditions perform on paper.
For this paper, there are eight possible configurations to explore.
It is also supposed to improve contrast and reduce bronzing and gloss differential neither of which I found problematic in the predecessor printers. It performs a lot of installation seamlessly. The five main parameters of print quality are color gamut, color rendition, Blacks and shadow tones, detail rendition, and smoothness of tonal gradations. Just to get a feel for the sheer difference of gamut volume between the printer profiles relative to the image colour contents, I examined it all in ColorThink Pro (CTP) (Figures 61, 62, and 63). As a number of people making prints value linearity and neutrality in the grayscale and Epson themselves have devoted considerable effort to the B&W experience, I provide a more detailed analysis of the grayscale in the form of my granular 100 patches (L*1~100) grayscale evaluation targets, disaggregated into three sections, one each for dark, medium and light tones (Figure 29 for my custom profile).
I examined these questions only for the Dark tones, which will have to serve as an indicator for the rest (Figure 48).
In Figure 24 we can see the near identity of gamut shape between the two profiles and the slightly larger gamut volume of the OEM profile, except for the dark blue/purple colors, where the Mark profile shows through the wireframe depicting the OEM profile. Linearity is quite well-preserved in both renderings; however, in both, there is a cross-over between printed and target values in the highlights occurring in the range of L*85 in order to produce a smooth transition into the media white point. Click on the + (my Black arrow) to create a new name, type in a name for the size preset (I use the dimensions). Maximum Blacks are the same and typical for this paper. I use the dE metric for assessing numerically the impact of inaccuracy on standard observers perception of color differences. The data for patches 35, 36, and 37 are excluded because they are deep Blacks out of gamut for this paper (and matte papers in general). The manual says that if one replaces a cartridge part way through printing, the colour may differ slightly once it resumes. The SCP-5000 has an overall much wider color gamut, especially over the portion of the hue spectrum ranging from red/orange through yellow/green.
Ill leave that decision in your hands!
The Black points differ little between the options.
Once this process finishes, as indicated, it turns the printer off and on again, and leaves you with the LCD Home screen, ready to print. The most common suite of photos I use for demonstrating printing conditions with new printers and papers are: (1) the Atkinson Printer Test Page, (2) The BVDM Roman 16 low-key B&W image for dark tones, (3) The Roman 16 high-key B&W image for highlights and (4) other photographs for illustrating other particular results of interest. All currently included Media Types and Media are listed. But do be aware, this is my estimate based on the stated assumptions nothing Epson has blessed or even had anything to do with.
That is probably what I like most about photography.
For the most part, the extent of non-linearity is not likely to be disturbing in real photographs; however, I would be attentive to the extent of the jump between Levels 4 and 5 in the result with CB ON.
Mark has been making photographs for the past six decades and started adopting a digital workflow in 1999 first with scanning film, then going fully digital in 2004.
(As a side note, in case anyone is thinking about a choice between the SC-P900 and SC-P5000: the SC-P5000 is a different class of printer meant for a high-volume production market, viz.
Both the two- and three-dimension projections tell the same story.
Adding it all up, per standard print in CAD: Ink 0.74 (uncertain), Total 2.36 (In USD excluding sales taxes: 1.55). This quote from Steve Jobs, as well as the support of family, friends, and loyal followers from many years are what inspired me to create this new website that is dedicated to photography.
There are advances in the print head: 3 droplet sizes per nozzle in a single pass; variable droplet sizes as small as 1.5 picolitres; ink repelling coating to reduce clogging risk.
For discussing Figure 33, the cases are identified by their column letter at the very top row of the Figure.
(Figure 45 provides some summary numerical data.) That is because these functions are not primarily aimed at achieving any particular standard of accuracy. The closer these values are to zero, the more accurate is the overall rendition on average, and the more satisfying the B&W tonality should be, in respect of both tone and hue bias. For Legacy Platine Paper, 49 square inches printed: (a) CB ON, High Speed OFF: 19 minutes, 47 seconds; (b) CB and High Speed both OFF: 9 minutes; (c) CB and High Speed both ON: 6 minutes. Because this is a matte paper, CB is not an available option, so it is greyed out even when selecting Quality Options, which opens everything that can be user-determined.
I turn now to the comparison of Cases F and H (Figures 50 and 51, Dark tones to Highlights Left to Right), this time with ABW_Darker ON. are good. Its very clear. What matters to printer economics about starter ink is how much remains in the cartridges after the initial fill. There is also hue bias and hue inconstancy throughout the scale in both cases with ABW, more so than seen in Case H without ABW, but it is all contained within a fairly low range, so the numbers and the bars may look worse than they would appear in printed photographs.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
These are simple differences of printed versus reference values that would generally be smaller if measured with dE(2000).
The EMI allows me to create a Media Type linked with my custom ICC profile that I can subsequently pull-up every time I want to use this paper in this printer.
As before, High Speed enables bi-directional printing (I assess it further on).
Many are good; in fact, many have been created and run by friends of mine. It will look like this opened: A dialog will come up asking you to select the appropriate generic media, which in our case is Fine Art Paper: The text in the Description on the LCD tells you to insert the paper lining-up the sheet with the front edge of the tray.
These are all conducted in ABSCOL to isolate the native behavior of the printer driver without the influence of application-induced colorimetric adjustments. CB ON provides a slightly deeper Black point (less than an L* Level) versus CB OFF. I think it more meaningful to show photos of the prints rather than JPEGs converted from raw files in the computer because those would not show whats on paper.
Three paper options are of interest here: The ABW workflow in the Epson driver serves a different purpose from the more usual Application-Managed workflows using ICC profiles.
There are quite a few mini-steps here, but this is easy to do and youll accomplish it in less time than it takes to read all this unless you speed-read.
When I did the P800 work about 4 years ago, I was using an i1Pro2 spectrophotometer, while I am now using an i1Pro3.
The following sequence of illustrations shows how the process unfolds using the top feed, or what Epson calls the rear feed, but is really on top of the printer. The small package in bubble-wrap at the back is a spare maintenance tank.
To construct the options for analysis shown with more detail in Figure 33, I culled several from Figure 32 and added two new cases. In ABSCOL mode, we can see comparing the left (CB ON) versus the right panel (CB OFF) that CB provides a Black point about one-half level denser than without.
This would provide the highest quality print for Epson Legacy Fibre paper. To me, these are the two most important outcomes the rest is really details not unimportant of course, but details. The SC-P5000 is a stand-out for color gamut the Epson SC-P800, SC-P900, and Canon Pro1000/2000/4000 dont come close for PK papers, but many photos dont need the wider gamut it provides, as Ive demonstrated in previous printer reviews. It is also automatically registered in both the printer driver Printer Settings menu and in the printer itself, accessible through the LCD (Figures EMI 15 and EMI 16). Figure 39 is a graph of the options analysis structure for Premium Glossy paper.
Again, using ABW, this time in RELCOL, there is little to say about whether CB should be ON or OFF. After six weeks of printing, Ive printed about 67 sq.ft. This table is largely self-explanatory.
Both of these cases were printed in ABSCOL and had satisfactory dE outcomes.
It allows you to download and install into the driver menu and into the printer software simultaneously new media from Epson as it becomes available, and very attractively as well, to install third-party papers complete with their media type settings and ICC profile.
After loading the ink, we place a sheet of plain paper into the top feeder and then install the driver.
Having installed the new cartridge to get this pano printing, the printer stuck in receiving data status forever, so I canceled the print job and started it over. Well explore the many options for processing your images and focus on the art of printing. Please consider helping us grow and broaden all aspects of what we do here. There is no visible difference of resolution or sharpness between the three prints, despite the fact that the SC-P5000 screens at 360 PPI and the SC-P900 at 180. ABW is said to be advantageous for producing B&W files in a quick and easy manner, toning B&W photos, and for increasing lightfastness.
Let us proceed with the START HERE poster that comes with the printer and follow it, step-by-step.
EMI is located in the Epson Software folder in your computer Applications folder.
However, once into Cyan/Blue/Purple/Violet, their gamut boundaries are similar, except for a small portion of the Purple/Violet segment where the SC-P900 gamut is slightly larger.
Select the Paper Handling menu item in the driver; scroll to the 1319 inch size group, expand it, and the whole range of available source and format choices opens, of which one selects Front (right-most red arrow) in this example.
The evidence of out-of-gamut (OOG) picture elements shows as tiny image dots that fall outside of the printer/paper gamut spheres, and that I have highlighted with Red oval surrounds.
As well, when loading 1722 cut sheets that are especially pliable (for example Epson Legacy Fibre), be sure to have the back assembly stretched to the maximum and load the paper so that it sits evenly in the feed.
For the time being, I shall assume that ink used for the P900 resembles that for the P4900, on which I have information derived from previous use of that printer: 0.0105 mL/sq.in. When you click on the app it begins to open (Figure EMI 1). It will be a piece of cake for those accustomed to Epson professional printers, or a fairly painless learning curve for those who are not. But first, lets finish setting up the printer. No overhead (e.g. Here are the steps, in order. They are all about the look and feel of the print the artistic impression. Youll find blue tape ever so neatly and precisely applied in various places, and you do need to remove ALL of it before doing anything else (Figure 4).
Ive found from experience that the following arrangements provide for a trouble-free experience from start to finish. In sum, this printer gets a stellar passing grade for how it handles both color and the grayscale using Epson Legacy Fibre paper a very high-quality matte media, by the way, for those who like making prints on matte paper.
So one tries them, looks at the outcome, and decides whether one likes it or not.
The outcomes are somewhat close. Clicking Done brings up a fresh screen with a button one tap to print the information. Mark developed a particular interest in film scanning and authored the ebook Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop (please check our Store for availability). One typical situation would-be owners of P3880s or SC-P800s pondering an upgrade to the SC-P900; another would be either upgraders or those new to printing wondering whether they should buy an SC-P900 or the still current SC-P5000.
A word about the photos: Starting with Figure 65 color print, this mural is 23 stories high.
In printer-lingo, the width is the width of the printer carriage, for this model maximum of 17 inches, and the height is the length of the pano being printed. The first thing I noticed is the similarity of the results having CB ON or OFF. All in all, youll be Enhancing Your Vision. To use the front sheet feeder for printing on thick media, 16 inches of free space behind the SC-P900 is needed.
This is also the most painful printing condition, requiring 27 minutes to print 51 sq. But we can use the amount that remains in the cartridges.
There are a lot of websites featuring photography. Figure 32 shows the summary results of testing these conditions. For example, as you can see from the Data Summaries of Figures 25 and 33, there are large differences of both Black point and gamut volume between Epson Legacy Platine and Epson Legacy Fibre, both excellent media.
The rendition of Black and handling of shadow detail depend more on the users photo editing skills, on the paper used, and on driver settings rather than on technical differences between these printers, possibly save for the new Black Enhance Overcoat/Carbon Black (hereafter CB) feature of the SC-P900, that Ill discuss in detail further on. So its just plain uneconomic to drink the ink if nothing else. Epson advised me that the impact of including violet ink is more apparent in the rendition of Blue than of Violet. Something dynamic, and evolving.
By the time I completed all the printing and analysis done to date for this review, amounting to about 61 square feet printed over the period October 17 to November 22, 2020, I was able to accumulate enough data to produce the table in Figure 68. The letter-size Baryta paper I have been using costs me about CAD 1.30 per sheet including 13% sales tax.
In Photoshops Image Size dialog, as usual, set the photos linear dimensions and the resolution you will send to the printer. If you look closely at the upper rendition in the very dark shaded area and the immediately surrounding rusting supports and pipes, you will see an ever so slightly more pronounced rendition of dark shade detail and contrast.
Theoretically, one is supposed to notice differences beyond a dE value of 1.0, but very often the differences need to be larger than that to be disturbing when comingled in a print having tens of thousands of colors.
(I no longer consider it necessary to use third-party applications for much of the stitching I do.) It produced a flawless borderless print (top and bottom left and right you need to trim) and there was no spillage of ink visible in the printer.
Youll find a summary of all the major points at the end of the article if you want to scroll down.
However, I must highlight the fact that these are early estimates, therefore tentative, and information that depends on ink consumption per print is necessarily inaccurate because there is no accurate data about how much ink per print this printer uses. If anything, it is likely to further exaggerate the brightening at the bottom of the tone scale.
Application Manages Color: Once embarked on this path, printer color control options are greyed-out to avoid conflicting color management (Figure 9). Yellow highlighted cells indicate that the reported dE values in those cells exceed 1.0.
When you commission the print, the printer starts working, the LCD saying it is receiving data, then a message appears advising to replace an ink cartridge because there may not be enough for the print to complete. Settings clearly impact printing speed, and they influence quality.
When printing finishes, scrolling the LCD (Figure 20) produces four tabs of print information. This is an ingenious application newly developed for the Epson models SC-P7570, SC-P9570, SC-P900, and SC-P700.
I estimate that Ill print another 35 sq.ft.
The presentation and interpretation of these results are similar to those in Figures 27 and 28, except that they report every Level from 1 to 100, rather than every 10th or so.
Aha, this is IT, I said to myself as I hustled it inside the house, took a bite of lunch and got down to work.
Become a member and gain access to our new features including high-resolution images, privacy options, higher photo upload limits, multi-photo uploads, night mode, and more! To get roughly equivalent USD value, divide CAD by 1.35.
Michael Durr is one of themore creative and fun videographers I have ever met.
As of the printers 4th day of use, the machine charge was CAD 0.32/standard print. By printing with Relative Rendering Intent (RELCOL) and Black Point Compensation (BPC), the deepest Black from the image color space is remapped to the deepest Black of the paper/printer profile space, and all lighter shades of the tone scale from there upward would be remapped accordingly.
My summary judgment on the whole B&W story, as to what plays better between CB ON versus CB OFF and ABW ON versus ABW OFF, boils down to two simple observations: (1) Where the maximum Black density the printer can deliver is considered desirable, do use CB with the papers that it supports.
The first bit of specialty tape one encounters is outside the box, having the name Epson imprinted throughout. ABW provides a bit of contrast boost in this tone area, but not much. So, if you are in the market for a new printer and you were thinking of either an SC-P900 or an SC-P5000 and space were an issue, this gives you an idea of how they compare. The Profile Black Point (CB ON) for the SC-P900 is about one L* level less Black compared with that for the same paper in the SC-P800 printer, but within a range of L*2 to L*3, its insignificant and please see the more important evidence of printed results just below.
In the case of Hahnemuehle Bamboo, the company recommends Epson Velvet Fine Art paper as the appropriate choice (Figure EMI 3). I happened to have recently completed a photo-shoot of another fabulous Nick Sweetman mural in downtown Toronto and thought his violet warthog with the swathes of blue paint through it may do the trick (Figure 60).
By the way, working in ABW mode, there is also access to CB for gloss/luster papers. I selected borderless printing because I wanted to see whether this printer would really do that accurately and without making a mess. Figures 35 (Case H) and 36 (Case I) provide a graphical comparison of the difference between highly satisfactory and less satisfactory outcomes respectively. So here goes.
I selected the case of CB OFF and High-Speed OFF, using Epson Legacy Platine (Figure 49).
However, the manual provides no guidance on how to move from a USB installation to a wireless network installation; its doable as Ill demo at the end of the review. Much as I appreciate the artistic feel and non-glare surface of the finer matte papers, normally I dont print on them because I prefer the larger tonal range (deeper Blacks) and larger gamut volume of, say, luster coatings.
On the main site, look for more visits with some very well-known photographers where well share their vision in our series Shooting with the Masters. There will be exclusive, behind the scenes segments where well bring you things you havent seen before. The two primary sets of considerations are relative print quality and feature sets.
Contrary to the ambiguity in the manual, we should load all Epson fine art papers less than 0.5mm other through the top sheet feeder. I also printed the Onsight target on Epson Legacy Fibre in SC-P900 and I was truly impressed with how closely the results resembled those from the Platine paper, insofar as Legacy Fibre is a matte paper (Figure 67, a photograph of the printed target, unadjusted). The only difference this causes is that printing from the SC-P5000 is faster.
I shall be examining that with real photographs below. Generally speaking, a profiling result will test more accurately when the same instrument and printer are used to both make and evaluate a profile, compared to when they differ between making the profile and evaluating it. As with all matters of the heart, youll know when you find it. So, Ill do that here, because roughly is more information than nothing. I tried to replicate their demonstration with my own test, making one print with CB ON and another the same but with CB OFF, and comparing (Figure 58). But with a couple of assumptions and a bit of work we can figure it out roughly.
Paper with edge curl can skew the page toward the end of the print, printing the remainder at an angle. So the remaining question is whether Dark would be a satisfactory mid-point setting not too dark, not too bright.
The printers small footprint will be handy for those with serious space constraints. I include several comparisons from SC-P800 data.
Your support is critical to the success and future of photoPXL. Well get to that.
The faint blue and faint orange sections of Figure 33 indicate how these profiles and the varied printing conditions perform on paper.
For this paper, there are eight possible configurations to explore.
It is also supposed to improve contrast and reduce bronzing and gloss differential neither of which I found problematic in the predecessor printers. It performs a lot of installation seamlessly. The five main parameters of print quality are color gamut, color rendition, Blacks and shadow tones, detail rendition, and smoothness of tonal gradations. Just to get a feel for the sheer difference of gamut volume between the printer profiles relative to the image colour contents, I examined it all in ColorThink Pro (CTP) (Figures 61, 62, and 63). As a number of people making prints value linearity and neutrality in the grayscale and Epson themselves have devoted considerable effort to the B&W experience, I provide a more detailed analysis of the grayscale in the form of my granular 100 patches (L*1~100) grayscale evaluation targets, disaggregated into three sections, one each for dark, medium and light tones (Figure 29 for my custom profile).
I examined these questions only for the Dark tones, which will have to serve as an indicator for the rest (Figure 48).
In Figure 24 we can see the near identity of gamut shape between the two profiles and the slightly larger gamut volume of the OEM profile, except for the dark blue/purple colors, where the Mark profile shows through the wireframe depicting the OEM profile. Linearity is quite well-preserved in both renderings; however, in both, there is a cross-over between printed and target values in the highlights occurring in the range of L*85 in order to produce a smooth transition into the media white point. Click on the + (my Black arrow) to create a new name, type in a name for the size preset (I use the dimensions). Maximum Blacks are the same and typical for this paper. I use the dE metric for assessing numerically the impact of inaccuracy on standard observers perception of color differences. The data for patches 35, 36, and 37 are excluded because they are deep Blacks out of gamut for this paper (and matte papers in general). The manual says that if one replaces a cartridge part way through printing, the colour may differ slightly once it resumes. The SCP-5000 has an overall much wider color gamut, especially over the portion of the hue spectrum ranging from red/orange through yellow/green.
Ill leave that decision in your hands!
The Black points differ little between the options.
Once this process finishes, as indicated, it turns the printer off and on again, and leaves you with the LCD Home screen, ready to print. The most common suite of photos I use for demonstrating printing conditions with new printers and papers are: (1) the Atkinson Printer Test Page, (2) The BVDM Roman 16 low-key B&W image for dark tones, (3) The Roman 16 high-key B&W image for highlights and (4) other photographs for illustrating other particular results of interest. All currently included Media Types and Media are listed. But do be aware, this is my estimate based on the stated assumptions nothing Epson has blessed or even had anything to do with.
That is probably what I like most about photography.
For the most part, the extent of non-linearity is not likely to be disturbing in real photographs; however, I would be attentive to the extent of the jump between Levels 4 and 5 in the result with CB ON.
Mark has been making photographs for the past six decades and started adopting a digital workflow in 1999 first with scanning film, then going fully digital in 2004.
(As a side note, in case anyone is thinking about a choice between the SC-P900 and SC-P5000: the SC-P5000 is a different class of printer meant for a high-volume production market, viz.
Both the two- and three-dimension projections tell the same story.
Adding it all up, per standard print in CAD: Ink 0.74 (uncertain), Total 2.36 (In USD excluding sales taxes: 1.55). This quote from Steve Jobs, as well as the support of family, friends, and loyal followers from many years are what inspired me to create this new website that is dedicated to photography.
There are advances in the print head: 3 droplet sizes per nozzle in a single pass; variable droplet sizes as small as 1.5 picolitres; ink repelling coating to reduce clogging risk.
For discussing Figure 33, the cases are identified by their column letter at the very top row of the Figure.
(Figure 45 provides some summary numerical data.) That is because these functions are not primarily aimed at achieving any particular standard of accuracy. The closer these values are to zero, the more accurate is the overall rendition on average, and the more satisfying the B&W tonality should be, in respect of both tone and hue bias. For Legacy Platine Paper, 49 square inches printed: (a) CB ON, High Speed OFF: 19 minutes, 47 seconds; (b) CB and High Speed both OFF: 9 minutes; (c) CB and High Speed both ON: 6 minutes. Because this is a matte paper, CB is not an available option, so it is greyed out even when selecting Quality Options, which opens everything that can be user-determined.
I turn now to the comparison of Cases F and H (Figures 50 and 51, Dark tones to Highlights Left to Right), this time with ABW_Darker ON. are good. Its very clear. What matters to printer economics about starter ink is how much remains in the cartridges after the initial fill. There is also hue bias and hue inconstancy throughout the scale in both cases with ABW, more so than seen in Case H without ABW, but it is all contained within a fairly low range, so the numbers and the bars may look worse than they would appear in printed photographs.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
These are simple differences of printed versus reference values that would generally be smaller if measured with dE(2000).
The EMI allows me to create a Media Type linked with my custom ICC profile that I can subsequently pull-up every time I want to use this paper in this printer.
As before, High Speed enables bi-directional printing (I assess it further on).
Many are good; in fact, many have been created and run by friends of mine. It will look like this opened: A dialog will come up asking you to select the appropriate generic media, which in our case is Fine Art Paper: The text in the Description on the LCD tells you to insert the paper lining-up the sheet with the front edge of the tray.
These are all conducted in ABSCOL to isolate the native behavior of the printer driver without the influence of application-induced colorimetric adjustments. CB ON provides a slightly deeper Black point (less than an L* Level) versus CB OFF. I think it more meaningful to show photos of the prints rather than JPEGs converted from raw files in the computer because those would not show whats on paper.
Three paper options are of interest here: The ABW workflow in the Epson driver serves a different purpose from the more usual Application-Managed workflows using ICC profiles.
There are quite a few mini-steps here, but this is easy to do and youll accomplish it in less time than it takes to read all this unless you speed-read.
When I did the P800 work about 4 years ago, I was using an i1Pro2 spectrophotometer, while I am now using an i1Pro3.
The following sequence of illustrations shows how the process unfolds using the top feed, or what Epson calls the rear feed, but is really on top of the printer. The small package in bubble-wrap at the back is a spare maintenance tank.
To construct the options for analysis shown with more detail in Figure 33, I culled several from Figure 32 and added two new cases. In ABSCOL mode, we can see comparing the left (CB ON) versus the right panel (CB OFF) that CB provides a Black point about one-half level denser than without.
This would provide the highest quality print for Epson Legacy Fibre paper. To me, these are the two most important outcomes the rest is really details not unimportant of course, but details. The SC-P5000 is a stand-out for color gamut the Epson SC-P800, SC-P900, and Canon Pro1000/2000/4000 dont come close for PK papers, but many photos dont need the wider gamut it provides, as Ive demonstrated in previous printer reviews. It is also automatically registered in both the printer driver Printer Settings menu and in the printer itself, accessible through the LCD (Figures EMI 15 and EMI 16). Figure 39 is a graph of the options analysis structure for Premium Glossy paper.
Again, using ABW, this time in RELCOL, there is little to say about whether CB should be ON or OFF. After six weeks of printing, Ive printed about 67 sq.ft. This table is largely self-explanatory.
Both of these cases were printed in ABSCOL and had satisfactory dE outcomes.
It allows you to download and install into the driver menu and into the printer software simultaneously new media from Epson as it becomes available, and very attractively as well, to install third-party papers complete with their media type settings and ICC profile.
After loading the ink, we place a sheet of plain paper into the top feeder and then install the driver.
Having installed the new cartridge to get this pano printing, the printer stuck in receiving data status forever, so I canceled the print job and started it over. Well explore the many options for processing your images and focus on the art of printing. Please consider helping us grow and broaden all aspects of what we do here. There is no visible difference of resolution or sharpness between the three prints, despite the fact that the SC-P5000 screens at 360 PPI and the SC-P900 at 180. ABW is said to be advantageous for producing B&W files in a quick and easy manner, toning B&W photos, and for increasing lightfastness.
Let us proceed with the START HERE poster that comes with the printer and follow it, step-by-step.
EMI is located in the Epson Software folder in your computer Applications folder.
However, once into Cyan/Blue/Purple/Violet, their gamut boundaries are similar, except for a small portion of the Purple/Violet segment where the SC-P900 gamut is slightly larger.
Select the Paper Handling menu item in the driver; scroll to the 1319 inch size group, expand it, and the whole range of available source and format choices opens, of which one selects Front (right-most red arrow) in this example.
The evidence of out-of-gamut (OOG) picture elements shows as tiny image dots that fall outside of the printer/paper gamut spheres, and that I have highlighted with Red oval surrounds.
As well, when loading 1722 cut sheets that are especially pliable (for example Epson Legacy Fibre), be sure to have the back assembly stretched to the maximum and load the paper so that it sits evenly in the feed.
For the time being, I shall assume that ink used for the P900 resembles that for the P4900, on which I have information derived from previous use of that printer: 0.0105 mL/sq.in. When you click on the app it begins to open (Figure EMI 1). It will be a piece of cake for those accustomed to Epson professional printers, or a fairly painless learning curve for those who are not. But first, lets finish setting up the printer. No overhead (e.g. Here are the steps, in order. They are all about the look and feel of the print the artistic impression. Youll find blue tape ever so neatly and precisely applied in various places, and you do need to remove ALL of it before doing anything else (Figure 4).
Ive found from experience that the following arrangements provide for a trouble-free experience from start to finish. In sum, this printer gets a stellar passing grade for how it handles both color and the grayscale using Epson Legacy Fibre paper a very high-quality matte media, by the way, for those who like making prints on matte paper.
So one tries them, looks at the outcome, and decides whether one likes it or not.
The outcomes are somewhat close. Clicking Done brings up a fresh screen with a button one tap to print the information. Mark developed a particular interest in film scanning and authored the ebook Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop (please check our Store for availability). One typical situation would-be owners of P3880s or SC-P800s pondering an upgrade to the SC-P900; another would be either upgraders or those new to printing wondering whether they should buy an SC-P900 or the still current SC-P5000.
A word about the photos: Starting with Figure 65 color print, this mural is 23 stories high.
In printer-lingo, the width is the width of the printer carriage, for this model maximum of 17 inches, and the height is the length of the pano being printed. The first thing I noticed is the similarity of the results having CB ON or OFF. All in all, youll be Enhancing Your Vision. To use the front sheet feeder for printing on thick media, 16 inches of free space behind the SC-P900 is needed.
This is also the most painful printing condition, requiring 27 minutes to print 51 sq. But we can use the amount that remains in the cartridges.
There are a lot of websites featuring photography. Figure 32 shows the summary results of testing these conditions. For example, as you can see from the Data Summaries of Figures 25 and 33, there are large differences of both Black point and gamut volume between Epson Legacy Platine and Epson Legacy Fibre, both excellent media.
The rendition of Black and handling of shadow detail depend more on the users photo editing skills, on the paper used, and on driver settings rather than on technical differences between these printers, possibly save for the new Black Enhance Overcoat/Carbon Black (hereafter CB) feature of the SC-P900, that Ill discuss in detail further on. So its just plain uneconomic to drink the ink if nothing else. Epson advised me that the impact of including violet ink is more apparent in the rendition of Blue than of Violet. Something dynamic, and evolving.
By the time I completed all the printing and analysis done to date for this review, amounting to about 61 square feet printed over the period October 17 to November 22, 2020, I was able to accumulate enough data to produce the table in Figure 68. The letter-size Baryta paper I have been using costs me about CAD 1.30 per sheet including 13% sales tax.
In Photoshops Image Size dialog, as usual, set the photos linear dimensions and the resolution you will send to the printer. If you look closely at the upper rendition in the very dark shaded area and the immediately surrounding rusting supports and pipes, you will see an ever so slightly more pronounced rendition of dark shade detail and contrast.
Theoretically, one is supposed to notice differences beyond a dE value of 1.0, but very often the differences need to be larger than that to be disturbing when comingled in a print having tens of thousands of colors.
(I no longer consider it necessary to use third-party applications for much of the stitching I do.) It produced a flawless borderless print (top and bottom left and right you need to trim) and there was no spillage of ink visible in the printer.
Youll find a summary of all the major points at the end of the article if you want to scroll down.
However, I must highlight the fact that these are early estimates, therefore tentative, and information that depends on ink consumption per print is necessarily inaccurate because there is no accurate data about how much ink per print this printer uses. If anything, it is likely to further exaggerate the brightening at the bottom of the tone scale.
Application Manages Color: Once embarked on this path, printer color control options are greyed-out to avoid conflicting color management (Figure 9). Yellow highlighted cells indicate that the reported dE values in those cells exceed 1.0.
When you commission the print, the printer starts working, the LCD saying it is receiving data, then a message appears advising to replace an ink cartridge because there may not be enough for the print to complete. Settings clearly impact printing speed, and they influence quality.
When printing finishes, scrolling the LCD (Figure 20) produces four tabs of print information. This is an ingenious application newly developed for the Epson models SC-P7570, SC-P9570, SC-P900, and SC-P700.
I estimate that Ill print another 35 sq.ft.
The presentation and interpretation of these results are similar to those in Figures 27 and 28, except that they report every Level from 1 to 100, rather than every 10th or so.
Aha, this is IT, I said to myself as I hustled it inside the house, took a bite of lunch and got down to work.
Become a member and gain access to our new features including high-resolution images, privacy options, higher photo upload limits, multi-photo uploads, night mode, and more! To get roughly equivalent USD value, divide CAD by 1.35.
Michael Durr is one of themore creative and fun videographers I have ever met.
As of the printers 4th day of use, the machine charge was CAD 0.32/standard print. By printing with Relative Rendering Intent (RELCOL) and Black Point Compensation (BPC), the deepest Black from the image color space is remapped to the deepest Black of the paper/printer profile space, and all lighter shades of the tone scale from there upward would be remapped accordingly.