[argyllcms] Re: Printer advice
- From: Geert Janssens <info@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:05:18 +0200
I got no replies to my question so far. Maybe it was a poorly formulated.
I'll try again:
I am about to buy a new printer. It should be capable of printing both great
photo's as general office work.
Since this list is about colour management, I am mostly interested in your
experiences in printing photo's.
I have two candidates so far:
* HP OfficeJet Pro K5400: good allround office printer, but slightly less
photo quality, according to the reviews I found.
* HP Photosmart Pro 8850: A3+ pro level photoprinter, with 8 inkcartridges. No
doubt this will give me better photo quality, but it will probably cost me
quite a bit on ink as well.
Has anyone on this list have got some experience with these printers ?
I am aware this is not really an Argyll related question. Please tell me if
this question is inappropriate here. I did see other slightly off-topic
questions on this list before, and photoprinting seems something that most
people on this list come across, so I risked asking anyway.
Thank you in advance,
Geert
On Saturday 14 June 2008, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am still steadily building a fully color managed work environment. I have
> calibrated and profiled my monitors, and profiled my scanner.
>
> I have now come to the printer. Again I have several questions. Maybe some
> are not for this list, but some of you may have useful pointers for me to
> pursue elsewhere.
>
> I'll repeat here that my work environment is linux (I work with several
> flavours on different computers: Mandriva 2008.0, Fedora 8, Centos 5.x).
>
> I currently have an Epson Stylus Photo 950. This printer has served me
> well, but starts to show signs of aging. Notably, I can't print full bleed
> anymore on non-photo paper, this causes ugly black ink marks on the bottom
> of the page. Sometimes I even have these at the top. As far as I can tell
> this is due to wear of the mechanics.
>
> So I am looking for a new printer. As we tend to print quite a bit, I'd
> prefer it to be a very robust printer. It should also be capable of
> printing ordinary documents as well as very good quality photo's. Fast or
> slow is less relevant, fast is of course more pleasant. Finally, it should
> be a networked printer. This is important, as I have several computers that
> need to print to it, and none of them is immediatly next to the printer.
>
> If the printer is not networked in itself, I can use a simple print server
> to attach the printer to. I have the ESP950 configured like that as well.
> But here I encounter my first problem. With this setup, I haven't figured
> out yet how to check ink levels and do other printer maintenance stuff.
> There is reportedly the escputil that does this, but it appears to work
> only for directly connected printers (it requires the raw device name for
> bidirectional tasks such as ink levels). If anybody here has managed to
> solve this, I would be very, very interested. It's currently my most
> annoying issue.
>
> If there is no solution for this, I will probably opt for a HP printer. A
> lot of them are supported through hplip which comes with a good toolbox to
> manage the printer (including ink levels). Other printer brands are as far
> as I know way less supported by linux. So unless someone has got
> experiences that counter this idea, I'll avoid those.
>
> So here my questions:
> * Has anyone on this list managed to read inklevels from an epson printer
> attached to a simple print server from linux over the network ?
> * What printers could you recommend for my environment ?
>
> So far, I have retained two printers:
> * HP OfficeJet Pro K5400: good allround office printer, but slightly less
> photo quality (according to the reviews I found). Other pro's: can have two
> paper trays (useful in my environment), comes with built-in network card.
> * HP Photosmart Pro 8850: pro level photoprinter, with 8 inkcartridges. No
> doubt this will give me better photo quality, but it will probably cost me
> quite a bit on ink as well. Additionally it is A3+ (not required) and only
> has got one paper tray.
>
> Any experiences on these models are welcome as well.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Geert
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