cthornhill
August 24th, 2003, 12:04 PM
Ink Use Results after the first week of printing with the Epson 2200
Since getting the Epson 2200 about a week ago I have done some light testing with target inks and profiles and I have printed two drafts of the 26 page double sided book I am working on for a customer. These drafts are on the proposed paper stock at full resolution. The pages for this book are going to be 8 inches by 8 inches so my results are almost identical to creating 8 inch by 10 inch prints. Ink coverage on my test targets and book pages is very high, with full bleed solids and full-page images. I have about 10% B&W content in the book, or maybe a bit less.
In summary I have run about 100 pages through the Epson in this first week, mostly glossy and semi-glossy stock. I have been using only the Photo Black since I was working with these stocks. My profiles have been Epson profiles for the most part since my stock choices match the Epson papers almost completely. I have used some Legion and Pictorico profiles for these papers. My double-sided stock has been InkJetArt Micro Ceramic Duo Glossy. It is close enough for a good print using the Epson profile, but it could benefit from a custom profile based on my experience. My results have been what I would call 'acceptable prints'. All the prints I see are as good or better than what I get from a local pro lab, none are as good as I can get on the printer by working with the images for what I would call a 'custom fine art print'. I expect ink use in the Epson profile is slightly higher than what I would see from ImagePrint (based on my experiances with the ImagePrint and UltraChrome Ink on the 9600 series Epson using Epson Luster media). I see minor block up but overall saturation and contrast are pretty good.
Just so everyone knows - I want to give my customers the best prints possible, but I also have to print on a 'production' basis - book pages are high volume, and as such I am always working to improve them, but as a rule I do not alter the settings on a page. I do adjust colors at layout to give the best effect, and I run test charts to make sure paper and ink settings are within a tolerance. Once I reached a point where results were better than my out of house choices, (only about a day or so with the 2200), I started to produce. I will continue to improve the profiles and RIP's I use, but at this point I can start to use a TQM gradual approach.
My ink use result so far are still a first approximation. Over time they will get a lot more accurate. So far here is what I have seen:
Approx. Pages
per Cart Print Size Cart Color
50 8x10 LTMAGENTA
75 8x10 LTCYAN
100 8x10 LTBLACK
175 8x10 CYAN
150 8x10 MAGENTA
125 8x10 YELLOW
175 8x10 PHOTOBLACK
I pay about $10 per cart from my local dealer (without tax since it is a consumable for me). This gives me a per 8x10 inch print ink cost of about $1. I have come to think of the Epson 2200 as a ’10 color printer’ since I have to by about 10 carts to get through a set of 100 8x10 inch pages with any margin. Sure I will squeeze out some more prints, but all things considered a good rule of thumb for me in my shop is that each page uses about $1 of ink. I am working with papers that cost anywhere from $.50 per sheet to a little over $1.50 a sheet right now, and on average I feel about $2 per 8x10 inch sheet is a good estimate of rock bottom materials cost (no printer cost, time, electricity, coating, etc. in the number). My commercial sources with 9600 systems (close friends and fellow photographers) use a cost estimate of about $3 per square foot to $5 per square foot in some of their shops, and I believe that is not far off for me.
I really like the 2200. It is a great printer, and with a few profiling tools or a more complex RIP I can get about the same things out of this unit I do from the 9600 (on smaller paper of course). Having it in reach 24x7 is also great. Still, anyone who plans to print on it needs to understand it is not free.
For anyone else interested in book production I can suggest the following:
1. Test the built in double-sided features. Right now I am doing all of my layout in Photoshop and not using any printer features to set margins. This is a big pain. My first jobs were are laid out for the 9600 on roll paper so I just used brute force, but I plan to start using the printers margin settings to save time and trouble. Paper handling has been great for me – registration is so close to perfect I have not had room for complaint. This is why I want to use the automatic features on my future layouts – it looks like the 2200 does that pretty well.
2. Try proofing on plain paper at a lower quality setting to save ink. I am in a hurry and did not worry about this yet (since I am basically swapping print systems at the last minute). Every mistake in feeding or handling I made cost a lot. Now that I have some pages off to the binder, I plan to go back and see if I can do layout proofs at lots less DPI and drop my per page proof costs.
3. Look at larger sheet size or roll options. My job calls for gloss or semi-gloss. If I had the option of using matt, roll paper would be a lot easier to work with. When I can get gloss on rolls (I may have to make a feed adaptor), I will use it as well. It is a real pain to hand swap the pages, and it takes about 2 hours for me to print a set of 26 pages for my book project (13 paper pages front and back).
4. Good news – with the right paper and profile you can take the print out of the output tray and feed it back to the input with no waiting. This is great. I still let the pages dry after both sides are done. I separate them with inexpensive acid free white stock and let them sit for 24 hours. I may coat them in the future, I just don’t know.
5. If you are printing matt, you have many choices for paper and good lifespan. If you are in need to glossy that is not the case. I have found most of the glossy or semi-glossy papers are really printer proof materials, and do not hold much ink without ****ling badly. The exceptions for me were InkJetArt’s Glossy Duo, and Pictorico’s dual sided photo paper. Maybe other people are smart enough to try them first, but I was not and that cost a lot of money. I do hope to get a profile that works better for the proofing paper (since I have a few boxes from other suppliers), but I am NOT going to use them for customer book pages.
6. Consider your non-Epson options – I have done a LOT of testing with digital press systems, and I will do more. I like the quality of the liquid ink digital press’s but it is not the same thing you will get from an Epson 6 or 7 color printer. It can still be good. You should expect to pay about $1 per side per press sheet for most liquid ink 4 or 6 color press systems. I have not found many people operating more than 4 colors and a coating, but hey, you might have better luck. A press sheet is more than 2 8x10 inch pages in size, but not much. This will give you an approximate price of $.50 per page, which is a heck of a lot less than the $2 to $5 you can expect from your 2200. You also get perfect registration and fast print times on big jobs – all outsourced so they don’t tie your systems up. The only downside is you are not controlling the quality, and you will get a good 4 color job on thinner stock, not a 6 or 7 color Epson job on high end stock. Well, you get what you pay for…Still, if you need to do volume runs or just need to reduce costs, this is a good option and you should get the freedom to print one book or 100, all for about the same costs. This is a great choice if you can stand the drop in color reproduction quality. I am not saying the digital press images are bad – far from it, just that they approach good offset, not good ink-jet in appearance. Those magazines you see at check out have some nice images in them, but they don’t compare to a real photo print – do they?
Since getting the Epson 2200 about a week ago I have done some light testing with target inks and profiles and I have printed two drafts of the 26 page double sided book I am working on for a customer. These drafts are on the proposed paper stock at full resolution. The pages for this book are going to be 8 inches by 8 inches so my results are almost identical to creating 8 inch by 10 inch prints. Ink coverage on my test targets and book pages is very high, with full bleed solids and full-page images. I have about 10% B&W content in the book, or maybe a bit less.
In summary I have run about 100 pages through the Epson in this first week, mostly glossy and semi-glossy stock. I have been using only the Photo Black since I was working with these stocks. My profiles have been Epson profiles for the most part since my stock choices match the Epson papers almost completely. I have used some Legion and Pictorico profiles for these papers. My double-sided stock has been InkJetArt Micro Ceramic Duo Glossy. It is close enough for a good print using the Epson profile, but it could benefit from a custom profile based on my experience. My results have been what I would call 'acceptable prints'. All the prints I see are as good or better than what I get from a local pro lab, none are as good as I can get on the printer by working with the images for what I would call a 'custom fine art print'. I expect ink use in the Epson profile is slightly higher than what I would see from ImagePrint (based on my experiances with the ImagePrint and UltraChrome Ink on the 9600 series Epson using Epson Luster media). I see minor block up but overall saturation and contrast are pretty good.
Just so everyone knows - I want to give my customers the best prints possible, but I also have to print on a 'production' basis - book pages are high volume, and as such I am always working to improve them, but as a rule I do not alter the settings on a page. I do adjust colors at layout to give the best effect, and I run test charts to make sure paper and ink settings are within a tolerance. Once I reached a point where results were better than my out of house choices, (only about a day or so with the 2200), I started to produce. I will continue to improve the profiles and RIP's I use, but at this point I can start to use a TQM gradual approach.
My ink use result so far are still a first approximation. Over time they will get a lot more accurate. So far here is what I have seen:
Approx. Pages
per Cart Print Size Cart Color
50 8x10 LTMAGENTA
75 8x10 LTCYAN
100 8x10 LTBLACK
175 8x10 CYAN
150 8x10 MAGENTA
125 8x10 YELLOW
175 8x10 PHOTOBLACK
I pay about $10 per cart from my local dealer (without tax since it is a consumable for me). This gives me a per 8x10 inch print ink cost of about $1. I have come to think of the Epson 2200 as a ’10 color printer’ since I have to by about 10 carts to get through a set of 100 8x10 inch pages with any margin. Sure I will squeeze out some more prints, but all things considered a good rule of thumb for me in my shop is that each page uses about $1 of ink. I am working with papers that cost anywhere from $.50 per sheet to a little over $1.50 a sheet right now, and on average I feel about $2 per 8x10 inch sheet is a good estimate of rock bottom materials cost (no printer cost, time, electricity, coating, etc. in the number). My commercial sources with 9600 systems (close friends and fellow photographers) use a cost estimate of about $3 per square foot to $5 per square foot in some of their shops, and I believe that is not far off for me.
I really like the 2200. It is a great printer, and with a few profiling tools or a more complex RIP I can get about the same things out of this unit I do from the 9600 (on smaller paper of course). Having it in reach 24x7 is also great. Still, anyone who plans to print on it needs to understand it is not free.
For anyone else interested in book production I can suggest the following:
1. Test the built in double-sided features. Right now I am doing all of my layout in Photoshop and not using any printer features to set margins. This is a big pain. My first jobs were are laid out for the 9600 on roll paper so I just used brute force, but I plan to start using the printers margin settings to save time and trouble. Paper handling has been great for me – registration is so close to perfect I have not had room for complaint. This is why I want to use the automatic features on my future layouts – it looks like the 2200 does that pretty well.
2. Try proofing on plain paper at a lower quality setting to save ink. I am in a hurry and did not worry about this yet (since I am basically swapping print systems at the last minute). Every mistake in feeding or handling I made cost a lot. Now that I have some pages off to the binder, I plan to go back and see if I can do layout proofs at lots less DPI and drop my per page proof costs.
3. Look at larger sheet size or roll options. My job calls for gloss or semi-gloss. If I had the option of using matt, roll paper would be a lot easier to work with. When I can get gloss on rolls (I may have to make a feed adaptor), I will use it as well. It is a real pain to hand swap the pages, and it takes about 2 hours for me to print a set of 26 pages for my book project (13 paper pages front and back).
4. Good news – with the right paper and profile you can take the print out of the output tray and feed it back to the input with no waiting. This is great. I still let the pages dry after both sides are done. I separate them with inexpensive acid free white stock and let them sit for 24 hours. I may coat them in the future, I just don’t know.
5. If you are printing matt, you have many choices for paper and good lifespan. If you are in need to glossy that is not the case. I have found most of the glossy or semi-glossy papers are really printer proof materials, and do not hold much ink without ****ling badly. The exceptions for me were InkJetArt’s Glossy Duo, and Pictorico’s dual sided photo paper. Maybe other people are smart enough to try them first, but I was not and that cost a lot of money. I do hope to get a profile that works better for the proofing paper (since I have a few boxes from other suppliers), but I am NOT going to use them for customer book pages.
6. Consider your non-Epson options – I have done a LOT of testing with digital press systems, and I will do more. I like the quality of the liquid ink digital press’s but it is not the same thing you will get from an Epson 6 or 7 color printer. It can still be good. You should expect to pay about $1 per side per press sheet for most liquid ink 4 or 6 color press systems. I have not found many people operating more than 4 colors and a coating, but hey, you might have better luck. A press sheet is more than 2 8x10 inch pages in size, but not much. This will give you an approximate price of $.50 per page, which is a heck of a lot less than the $2 to $5 you can expect from your 2200. You also get perfect registration and fast print times on big jobs – all outsourced so they don’t tie your systems up. The only downside is you are not controlling the quality, and you will get a good 4 color job on thinner stock, not a 6 or 7 color Epson job on high end stock. Well, you get what you pay for…Still, if you need to do volume runs or just need to reduce costs, this is a good option and you should get the freedom to print one book or 100, all for about the same costs. This is a great choice if you can stand the drop in color reproduction quality. I am not saying the digital press images are bad – far from it, just that they approach good offset, not good ink-jet in appearance. Those magazines you see at check out have some nice images in them, but they don’t compare to a real photo print – do they?