Printer News

It used to be that manufacturers and even us press types hailed every tiny improvement in printer technology as a major achievement. Now the honeymoon is over. We expect these devices to produce impressive color and monochrome output and do so at an inexpensive price--except for the inks, of course. As a result, photo-quality printers, except for pricy laser and dye...

The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 has been going strong for almost six years now, and you'd think that Epson's replacement model, the Stylus Photo 1400, must be exceptional to be worthy of replacing such a venerable printer. While the idea has merit, the fact is that Epson's letter-sized, dye-ink photo printers, such as the R380, already have new inks; the 1280 was the...

Epson, you have company! For years, serious large format inkjet printing has been owned by Epson with the 7000- and 9000-series printers. The pigment-based printers had a huge advantage in archival life and in the media options available, making fine art printing something that the individual could finally afford to do in-house. In the past year, both Canon and HP have entered the...

Technical Specifications
Print Head: PF-01
Technology: FINE (Full-lithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering)
Configuration: Six colors per print head; dual print heads (total 12 colors); Print Head (A) Y/PC/C/PGY/GY/MBK; Print Head (B) PM/M/BK/R/G/B
Replacement: End user...

While HP did show a number of consumer-oriented printers, perhaps the most interest was generated by their new HP Designjet Z2100 and Z3100 models. Both use HP Vivera pigment ink technology (introduced with the HP Photosmart Pro B9180) and have built-in color management with an embedded spectrophotometer. According to HP, the use of the Vivera pigmented inks yields 200+ years...

Last year it took us days to crank out the 1000+ proofs we print every week during the summer camp season. In desperate need of a truly fast and reliable digital photo printer, the Sony UP-DR150 caught our attention. This dye sublimation printer is extremely user friendly, portable, and designed for fast on-location printing of 3.5x5, 4x6, 5x7, and 6x8" prints. After test...

Epson has unveiled a new line of printers employing an eight-color pigment-based UltraChrome K3 inkset system. All of the new machines employ the same K3 inks, print heads, and driver software, but differ in size, cartridge size, and color calibration technology.

The suffix K3 refers to the fact that a full three--not merely two--black pigmented inks are...