The shocking truth about modern inkjet printers. How to get the best from your printer. 

My pleasure! - glad it's of interest.

Thanks - that really good to know!

@@KeithCooper Thanks you Keith, you mentioned something about questions, here I have some things I don't understand: I shoot always in raw, then convert to tiff to print, RGB with the prophoto colour profile, 360 dpi and 16 bit. (Recently I use more and more lightroom, used to use photoshop and DXO.) Then after saving the file I open it in Photoshop I convert to the profile I need and go from 16 bit to 8 bit since I noticed a more accurate color matching screen to print doing that, what I do not understand is, do I convert to CMYK first, in Lightroom, or whatever or leave it in RGB as recommended ? I mean, printer is CMYK always so that should be the most natural thing to do? And another question is about DPI- Both of my printers are 5.760 x 1.440 dpi, that being said that I prepair my print files in 360 DPI, so what is this resolution of my printer stand for? Thx a million Keith, If you made allready videos on these subjects please share the link, have a blessed evening!

@@fransschmitz2628 Don't go anywhere near CMYK - leave that in your commercial past. inkjet printers are not CMYK devices - they are characterised as RGB and profiled accordingly Why are you converting files? 16 to 8 is not something I'd normally do, and there's normally no need to do any profile conversion anywhere either See my video about why dpi is not ppi ;-) See also my main index of videos at www.northlight-images.co.uk/keith-cooper-photography-videos-index/

@@KeithCooper Thx for the homework Keith I will see the video right away! Back in the 80's when I worked as a printer we used to mix the colors according to the Pantone system, no CMYK involved there. As for the 16 to 8 bit conversion, the colors look more natural to me, perhaps I should do some more testing? Thx for the answer!

@@KeithCooper Hi Keith, I have been doing some testing (as I am fairely new to printing with inkjet printers) on the 16 bit to 8 bit conversion. Also did watch some videos about the issue and than proceeded with printing 16 bits with the recommended color profile from Hahnemüle for my Epson R3000.... Result: Marvelous!! when I converted the files to 8 bit The prints came out extremely dark, over saturated even using the recommended Hahnemühle profiles. So what I do now is prepare my prints in lightroom classic, export next in tiff 16 bits with the correct color profile and than print it with Epson print layout with the correct settings there as well. So I was doing everything utterly wrong up till now and thanx to your comment on the 16 to 8 conversion I did do some further testing and I am very happy I did! Thx a million Keith, your videos really make a difference!

Glad it's of interest!

Thanks - it genuinely took some effort to do this ;-) I don't want it to become a regular feature though!

Thanks!

Thanks. Glad to have helped - it's taken a while for me to truly appreciate that YT has 'no history' - when I write an article I link to it and reference it for years, but YT is at heart far too ephemeral for my liking. Nevertheless, the guy from Canon was right and people do watch it... ;-)

@@KeithCooper Oh I don’t know. I use RU-vid to look up older videos of interest, both new to me and repeats regularly. I try and save anything I think useful and/or interesting to playlist folders on RU-vid. For searching for specific things, it’s most important that the author gives video titles great thought and care to include key words about the content so that a search by the potential viewer is bound to find content of relevance.

@@hedydd2 YT itself provides virtually no help in this aspect It's why I decided to build a proper categorised index for all my videos www.northlight-images.co.uk/keith-cooper-photography-videos-index/

Thanks!

Thanks - that's appreciated!

Hope it goes well!

Thanks - glad it's woking for you!

Thanks - The 1000 is a good solid printer

Thanks - that's much appreciated

Thanks 👍

Yes - it's partly why I often show its use in my testing.

Great to hear! I do like that printer...

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks - glad to have helped with that!

Thanks

Thanks - glad it was of interest.

Thanks!

Good choices

Yes, a good printer

Yes - an editing monitor, can look very dull in 'normal' use...

Thanks - this is why I always mention the free Epson Print Layout and Canon PPL software as well. Yes there are a multitude of ways of getting poor prints ;-)

Yes a fine printer - I did a detailed review when it first came out.

Ah - a gap which no-one is in a hurry to fill. At the much more expensive end, Epson are moving to ink in bags [P20500 for example] but I don't see this or fillable tanks in 17/24/44" for a while

Thanks!

@@KeithCooper And, of course, last but not least, looking at videos like those of Keith, very important for a B&W laser addicted

Fair enough - whatever you like, there is no requirement to use any specific paper type.

I don't actually know for sure - this is something I'd ask on the printing forum at DPReview.com or more likely www.printerknowledge.com

A nozzle check on a sheet of A3 plain paper would suffice ;-) [I have not tested if the 2600 will do this, but the older pro-2000 did]

Indeed - requirements differ widely ;-) I still have a virtual Mac running some 1996 typography software, which gets fired up because it does one thing I want, so well...

ABW is best on the P900 for most media. For myself the greyscale conversion should be done elsewhere - there is no control over the method/results if just done in ABW icc profiles rarely work well for this - partly because the makers of profiling software have put no great effort into optimising icc profiles for B&W use See here for much more [P700 & P900]: www.northlight-images.co.uk/black-and-white-printing-with-the-p700/

Tanks!!

Convert your images to BW in some software like LR/Darktable/Rawtherapee or Photoshop/Gimp. See some videos about BW conversion. ABW, though it's fantastic tool for printing images that are already BW, is a bad choice for conversion, as it only sets saturation to zero. It's a good and safe behavior for what this program is intended but nothing more. Also - try to take ypur pictures with BW as a goal. Of course physically they are color but the content will work in BW better than converting the pictures taken with color in mind.

I have a whole section of my web site devoted to all aspects of 'digital B&W' such as conversion and workflow www.northlight-images.co.uk/digital-black-and-white-photography/

Thanks - The PRO-200 is probably the least likely to be updated in the next year or so - Canon keep these models going for a while...

@@KeithCooper Then I should get the Epson, so that all those a week after me can wait on the new model they would announce... And it wouldn't be right to have a Nikon camera (with a Fuji too) and print Nikon images on a Canon. That is an argument waiting to happen. :-)

It varies - my own personal printers are all on Ethernet These days, I usually test printers on WiFi - the PRO-100 was a printer I reviewed many years ago - quite possibly on USB

Indeed...

Yes, the 200 is a good printer for some applications

As long as you appreciate that the printer has no way of actually knowing the levels, and keep an eye on them, it's fine. If you do fully fill a tank it's worthwhile setting it as 'full'

@@KeithCooper Aa, ok. Thanks for the advice. I will keep that in mind. Cheers!

@@KeithCooper Hello, I have one more question iff You can answer to me please... My prints are somewhat darker from printing in Photoshop. But only darker areas are affected. Lighter areas are fine. I have a pro Dell monitor calibrated with Xrite I1 Display Pro device. True, I have Canon Glossy Photo paper. I bought 100 sheets for old Canon printer so I must consume it all. But I have ICC preset from printer Epson Photo Glossy which should be simmilar 200g paper...

@@VedranKlemen wrong profile - would be my first thought. There is no such thing as 'should be similar' ;-) Test though with a known test image - never images of your own - see my written review for detail.

Depends on the sort, but most unlikely - they are optimised for document printing.

Ah... What about it? I do include examples of printing on canvas in most of my printer reviews. It's no different to printing on a photo paper - you just need the right profiles. Smaller printers may need sheets cutting from a roll. The handling of it after printing requires framing/mounting skills, but the basic printing is not really much different to printing a photo on a photo paper

@@KeithCooper thank you I’ve been in the image making business for 40 years. 90% of the time the canvas prints I require are between 1 and 2 m so I usually farm them out to a lab. I should’ve been a bit more specific in my question as far as the archival qualities are concerned.

Archival is a term rarely applied to most canvas printing, it does very much tend to be influenced by cost and a commoditised approach [read 'cheap' ;-) ] For higher end printing I'd be looking at a printer more like the P7500 and custom profiling See here for example: www.northlight-images.co.uk/epson-surecolor-p7500-printer-review/ [or P9500 for wider] For media, I've used ones from the Innova range - but that depends where you are. A good museum grade varnish will definitely help too

Maybe - but where are you going to get the icc profile for the paper? Cheap paper can be cheap in many different ways...

If you use Canon's DPP software and printing software, it did offer some 'improvements' However, I always found it so awkward to use that any benefits were completely lost ;-)

@@KeithCooper and no doubt now AI is going to be applied, in the background to a greater or lesser unknown extent, I expect the academic output of printers will become harder and harder to define, beyond, as you say, very good / excellent.

Yes - someone I've known for years challenged me to do it with the title to see ;-) Yes - icc profiles can be wrong - I've come across it on rare occasions even from reputable paper suppliers. In general, it's why I only ever suggest a few paper suppliers I know and have dealt with.

It's because our eyes are incredibly sensitive to minor colour casts. Printing black is one thing, but greys are a mix of colours balanced to be near neutral. There are ways round it, but it comes down to the difficulty of printing lots of different greys Thanks for the suggestion - added to the list

@@KeithCooper ahhh! This makes sense. You sent me your profiles for the 8550 and Epson papers a while ago and I found the colours were mostly the same, but black and white prints came out far more neutral with your profiles than Epson’s profiles which seemed to have a brown colour cast to them. I guess I just assumed that printing black and white would use just the grey and black inks. This makes me wonder… what would a black and white print look like with the colour inks disabled?

Grainy - there used to be a BO or black only mode in some drivers. Also a bit like trying to do B&W photos on a laser printer. I'm still trying to get the people who create the profiling software to treat B&W as a serious option, and the printer makers to give more flexibility to their B&W print options [i.e. ABW for Epson]

@@KeithCooper just read up on that… seems interesting! A very good topic for a video I think. I’m surprised how good the B&W prints I can get from the 8550 are

Depends on the market and size of the print See this category of videos in my index [I have addressed the issue several times] www.northlight-images.co.uk/keith-cooper-photography-videos-index/#pb2

@@KeithCooper I will be becoming an photographer, I will mainly be in landscape and wildlife photography and expand to do astrography as well

Pricing is well down your to-do list then Know your market first. Without that, pricing is no more than guesswork See the videos I've produced covering all of this - via the link above

@@KeithCooper Will do, I watch them when I get a chance, I thought to ask you here incase you didn't do it yet but you did anyway

Dye sub is very niche here - I looked at an SL-D700 a while ago very good for kiosk type stuff Selphy could be seen as very much at the novelty end of printing...

The colour space setting on cameras only applies to jpegs - if you shoot RAW, you get to choose what you want when processing

Exactly ;-)

I’ve such a camera too 😮😉

It seems definitions of 'real' vary widely...

Wow.......... I still use a three year old £35 Canon TS3150 All-in-One scanner printer for the occasional 7x5 print as well as documentation and it's fine. Sometimes go a couple of months without using it but it fires up every time. Scan quality 600x1200 is "ok" for standard use but I recently purchased an Epson V600 6400x9600 scanner and I just love it. Copes beautifully with prints, negatives and slides so it's great for all of my late father's 1940's negatives as well as black and white photos. Purely amateur work but delighted to see old photographs come back to life after scanning. Also use Photoshop Elements 2024 which is enough for our family requirements.

Yes - find what works. One reason I rarely ever make direct recommendations, since it's always "it depends"