Anyone doing their own high-quality fine art/photography printing?

[steve...]

I've had some of my work printed by a profesional who does excellent quality work but is not cheap. I'm thinking about getting my own archival pigment printer and making my own images for sales and gallery shows. From what I've learned so far, the Epson Pro 3800 looks like the printer I'd be buying. Does anyone have any advice on buying a printer and making and selling their own archival, high-quality prints?











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[DP]

I had Epsons for years but got tired of their weirdnesses and now have a Canon Pro9000. I get great results from it and it uses the Chromalife 100 cartridges. There are a lot of beautiful-and expensive-papers on the market. Most have a trial pack of different surfaces and textures you can buy. I like Moab and Red River but both Epson and Canon have nice products too.

[pipiens]

I have 2 Epson 3800s and an HP Z3100. They all work just fine. They are located in two different states but leaving them with the power on has eliminated any head clogging problems.

Printing is an art all by itself. I recommend taking a class or two.
http://www.charlescramer.com/classes.html
http://luminous-landscape.com/workshops/...-one.shtml
http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/workshops/

[mattkime]

If its gonna be a canon vs. epson thing, I definitely come down on the side of epson. they've fixed the clogging problems and have a good range of printers - you can make your own 16x20 prints but if you need to make a 30x40 you can print it on a 44" wide printer that uses the same inks.

[JoeM]

Years ago when I bought my HP Designjet 800PS, these folks were very helpful:
http://www.wide-format-printers.org/

They also have a number of other sites, one of which covers fine art printers (check at the bottom of their pages for a list of all their sites):
http://www.fineartgicleeprinters.org/

They have a review of the Epson 3800 and comparison with Canon iPF5000 and HP models here:
http://www.fineartgicleeprinters.org/wid...ations.php

After seeing and purchasing a reworked photo reproduced on canvas in New Orleans recently, I've become interested in creating similar art. I've experimented with shots I recently took there and already have had inquiries from some people wanting to purchase some of them.

I've read some articles in After Capture mag about working with Painter in conjunction with photos and want to learn more about this type of photo art.

I've located a number of shops that do photos to canvas but am wondering about purchasing a printer, if I continue to work at it.

Here's the photo I purchased:



I wasn't crazy about the purple sky but the detail and light in the buildings area along with the people and carriage is really striking in person.

Do any of you know anything about doing this kind of photo art?

[C(-)ris]

I had an Epson 4800 Pro for a while. Great printer. The prints are amazing. Epson is by far better than Canon on the professional end of things. My only word of caution would be to make sure that you can get a return on that printer relatively quickly. They aren't cheap and the ink and paper adds up fast too.

[laarree]

The Epson 3800 is pretty darned good--I have one in my home studio. It is, however, slightly hobbled by its need to go thru an automatic internal techno-ritual if you wish to switch from printing with the photo black ink to matte black ink or vice-versa. This is an improvement over other larger x800 Epsons, which require manual black ink cartridge swaps and lots of lever flipping, taking a much longer time. I believe the x900s are redesigned and this annoying requirement is a thing of the past, but I don't think there is a 3900 yet.

Eric Chan's webpages devoted to the 3800 at http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/...index.html are extremely useful.

The devilish part of fine art printmaking is color management-- it can take much learning and investment in additional tools like a display calibration device to get a reasonable sync between what you see on your monitor and what pops out of your printer.

[mstudio]

When I'm not in the darkroom doing my own printing, I use an Epson R-2400 with Hahnemuhle paper. They make a really nice fiber paper that looks and feels like my darkroom prints.

A less expensive solution is an Epson 2000P that I also use with their smooth watercolor paper, beautiful color saturation and nice feel.

I do prefer my darkroom prints, however.

[Grateful11]

There's nothing wrong with an Epson, even the old ones if you just use
them and not let them sit unused. I'm on my second 740, wore the ink
carrier bushings out on the first one.

[rtwdwk]

I run both Epson and HP's

The Epson own this market.