Open Office draw free software

[Dave271069]

is something this simple ok to use for mug printing. i have gimp but not to good at photo editing at mo, so just used open office draw and experimented ,

[Justin]

Are you using a Ricoh printer with Powerdriver or just a profile?

[Dave271069]

Will be starting off with a Epson sx130. And just printing some basic stuff for family to practise on. Doubt if I use profiles etc until I've seen any results. Only want to print out text mugs and maybe experiment with photos later.

[Justin]

OK, well you'll need a profile then. As that isn't an officially supported printer you'd have to get a profile made (Speak to Mod: Paul)

You'll need to get the proper inks and tbh by the time you've bought them it may be better for you to get an officially supported package from a recognised supplier.

[JSR]

I print through Qimage using ICC profile, but I recently picked up Photoshop Elements 6 for a tenner off ebay. I've not had chance to use it too much just yet, but you might find that kind of thing is useful/cheap and there are plenty of people who'll be able to help you with Photoshop and/or Photoshop Elements (not me, though, because I'm new at it too). That said, it's cheap because it's an old version so you may find a newer version that's not quite so cheap if that's more suited to you.

As Justin says, though, if you start out with a Ricoh package from an authorised Sawgrass reseller, you'll be able to print using any software without having to worry about all the profile-business. That makes it easy, apparently.

If you print through your sx130 without custom profiles made for your ink then you can expect to get the wrong colours printed. If you're not that worried about colours because you just want to see something printed, then just go for whatever software you're happy with. Give it a go, print and press. Just don't expect the colours to be accurate. You may be lucky and it may not be completely awful, but the more you do different images the more you'll be pulling your hair out.

[Dave271069]

I print through Qimage using ICC profile, but I recently picked up Photoshop Elements 6 for a tenner off ebay. I've not had chance to use it too much just yet, but you might find that kind of thing is useful/cheap and there are plenty of people who'll be able to help you with Photoshop and/or Photoshop Elements (not me, though, because I'm new at it too). That said, it's cheap because it's an old version so you may find a newer version that's not quite so cheap if that's more suited to you.

As Justin says, though, if you start out with a Ricoh package from an authorised Sawgrass reseller, you'll be able to print using any software without having to worry about all the profile-business. That makes it easy, apparently.

If you print through your sx130 without custom profiles made for your ink then you can expect to get the wrong colours printed. If you're not that worried about colours because you just want to see something printed, then just go for whatever software you're happy with. Give it a go, print and press. Just don't expect the colours to be accurate. You may be lucky and it may not be completely awful, but the more you do different images the more you'll be pulling your hair out.

Thanks, makes a lot of sense, I'm only going to be playing around for a while with mainly just text prints, I can upgrade in the future after I've learnt the basics.
ps my mate just ordered 50 plain text mugs with the name of his company on. All my hardware apart from mug press which I already purchased from coralgraph is coming tomorrow. So looking forward to a few busy hours practising .