DSF

I have just been to see a friend of mine in the hope of borrowing his Screen Calibration device which he couldn't find.

Anyway, in passing he told me he was paying £x for a set of inks for this printer - That does look like Epson retail cost to me but I am sure I can help him by sourcing some at a better price and where better to ask than here !

Does anybody have any suggestions ? I'm sure there are suppliers here who can help.

Is he wanting Epson genuine? or a 3rd party equivalent ink? or sublimation ink? pigment ink? dye ink?
Is he set up to do his own printer ICC profiling, or does he need an ink that comes with one for the 3880?

NikGrey;79131 wrote:I have just been to see a friend of mine in the hope of borrowing his Screen Calibration device which he couldn't find.

Anyway, in passing he told me he was paying £x for a set of inks for this printer - That does look like Epson retail cost to me but I am sure I can help him by sourcing some at a better price and where better to ask than here !

Does anybody have any suggestions ? I'm sure there are suppliers here who can help.

Hi Nik

Look at the Calumet photo web site and search on it for the Color Munki calibration system - £67 plus vat and delivery, may be available cheaper elsewhere but if you want back up......... They will also advise you on whether it will meet your needs.

The thing you have to remember is that calibration is not something that you do just once. When I ran my photo studio I would calibrate every week, only took 5 minutes. You could get away with every 2 weeks or maybe every month but you have the calibration sensor on the shelf and the software is loaded and ready to go its no big deal. If you are using a studio quality CRT monitor you would need to calibrate it every week, they are getting very long in the tooth now and the guns in the back that drive the screen can't do go down hill and you will find that they can't be calibrated any more because they are so far out of tolerance - not that you would necessarily notice that in general use.

If you want to calibrate, you do of course need to have a monitor that can be calibrated - full control of brightness, contrast and ideally colour temp as well - i can recommend an HP ZR24W if you can still find one or the ZR2440W 24 inch or ZR2240 21.5 inch monitors (new equivalent range). Really consistent and controllable £250 - £350. I am guessing that a lot of people will wince at the price but in the photographic trade you are looking at a thousand plus for the likes of an NEC Spectraview (now that really is a beautiful monitor) and these are more than adequate for the general photographer. You wouldn't find them in the high level pro studios just because their clients expect to see top of the range kit. There isn't much point in trying to calibrate a 'consumer' grade monitor. The hundred quid or so 22 inch monitors that the likes of Samsung sell are in terms of value for money very good and more than adequate for the average home user but when as a business user, especially a beginner, you do need accurate and repeatable colour you ought to spend a bit more cash. If you have a consumer monitor already, well all is not lost - get an Hp or similar and buy yourself a decent double head graphics card - bit out of touch on what is available at the moment but something from Sapphire should do you, then you have your mains screen nicely calibrated for your colour work drag tools, drop downs, email, YouTube and iPlayer onto the other screen ;o) Once you have had the luxury of a large uncluttered screen to work on you would NEVER go back to a single screen!

I am trying to see if can get a seminar organised at P&P so that a man from Calumet will give a 20 minute talk on how easy these calibration devices can be to use and how unlike 5 years ago they no longer have to cost an arm and a leg. Of course if I get it organised, there is a chance that no one will come as they don't see the point in calibration, no fool like an old fool ;o) That should raise some hackles!


Arthur

I would certainly be there for the seminar - I'm always hungry to learn, I never turn down free education.

I will find a Colour Munki, they are not expensive. The fella I went to see (My Neighbour) was telling me that as he uses Macs and doesn't guarantee any colour specs for customers - he thinks the Mac's displays are adequate on their own. He has been a photographer all his life and has a big Barn as a studio and is always busy. I was quite surprised to hear him say he didn't calibrate to say the least.

So, I use an iMac and the colours are pretty accurate from what I have seen - I just like to try to get things as matched as I can for peace of mind. I do have a cheap Benq also attached to this and the colours on that are aweful.

I think you may be surprised at the turn out for a calibration seminar, I think lots of people haven't even considered this.


Pisquee, your right - I wasn't very specific in my post about the ink set, he will be wanting genuine ones.

If your work involves print to a large degree, and I would assume for a sublimation printing forum it does, then you should consider paying extra and buying a ColorMunki or Spyder system which also do printer profiling/ICC creation.

NikGrey;79254 wrote:I would certainly be there for the seminar - I'm always hungry to learn, I never turn down free education.

I will find a Colour Munki, they are not expensive. The fella I went to see (My Neighbour) was telling me that as he uses Macs and doesn't guarantee any colour specs for customers - he thinks the Mac's displays are adequate on their own. He has been a photographer all his life and has a big Barn as a studio and is always busy. I was quite surprised to hear him say he didn't calibrate to say the least.

i am afraid that a lot of photographers like to think that they can tell how accurate their monitors are just by looking at them and think spending a couple of hundred quid on something which as far as they can see won't earn them anything is a waste of cash.


Arthur

... and the problem with that way of thinking is our eyes adjust and compensate for what they see, so a monitor whose white is showing as too yellow or blue will appear to us as white, if there isn't a reference of what white should actually be.
I recently bought in a new monitor, a nice one too, but my calibrator had broke, so I was just left with it without any way of calibrating it. I tried some editting on it, and my colours were coming out too different when printed, so I was back to the old monitor, which on paper wasn't as good quality, but being calibrated, I knew I could trust it.
It really does make a big difference, as much as having an ICC for your printer/inks if you want accurate colour reproduction.

pisquee;79290 wrote:... and the problem with that way of thinking is our eyes adjust and compensate for what they see, so a monitor whose white is showing as too yellow or blue will appear to us as white, if there isn't a reference of what white should actually be.
I recently bought in a new monitor, a nice one too, but my calibrator had broke, so I was just left with it without any way of calibrating it. I tried some editting on it, and my colours were coming out too different when printed, so I was back to the old monitor, which on paper wasn't as good quality, but being calibrated, I knew I could trust it.
It really does make a big difference, as much as having an ICC for your printer/inks if you want accurate colour reproduction.

Its refreshing to hear someone else who thinks the same way!

As an aside, I was at Listawoods on friday for a training session and we looked at the difference in print quality on mugs with the same image printed via Powerdriver and a Sawgrass ICC profile (Sublijet through a Ricoh 3110). Until that point in time I had been running Powerdriver and thought the results were ok and that the quality issues i had were down to my press set, timing and temp. Suffice to say that i am now installing an ICC profile and won't be using Powerdriver again. With the ICC profile, colours were punchier, blacks were black and the level of detail for reproducing fine text was much better. The only thing it didn't do was to flip the image before printing ;o)


Arthur

Also, if using PowerDriver for your colour management instead of letting your graphics software run things, then your graphics software doesn't 'know' what the output ICC is, and so you can't use proof/gamut mode, which means you can't see what's going to print in real time whilst editing/creating. (This is at least how we use Photoshop, and I'll assume/hope Corel has this feature) With our printers each having their own ICC profiles, along with our monitors, and Photoshop in proof mode, we get pretty spot on results, that I don't get surprises now when things are printed/pressed.