Printing Yourself What Printer

[John Hendry]

Thinking of starting printing my own images fed up with prints going missing in the post funny casts and labs oversharpening my work.

Any thoughts on the best printers out there?

All the best

[Rentham]

In my opinion and experience, you should be willing to spend a great deal of time and money if you want to professional level prints from home. I think this is the printer Jeremy Cowart has been raving about:

Epson Stylus Pro 4900 Designer Edition Inkjet Printer SP4900DES

Then you'll probably need some calibration hardware/software to make sure you get color accurate prints.

Anything short of that, I'd opt to continue using a lab. I've had nothing but frustration getting decent prints at home.

[Doug Pardee]

You might try the Post Processing and Printing board here: Post Processing and Printing

[JFSanders]

Epson. If you want to ease into it, start with a used R-1800. I use it 50% of the time when I am working with prints and editing. For client sales the R-4900 is top of the line but it isn't really that far ahead of the R-3880 in overall print quality.

As Rentham said, it is best to have your front end up to speed otherwise you will be mashing your head with a hammer pretty quickly. I will use a print house if I am having more than one offs done for a client but I am pretty anal about who I deal with and I spend a good bit of time making sure that we understand each other's needs with respect to files and prints. I know they don't want to have to fiddle with it and I don't want to have to bitch about not getting what I expected. That being said I don't recommend printers anymore because I cannot guarantee the end product and it has cost me a friendship when the lines of communication became garbled and the friend thought somehow I was responsible for her problem.

Jim