Epson L1800

[Ink stained Fingers]

Qimage or not - let me just post @Roy Sletcher 's comments about Qimage

It is somewhat hard to give general advice because everybody producing creative printed images has different aspirations, workflows and objectives. Some merely want to produce a few 4 x 6 images of the kids and family. Others strive for A2 or A3 fine art images for their walls or even sale.

I am a strong evangelist for Qimage, but admit it is not for everyone.

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/newb-to-qimage-or-not.11391/#post-95891

There are so many ways to get your image data to the printer - frequently via the photo editor you are using or with a separate program like Qimage or Printfab, it's your workflow. Some people like to have it all in one program - from RAW development to printing , I rather like to use separate programs for different functions.

 

[oroblec]

After 84 pages printest looks fine this week. Lets see the result.

 

[oroblec]

I'm using Qimage under Windows for printing, but let me comment nevertheless to some of the available options on the screeen
- I don't think that you ever need 16 bit output - 24 bit (3x8RGB) can already create 16 Mill colors, much more than the eye can differentiate. I think Canon is advertising some printer for which the driver can handle 16 bit data - o.k.
- you should use some print resolution which the driver genuinely supports without further up - or downsampling and interpolation - 360/720dpi for Epson , 300/600 dpi for Canon and 300/600 dpi for Epson with precisioncore printheads.
- you should test the various settings for print sharpening - too much sharpening may enhance noise or create unwanted edge effects depending on the algorithm they use.

New seetings.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you may rather use a print resolution of 360dpi if you can adjust that value.

 

[oroblec]

you may rather use a print resolution of 360dpi if you can adjust that value.

i will try but since a remove sharpness and 16 bit output the quality of my images are superior thanks to all you, dpi and ppi are the same?

 

[oroblec]

Prints

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

dpi and ppi have separate meanings but they get intermingled rather frequently. When you have a sensor with X x Y sensor elements it is pretty easy to see that you have that many pixels, and if you have X pixels along 1 inch you get X ppi - pixels per inch, and this has nothing to do whether you see an image at the end on a small screen or large screen or on a print.
Printers, Lasers etc have a fixed raster how and where they place the image dots, that's driven by the mechanics, coding wheels and strips, stepper motors etc, so they place the image dots with 300 or 360 or 600 etc dots per inch. And here you see that some transformation becomes necessary - to transform the image pixels into those printable dots, you define the print size etc, and some more software does the conversion in one or more steps - the printing program and the driver. And all such conversion, interpolation reduces the original sharpness - more or less - and may introduce some other artifacts. And that's the area where some software tries to counteract this loss of sharpness - by adding some level of additional sharpness.
And when you look to color printers then every of these image dots to be printed have a unique color which needs to be created from a mix of smaller dots - within this image dot. This is where these extremely high numbers of 4800 or 5760 etc dpi come in, that's the color mixing within an image dot.

 

[oroblec]

dpi and ppi have separate meanings but they get intermingled rather frequently. When you have a sensor with X x Y sensor elements it is pretty easy to see that you have that many pixels, and if you have X pixels along 1 inch you get X ppi - pixels per inch, and this has nothing to do whether you see an image at the end on a small screen or large screen or on a print.
Printers, Lasers etc have a fixed raster how and where they place the image dots, that's driven by the mechanics, coding wheels and strips, stepper motors etc, so they place the image dots with 300 or 360 or 600 etc dots per inch. And here you see that some transformation becomes necessary - to transform the image pixels into those printable dots, you define the print size etc, and some more software does the conversion in one or more steps - the printing program and the driver. And all such conversion, interpolation reduces the original sharpness - more or less - and may introduce some other artifacts. And that's the area where some software tries to counteract this loss of sharpness - by adding some level of additional sharpness.
And when you look to color printers then every of these image dots to be printed have a unique color which needs to be created from a mix of smaller dots - within this image dot. This is where these extremely high numbers of 4800 or 5760 etc dpi come in, that's the color mixing within an image dot.

so after this, if i use 300 it will be more sharpeness if i use 360 and if i use 420 better and better ? but one question how i know how many ppi support my printer ??? for example Epson L1800 where i see how is the max number of ppi that i can use ?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

1. please just try whether you can set the print resolution to 360 dpi instead of 300 dpi and check
whether that makes a difference

2. Let's go into the numbers, the details and all that and see whether higher numbers are better or
not.
Let's start with a camera , this camera has a sensor approx. full format , one dimension is 1 inch
with 2540 square pixels, and the other dimension is 1.5x of that. So you have an image resolution in
the camera of 2540 ppi, or 100 ppm - 100 pixels per millimeter. So you want to print that image
onto a 4"x6" paper which means that you need to stretch your image pixels by 4 , and you only get
635 pixels per inch onto the paper.
But now your printer has fixed mechanics, stepper motor width/step, distance of codings on the
coding strip behind the printhead etc, and all that let the printer print the image dots within a
distance of 1/720dpi. So now you see what needs to happen - to stretch the 635 pixels per inch of
your image to 720 dots within an inch. This is where the interpolation starts to work - by Lightroom
and the driver.
And now you want to print this same image bigger - 8"x12" - you don't get more pixels out of your
camera for that so the software needs to get active even more and stretch the image pixels further -
by another factor of 2x. The software is adding dots as an average between the adjacent image
pixels but the software is not adding any more new image details.

3. Now you could do similar considerations for the situation that your image you want to print is much
smaller e.g. 800x1200 pixels, and you want to print a blow up on 12"x18", it's your calculation.

4. Canon printers print with 300 or 600 dpi depending on the driver quality settings.
Epson printers print with 360 or 720 dpi since a long time depending on the driver quality settings,
this applies to all printers since the R200 and before from 15+ years ago including the L1800.
The newest printers with Precision Core printheads print with 300 or 600 dpi.
That's numbers from the technical specs for every printer, and that's a number which Qimage tells
you above the layout window.

 

[oroblec]

1. please just try whether you can set the print resolution to 360 dpi instead of 300 dpi and check
whether that makes a difference

2. Let's go into the numbers, the details and all that and see whether higher numbers are better or
not.
Let's start with a camera , this camera has a sensor approx. full format , one dimension is 1 inch
with 2540 square pixels, and the other dimension is 1.5x of that. So you have an image resolution in
the camera of 2540 ppi, or 100 ppm - 100 pixels per millimeter. So you want to print that image
onto a 4"x6" paper which means that you need to stretch your image pixels by 4 , and you only get
635 pixels per inch onto the paper.
But now your printer has fixed mechanics, stepper motor width/step, distance of codings on the
coding strip behind the printhead etc, and all that let the printer print the image dots within a
distance of 1/720dpi. So now you see what needs to happen - to stretch the 635 pixels per inch of
your image to 720 dots within an inch. This is where the interpolation starts to work - by Lightroom
and the driver.
And now you want to print this same image bigger - 8"x12" - you don't get more pixels out of your
camera for that so the software needs to get active even more and stretch the image pixels further -
by another factor of 2x. The software is adding dots as an average between the adjacent image
pixels but the software is not adding any more new image details.

3. Now you could do similar considerations for the situation that your image you want to print is much
smaller e.g. 800x1200 pixels, and you want to print a blow up on 12"x18", it's your calculation.

4. Canon printers print with 300 or 600 dpi depending on the driver quality settings.
Epson printers print with 360 or 720 dpi since a long time depending on the driver quality settings,
this applies to all printers since the R200 and before from 15+ years ago including the L1800.
The newest printers with Precision Core printheads print with 300 or 600 dpi.
That's numbers from the technical specs for every printer, and that's a number which Qimage tells
you above the layout window.

today i will try to install windows in the new pc and see how i can see that in Qimage but for now, i goona try 360 and 600 and see the alert, when u says drivers quality i can get a better driver for this epson L 1800 how is that ?