Epson SC P600--need help getting better clarity/crispness in art prints

[Anthony Wheeler]

Hi Folks,

I'm a rookie user of both photoshop and printing (not a good combo). I'm an illustrator, scanning original watercolor artwork at 400 DPI, bringing into photoshop and then printing. As i'm printing, I'm noticing that that some of the black lines of the artwork along with some of the coloring just isnt crisp and not professional looking. I'll give as much info below and would love any recommendations.

Artwork:
Watercolor paper, black ink and watercolor paint--size is either 8x10 or 11x14

Scan:
400 DPI, .tiff file

Photoshop:
Set canvas size at 8x10 or 11x14
400DPI

Typically Smart Sharpen, Reduce some noise, adjust the black level to make slightly darker in Levels and maybe some Vibrance. Image in Screen looks very sharp, solid black lines, great clarity.

Working in RGB, 8 bits per channel

Save as a .tiff file

Printer:
Epson SC P600
Photoshop manages colors
Printer Profile is Cold Press Natural MK v2 paper (I print on Finestra watercolor paper)
In the Printer driver--Use Media type Ultra Premium Presentation Matte, Matte Black ink, Max Quality (5760x1440 DPI) and typically +10 in Color Density.

Prints come out fine in color but the crispness of the black lines looks soft and in some places a little pixelated (especially if i enlarge). I've tried printing in CMYK and bumping the level of the blacks and doesnt seem to make a difference.

One thing i'm having trouble understanding is PPI to DPI--if my printer is printing at 5760x1440 but my PPI is only 400, do i need to up my ppi? Do i need my original scan to be much higher in DPI?

I've played with a lot of settings and run about 200 dollars of test prints and read a lot of internet forums and youtube vids...any help, suggestions would be wonderful!

Thanks, anthony

 

[The Hat]

You’re a bit mixed up with your DPI and PPI, but there’s plenty of time to learn...

try scanning at 600 DPI and printing from Illustrator itself, and let the printer handle the colours and see what you end up with, you can still set the Media choice...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

those dpi/ppi numbers are not really important at this time, you are concerned about black lines, could you crop a small part of one of your images - with such black lines and post it here - please as a .tiff file compressed to .zip, this to avoid that the jpg compression is adding artifacts along the edges. Did you compare your scanned black lines to a text print with a similar line width? Are you adjusting a blackpoint when you scan these images ? Are you doing other adjustments to the scan before printing - gamma, contrast etc ? are you checking your image before print by looking to the histogram to verify that the 'black' areas are really black - RGB close to 0 and not something like 10,12,8 or similar and just a dark gray. Sharpening may help but can have other side effects.

 

[Greatwhitewing]

Maybe a dumb reply but do you have a clean nozzle check pattern and print head alignment?
I am a rook printer too