High resolution (PPI) printer

[martinas]

Hello!

I am planning to produce some quality lenticular prints with high frame rate and am looking for a printer for this complex purpose. From what I have found is that it's essential to have a machine with high native resolution (PPI). By far the most common choice in the field seems to be Epson printers (720 PPI). I was wondering if there are any other printers available with even a higher PPI?

Am I missing something or why are printer's native resolutions so difficult to find out? So far I have found only one suggestion related to the topic and even this is something I am not really sure (some other sites claim a lower PPI):

"The Z3200 drivers set at Best quality + Maximum detail will ask for 1200PPI input. Whether that actually delivers 1200 PPI output quality is another question that could in theory be resolved with MTF charts of print paper resolution tests."

Thanks a lot,
Martin

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You are right, Epson printers will print with a max resolution of 720dpi, Canon mostly with 600dpi. You need to consider that each of these dots have a color, and these colors are rendered with a varying amount of 'subpixels', printing those colors to make up the resulting color of that dot, and the resolution for the rendering process within a dot makes up those 1440x5760, 2400x4800 etc which printer manufacturers advertise with.
You may test the printing software Qimage, that is the only software I'm aware of which shows the effective resolution of the printer defined by the driver quality settings and interpolates images for output accordingly so that the printer driver itself does not need to do that with its limitations from interpolation. You may run a trial on Qímage, load the driver of the Z3200 and test whether you'll see a printer resolution active of 1200 dpi depending of the driver settings. Qimage will show you as well the expected size of the spool file already before it is printing, there you can see as well quickly whether driver changes impact the size of the output spool file, it's simple - when you go from 360 dpi to 720 dpi the output file grows 4x.

Even those 720dpi are just technically what the printer is doing, you have effects during printing which will reduce that number - e.g. ink bleeding that dots grow on the paper, mechanical variations, the resolution may vary somewhat in different directions. I have seen barely any testing of the effective resolution in publications, I remember one test with a Siemens star long time ago which yielded about 350dpi for Epson for a 50% contrast ratio averaged over the directional variations, and about 325 dpi for Canon instead of the 720/600 dpi theoretical numbers.

 

[The Hat]

Hi Martin and welcome, when it come to reproducing hi quality photos you are totally misguided in many areas.

Firstly it doesn’t matter which brand of large format printer you choose they are all the same and will all produce the most beautiful finished product that will amaze you.

The idea of chasing this elusive and mythical PPI or DPI which ever one your hooked on is a big joke in my opinion, so don’t waste your time chasing a smaller dot, because the larger your print is the smaller the PPI you need, not bigger,

The human eye can not see any differences in a print above 175 PPI at very close quarters so standing back one metre from a print that has a 50 PPI will still look superb, it’s the art of elusion.

Just try and pick a printer that suite your needs rather than the one the salesman wants you to buy, because he usually has a brand loyalty that gives him the best bonus at the end of the month.

The next time you see a large hoarding at the side of the road stop your car and go over to it so you can touch it with your hand and you’ll quickly notice that it is totally blurred.

This advertisement is designed to be seen from 50 metres and the PPI is less than 1, not 1200 or 2000 PPI as you might expect, just trust in your own ability and let the printer take care of the rest..

 

[martinas]

Thanks for the feedback!

I am not after some certain brand or specific media output size. Just something being able to print more pixels per inch than the regular Epson (720 PPI) or other inkjets (600 PPI)...

There will be a sheet made of tiny lenses on top of my printout which separates the image into very thin lines, so that's where the need for extra precision comes in. In this case a high DPI is a must, but that does not translate directly into PPI and being able to print more lines on the same amount of space.

I've heard there are some HP printers that can print more than 720 PPI on special paper but I'm not sure.
Does anybody know if there exists a printer, any brand and any cost, that can print at high PPI resolution?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Are you looking for color prints or B/W ?

 

[The Hat]

laser printers are well capable of very high PPI..

 

[turbguy]

As you note, printing for lenticular display purposes does indeed require a great amount of precision! The finer the lenticular lens spacing, the more precise the required printer output becomes.

One thing you WILL want to avoid, is bi-directional printing. Any inkjet printer will be more precise when used in unidirectional printing mode. You may have to fuss with the driver settings to obtain this mode...