7/30/2005 09:26:00 PM|||dalegaspi||| Usually when people (especially those pretend digital imaging "experts") discuss (or host a pissing contest, whichever applicable) about printers, more than half the time it is usually a bias towards Canon or Epson. And to be honest--until just a couple of days ago--I was a Canon printer fanatic.
I have a 6-ink Canon i950 that is being used for color digital image printing; I also have an HP 7660 which is used exclusively for B&W printing. Recently the i950 started clogging more frequently than I want to which causes this shifting of colors depending on which color is clogged. I found it very annoying that I started using the 7660 for making color prints.
I haven't profiled my 7660, and I was damn too lazy to profile anything during that first time I was using the 7660 for color printing. So during printing, I just set everything to sRGB. Now since all HP printers natively support sRGB (they co-developed this color space with Microsoft, after all), it was such a breeze. To my surprise, I found that using the HP Premium Plus Glossy Paper, the prints are an exact match on the screen the first time!
I also found that the colors were way beyond my expectations. Keep in mind that the 7600 series are the entry-level series to the line of Photosmart printers.
And then it just hit me: Why the hell am I wasting time with Canon printers in the first place? Let me count the ways:
- HP natively supports sRGB. So if you have a finely-tuned monitor--or better yet--if it can support sRGB, you are all set. No more printer profiling needed. It's as simple as that. Some purists would criticize the limitations of the sRGB color space compared to the potentially larger color space of the printer itself, but for all practical purposes, sRGB should suffice for all our color space needs. No, really. Last I checked I haven't heard of a digital photo lab that could support color spaces larger than sRGB.
- HP's Premium Plus photo papers are the best out there when it comes to price-to-quality ratio--bar none. I have tried a lot--and I mean a lot. Canon and Epson OEM papers cannot even come close. With Canon printers, I would usually use the Ilford Pearl papers or the more expensive Olympus Pictorico papers, but I would waste a lot of paper (and time) just to create a decent printer profile.
- No clogging. How does HP do it? The printer heads are built into the ink cartridge. So if you got clogged heads, replace the affected ink cartridge. Isn't that sweet? With that design, however, HP inks are more expensive than Canon's or Epson's.
- Some users/reviewers find the naming scheme of HP for their inks as confusing because HP is using numbers for "naming" their inks. I think those users/reviewers are retarded. I thought HP devised a brilliant naming scheme. When I bought ink cartridges for the i950, I should remember that it's BCi-6 ink (or is it?...I don't know, I forgot already) and one for each color code (Y, B, etc.). THEN I would read the cartridge to make sure it's compatible with the printer. DON'T even get me started with Epson's naming scheme. For the 7660: No. 57 and No. 58. Is that confusing?
With all that said, there is one nagging downside on HP printers: software. It's poorly designed, at least for the XP. Let me outline the problems:
- Drivers are a pain to install; you will have to go through this idiotic installer when an INF and driver file should be enough.
- It installs a resident software to check on the status of your printer ALL THE TIME. Pure genius, HP: Users definitely needs to know the status of their printers when they're not using it. Oh, wait.
- HP installs a driver Update software. It's not even an option NOT to install it. Eh? We already have Windows Update. What's the point?
Despite these problems on software, at the end of the day, it boils down to ease of use, quality of prints, and durability. HP's poor software will not prevent me from buying another HP photo printer in the future.
|||112277499366713078|||On Photo Printers: Canon, Epson, or HP?