Hello all,
I apologize in advance for such a noobish question, but I am on the verge of buying new equipment, and my confusion is turned up to 11. However, my expectations may be unreasonable. This side of the world is new to me, and I think I have the wrong mindset.
I have three Canon Printers at my home. They are aqueous printers, I started with one small one and bought bigger ones as I outgrew them, and the best one is a Prograf Pro-4100. These are hobby machines, and I originally got them to print my own pictures and posters. But over time, I don't know how it happened, and it is kind of a long story for another day, but these printers started making money the last couple of years and have turned a nice profit. However, being aqueous printers, we started looking into upgrading to Solvent or latex machines.
I contacted my local rep to order some samples and go over all the features and requirements, and everything sounds great with latex. Especially how they can be turned off without causing damage to the heads, and I will probably be using the 220v drops we use to charge the cars, so that is a plus. They are also within the budget because I am trying to stay below 18k.
Then I got the samples, and the quality was not what I was expecting. The samples were grainy. All the samples appeared to have an issue with the color green.
They had a backlit sample that looked fine, but the others looked like they were at a very low DPI. I combed through the internet looking for information. I have found both sides of the aisle where it is said that the HP 300 series can produce photo-quality prints, to others that these printers are meant for stuff to be seen from far away. I have seen print samples that I am told are good quality, but all I see is the graininess when I look at them. I found some posts saying that a properly configured HP printer (color management, profiles etc.) will produce solid color prints on most colors. I even got samples from more expensive printers like the Roland VF2-640, which were also grainy.
I requested some samples from HP directly to see if maybe there is something wrong with the samples I got. With that being said, some of the research I have done here regarding graininess has been concerning.
Are my expectations just too high? The HP is listed at 1200dpi, but the prints I received look exactly like my first canon printer, which struggled to print at 600 dpi.
I started looking into printers that could print at a higher DPI rating than 1200 as I feel that some of these printers have caveats to print at that resolution because all but the backlit of these samples look like they were far below 1200 DPI. I am looking into Mutoh printers at the moment to see if perhaps that's a better option. They are much more expensive for six-color versions, and getting replacement parts seems like it may be an issue. The Epson printers are priced competitively to the Mutoh.
I apologize in advance for such a noobish question, but I am on the verge of buying new equipment, and my confusion is turned up to 11. However, my expectations may be unreasonable. This side of the world is new to me, and I think I have the wrong mindset.
I have three Canon Printers at my home. They are aqueous printers, I started with one small one and bought bigger ones as I outgrew them, and the best one is a Prograf Pro-4100. These are hobby machines, and I originally got them to print my own pictures and posters. But over time, I don't know how it happened, and it is kind of a long story for another day, but these printers started making money the last couple of years and have turned a nice profit. However, being aqueous printers, we started looking into upgrading to Solvent or latex machines.
I contacted my local rep to order some samples and go over all the features and requirements, and everything sounds great with latex. Especially how they can be turned off without causing damage to the heads, and I will probably be using the 220v drops we use to charge the cars, so that is a plus. They are also within the budget because I am trying to stay below 18k.
Then I got the samples, and the quality was not what I was expecting. The samples were grainy. All the samples appeared to have an issue with the color green.
They had a backlit sample that looked fine, but the others looked like they were at a very low DPI. I combed through the internet looking for information. I have found both sides of the aisle where it is said that the HP 300 series can produce photo-quality prints, to others that these printers are meant for stuff to be seen from far away. I have seen print samples that I am told are good quality, but all I see is the graininess when I look at them. I found some posts saying that a properly configured HP printer (color management, profiles etc.) will produce solid color prints on most colors. I even got samples from more expensive printers like the Roland VF2-640, which were also grainy.
I requested some samples from HP directly to see if maybe there is something wrong with the samples I got. With that being said, some of the research I have done here regarding graininess has been concerning.
Are my expectations just too high? The HP is listed at 1200dpi, but the prints I received look exactly like my first canon printer, which struggled to print at 600 dpi.
I started looking into printers that could print at a higher DPI rating than 1200 as I feel that some of these printers have caveats to print at that resolution because all but the backlit of these samples look like they were far below 1200 DPI. I am looking into Mutoh printers at the moment to see if perhaps that's a better option. They are much more expensive for six-color versions, and getting replacement parts seems like it may be an issue. The Epson printers are priced competitively to the Mutoh.
