The Online Photographer

No text.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jon Peterson: "A similar rebate is also expiring on the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000."

Mike replies: Argh, I wish I'd known that, I would have linked that too. At least there are still 27 minutes left!

SA: "No, that is a trick. Epson printer rebates are always on. Just wait a few days for the new one."

[UPDATE Saturday morning: SA is right! The Epson P800 rebate has been extended to October 31st. The rebate on the Canon PRO-1000 has also been extended till the end of October.]

Here's the disadvantage of sending your prints out for printing.

Imagine you work on your image file, get it just right on the monitor, and send it off to wherever to be printed. A day or three later the print comes in the mail, and you look at it and think, hey, looks great. Then you look at it some more, and you think, you know, if would look better if it were just a little less yellow.

Or: I should have opened up that shadow just a tad.

Or: I didn't realize the color noise was going to be quite that obvious. Should have hit that slider just a little harder.

Or, darn, forgot to remove that whatever-it-is in the distance that you can't tell what it is...meant to do that.

Obviously there are different standards for different people and different uses, and hey, it might even be the case that the professional printmaker can do a better job than you could ever do, so his/her/their expertise and equipment is pure bonus. And maybe the print you'll be happy with is a McDonalds meal as opposed to a gourmet experience at a fancy restaurant—if it looks halfway decent you'll be happy. Not everything has to be a connoisseur's idea of just-so.

But at the other end of that spectrum, printing is a means of "signing off" on exactly how you, as the artist/"creative," want the print to look—precisely. To set it in stone, so to speak—or rather, set it in unchanging pigment ink on archival paper. Printing to that higher standard is a servo-mechanism kind of activity. You prepare the file, print it, look at it, appraise how it looks and feels; make changes; print again; look, appraise, make changes, print again; look, appraise, make changes, print again...and so forth until it looks just exactly the way you want it to.

Just one of those re-do cycles becomes pretty onerous when you're sending the file out for printing...even if the shop you use does the re-do for free. It's still a hassle.

Print at home, and the process might end at one print, or three, or seven. And it could take 45 minutes or five days—you can do it in your own time. You can keep going and stop as soon as you are satisfied and not one iteration sooner. It's really a far better way to work, if you're [an artist / picky].

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Larry Gebhardt: "Well said, and it's why I own printers instead of sending out for prints. I've tried both ways of working and I wouldn't go back to not owning a quality inkjet, though I might someday let a shop make large prints for me after proofing at home."

MHMG: "And once you have the printed image exactly the way you want it, you can now make a few perfect replicates for family and friends...no need to re-order from the photo lab and cross your fingers that the reprints will match the first print!"

PhotoDes: "I did some prints earlier this week and your portrayal of the process was spot on. For me, it took three prints and I got just what I wanted. I've always known I'm 'picky.'"

Steve Caddy: "And it's satisfying as hell. Making that final object closes the creative loop."

Mike replies: That's the real bottom line.

Wayne asked: "Thanks for taking the time to relate your experience with the Epson printer. I am always interested in such things as I have yet to take the dive into high quality inkjet printing. The obstruction is the horrific, or at least seemingly horrific, prices associated with ink. There are two areas of printer evaluation that seem always to be difficult to determine: 1.) on average, how many 8x10 color prints can one expect to glean from a new set of ink tanks? and 2.) are the various refillable ink tank options a viable option to control expense related to ink? On the first question, I realize much will depend on the type of prints produced; but some indication of what a print will cost would be helpful. On the second question, without information from someone who has taken this route, it has the taint of being one of those episodes of throwing good money after bad. At 56, I have had experience with that type of episode and am anxious to curtail them in future."

Mike replies: I can only speak to your question no. 1, as I haven't tried any refillable cartridges. The problem there is that most of the available archival testing information available for print life expectancy (called print LE) is for manufacturer inksets. While it's possible that third party inks might be as good, there's little scientific corroboration available. Getting a print right is exacting enough work that I want to be reasonably assured that I don't have to do it all over again sometime.

As to how many 8x10 prints you can make from a set of inks, I suspect the only way to get good data would be to keep careful records of the number of prints you make—probably by square inches—and the amount of ink you use over a long period of usage. I mean hundreds of prints or even into four figures. The problem is that not all pictures are the same, and different pictures can use varying amounts of ink; plus, the cartridges don't deplete all at the same rate. Sooner or later, if you keep careful records, all the variables will even out and you'll have a pretty good answer for yourself.

For instance, look at my current ink usage on the P600:

(The grayed-out bar on the right is for matt black ink or MK—"K" being an old printer's term for black). What would you say—about a third used up? Be aware that the bars are probably not precise readings, either. And the machines leave ink left over even in fully depleted cartridges.

[Correction: I forgot to mention that new printers need to have the lines charged which uses up some ink. Ken Tanaka reminded me—thanks Ken. I did at least call Epson to confirm that the carts that come with the P600 are full ones, not partially filled starter cartridges. —Mike]

At the moment I've made 24 prints on letter sized paper. That's three on Epson Hot Press Bright and 21 on Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster. Most of them are 7" wide and of varying heights. Five are B&W. Several are 9" wide and three (one dark) fill up the entire 8.5x11" sheet.

See what I mean? At this rate my VLM and PK will exhaust first, and I'll replace those before the others run dry. By that time I'll have an even less precise idea of exactly how much I've printed.

Finally, what do you consider "an 8x10 print"? Any 8x10 print, or just the final, finished, successful one? Because it might take you a few passes to get to that. If you make four prints to get to the one that's just right, does that count as four or one? I'd call it "one print." Not four.

This—ink use as part of the creative process along the way toward a final print—is in part a technical and workflow issue, in part a matter of your skillset and experience as the printmaker, and in part it is purely a matter of aesthetic process. That is, you sometimes need to take some steps toward deciding what you want the final print to look like. The technical part (equipment calibration, color management, paper profiles) can presumably be mastered, and your use of ink might get more efficient. The aesthetic part of the process might be another matter. Your process might demand first a workprint, then a good trial print, then some time for reflection, then finally the finished print. You might improve your efficiency there over time, too: I knew a National Geographic printmaker in the days of RA-4 and JOBOs who could look at a proof sheet of color neg, set the color pack on the enlarger, and get a pretty good print at the first go. She had a great eye for color and density.

How few or how many trial prints you have to make toward a finished print is not entirely a technical matter, is what I'm saying.

So your question seems straightforward and easily quantified, but I wonder if it's not, in the end, almost unanswerable!

But at least I've described for you the P600's ink use as accurately as I can thus far.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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bandbox: "Yes, the OEM inks are expensive, but for me the expense of printing on my 3880 is certainly less than my costs of printing paper and chemicals when I was into silver based photography and using my own darkroom. There was much more testing and waste involved before getting to a final print, to say nothing of the time setting up, printing and processing, and cleaning up. After many years of doing that, and watching the rise of digital and decline of silver, in 2005 I threw in the towel: got rid of the darkroom equipment, switched from enlargers to an etching press, and converted the darkroom into a studio for painting and printmaking.

"And then I watched as digital imaging got better and better, eventually bought a digital camera, started using Lightroom, bought the 3880.... All of this fits into a corner of the studio and I can do everything in full daylight. The finished print quality is better than my old silver prints and there's much less waste of materials and time.

"Really, it's orders of magnitude better. Yes, I thought about the price of the inks and realized that it's insignificant compared to the old darkroom costs. So just suck it up and use that new printer."

Andre Y: "Charging the lines with ink only happens for printers where the ink doesn't sit on the printhead. Generally, lower-end printers have cartridges on the printhead, while higher-end printers have their cartridges sitting separate from the head, with hoses to bring the ink to the head.

"Why would anyone use a lower-end printer, especially your august readership? Well, if you're into B&W printing with dedicated B&W inks (Jon Cone's Piezography as mentioned already, as well as Paul Roark's more DIY approach), the Epson Artisan 1430 is a fantastic printer to modify with B&W inks because it's cheap, well-supported, and can lay down very small dots (1.5 pL in the highlights). If you're worried about the waste ink pad, you should install a waste ink receptacle. I use Octoinkjet's Printer Potty. Installation varies by printer model, but it's not too bad if you go slowly. Shipping to the US is very fast too."

Ken James (partial comment): "I cannot imagine taking pictures if I could not print them."

[Note: When I "feature" entire comments, they do not appear in the Comments Section, but when I feature only part of someone's comment, the full text of their comment always appears in the Comments Section.  —Ed.]

Michael Perini: "In answer to Wayne, there are people who have done the kind of analysis you ask about, but it is usually done with some sort of test print, which, as Mike points out, will never match your experience. You are also correct, there are huge markups on ink, which seems difficult to take, but ink is just a charging mechanism for all the R&D and incredibly complex technology that ink jet printers represent. They are also selling us the printers for a fraction of the cost of manufacture.

"I am not an apologist for the printer companies. I would like ink to be cheaper too. But they are providing the ability to make better color prints than we ever made in the smelly expensive darkroom, in two square feet of desk space. I really believe the answer is to look less at what you give and more at what you get, which is the ability to make the finest color prints ever possible, for under $10 bucks apiece.

"But it has to be worth it to you. there are many Internet services who make perfectly nice prints cheaper than you can make them yourself. Printing inkjet prints yourself is not cheap, and not for everyone. It doesn't lend itself to the kind of analysis you would like. The printer manufacturers know that, and are aggressive in their pricing, but, given the results possible, I still think it's a bargain. If you worry about the cost every time you print, you probably won't enjoy the experience. There are many folks who rarely print anything. And that's OK too."

Wayne: "Thanks for the comprehensive response to my question. I see what you mean regarding the definition of 'print.'"

Steve Rosenblum (partial comment): "This discussion reminds me of the ones my father (may he rest in peace) and I used to have when we went on our fishing trips. At the end of each trip (usually a week) he would ask what the cost per fish caught worked out to. It's true that if you are a local who lives near a great river, tie your own flies, use the same gear for years, and go wade fishing on your own, it's a pretty economical pastime. However, we would fly out to Montana (or another fishing Mecca), fish with guides (to be sure we caught some fish and so he could do it despite his elderly frailty), and stay at a motel or lodge. Even if we caught a hundred or so fish each, the cost per fish was quite substantial.

"But, then again, we weren't spending the week together to catch a certain number of fish—we did it for the experience fishing provided for us. I think that doing your own printing is the same kind of thing...so long as you can afford it."

Winwalloe: "Mike, could you please mention how you set for picture to have a white margin in the printer? Do you specify it at the printing step? Do you have the margin prior in Photoshop for instance?

"I wish I could 'automate' the addition of margins to my prints, depending on the paper size and the image ratio, but I've no idea how (except by using the same ratios most of the time, and have a script to add margins based on that, but it's a bit of a pain)."

Mike replies: Sure. In Photoshop it's in the Print Settings dialog box that comes up when you hit "Print." I assume it's the same or very similar in Lightroom.

You'll find it under "Position and Size." Clicking on "Scale to Fit Media" makes the picture as large as possible on the sheet you're using; if you unclick that, you can set image size based on Height or Width or Scale (percentage). As long as "Center" is clicked under "Position," the image will be exactly centered. While it's centered, you can read the exact measurements of the borders. The you can unclick Center and set one of the values to move the image up or down (or sideways) on the sheet. With this image (I sneaked in another image of Butters, which I enjoy doing—this one taken on Wednesday with the Nikon D7200 and Sigma 17–70mm, by the way), when it was centered it was 1.834 inches from the top. I changed that value to 1.5 inches to move the image up on the sheet a little, which is called "bottom weighting."

Notice at the top of this dialog box that you can also choose between portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) paper orientation.

This will be somewhat different in different programs, but I think most will have easy-to-understand controls for positioning the image on the sheet.

Alan Carmody: "I have a far more humble model of Epson photo printer. I've reduced ink usage greatly ever since I learned not to turn it off—at all. Apparently, turning the printer off and on causes the printer to go through at least one cleaning cycle, in which it uses ink to clean the pipes. Turning the printer off nightly, in the false belief that one is saving the world by doing so, merely causes most of the ink to be used up cleaning the print head nozzles. I'd say I've reduced ink consumption by at least half, if not two thirds."

William: "The business models for printers and ink is a significant factor in my decision to send files to a very good lab and let them do the printing."

Chris Kern: I think concern about the cost of ink is misplaced. Since I bought an Epson P800 about a year ago, I've been spending more on ink and paper than I did when I was ordering prints from a custom lab, but I'm printing a lot more of my images than I ever thought of doing when I was paying someone else to print them. 

"In other words, I enjoy the process of printing—of soft-proofing to get the colors just right and tweaking the tone curve in an attempt to replicate as closely as possible the high dynamic range of a transmission display (my monitor) on a much lower dynamic range reflective medium (photo paper). I'm not sure my results are any better than what the lab tech would have produced, but I'm learning a new craft (my previous experience printing was many years ago in a black-and-white wet darkroom) and producing a physical artifact I can hang on a wall or use as a gift.

"I'm assuming anyone selling prints in volume would be better off turning over the production to someone else. It seems to me that photographers should print their own work for two reasons: 1.) they want to control the result as precisely as possible in order to preserve their brand or 2.) they're amateurs, like me, and printing is a part of the craft they enjoy practicing. In either case, the cost of materials shouldn't produce a lot of angst."

It's early days yet, but my experience with the Epson P600 printer is going well. I'm trying to make at least one print every night; so far I haven't been able to stick to anything near that few. I've been making mostly small, 7-inch-wide workprints to conserve ink (even though Epson provided the ink! Still)—

Wee print, because I'm cheap

Remember the french fries
However, before we go much further here I need to say a word about the value equation. The P600 costs $750 at the moment, vs. $1,195 list* for the P800, its little-bit-bigger brother (LBBB)—a difference of $445. However, as you might know, printer manufacturers basically pass along the printer units for free or even below cost, and then make it up on materials. (McDonalds fast-food restuarants do the same thing—everything they serve is priced at cost except fries and soda, both of which have tremendous markups—500% or more in the case of fries. Not for nothing are counterpeople taught to say "Would you like fries with that?") The T760 ink cartridges for the P600 hold 25.9 milliliters of ink, and a full set costs $288. The T850 ink cartridges for the P800 hold 80 ml. of ink, and a full set costs $495.

P600 ink: $1.24 per ml.

P800 ink: 69¢ per ml.

Not only would the difference of 55¢ per ml. pay for the cost differential between the two printers after purchasing only 809 ml. of ink—that's 31 cartridges for the P600 or just over ten cartridges for the LBBB—but, since the P800 comes bundled with more ink to begin with, the price differential is already offset quite a bit just by the ink that comes in the box! (I haven't figured that out exactly, but I'm sure someone, somewhere, has.) That's a huge operational price advantage for the P800 LBBB that will only grow more lopsided the more prints you make.

Not only that, but Epson considers the P800 a professional product and the P600 a consumer product, and it doesn't provide programming documentation for the P600 to third-party software and peripherals providers. For instance, ColorByte Software is still working on ImagePrint 10 for the P600, because they had to reverse-engineer it. (They'll be sending it to me when they finish up.)

Further, a friend points out that "beyond the ink cost, the P600 doesn't have the maintenance cartridge feature of the 3800/3880/P800 and so has its own characteristic failure mode: it will eventually die a messy death by drowning in its own ink when its excess-ink-trapping sponge, or whatever they call it, gets saturated. Already had that experience with my first inkjet, which had the same 'feature'—don't want to go there again if I can help it."

The downside? The P800 is bigger and heavier, harder to site in your home or office, and takes a bigger up-front outlay to buy. Ink carts cost more in absolute dollars, too.

Additional upside of the P80o LBBB is the immediately obvious one, which is that it handles 17-inch-wide paper instead of 13-inch like the P600.

LBBB gets nod
But as you can see from all this, you might need to think beyond the obvious here. The P800 is a more sensible investment for anyone who intends to do any significant amount of printing. Certainly if you were going to embark on an OCOLOY project making one print a day, the P800 is pretty much a no-brainer. It would be much cheaper in the long run.

...I kind of have to wonder, in fact, exactly who the P600 is aimed at. Obviously, not a casual printmaker, or one with low standards, because it's a very high-quality 9-ink printer that uses Epson's latest UltraChrome HD inkset. I've only been using it for three days but it's so much fun, and the prints look so nice, that I stayed up way past my bedtime last night making prints, including, um, several big ones. My ink is never gonna last at this rate.

I guess the P600 is for anyone who is decisively swayed by the smaller physical size and lower up-front cost, or for someone who wants to make top-quality prints but only in small quantities or occasionally—perhaps only two or three prints every two or three weeks, say. Anyone, that is, who would have trouble using up 31 ink carts over the course of several years or, especially, over the 5–8 year life expectancy of the printer. (That's really ballpark, as I have nothing but a rough monkey-butt idea of how long people typically keep their inkjet printers, or how long the printers themselves typically keep on truckin'.) That would also minimize the lack of that maintenance cart.

Anyway. Something to think about. As far as I can tell so far, the P600 is a wonderful printer that gives outstanding results—and it's quite possible you shouldn't buy it! In fact, I'm mulling over sticking this P600 right back in its box and sending it back to Epson...it's that good.  :-)

As always, I shall keep you posted.

Mike
(Thanks to John P. and Oren)

A counterpoint view from Mark McCormick-Goodhart of Aardenburg Imaging: The lower ink costs of the P800 versus the P600 only begin to bear economic fruit after you've printed several hundred 8x10 equivalent size prints or more, and can do so in a couple of years or so. I could be wrong, but I suspect many advanced amateur photographers just won't print all that frequently or in enough high-volume sessions to justify the higher capacity ink cartridges. To make a point, consider your first print on the rebated P800. It just cost you about $800. Make two prints. They are $400 apiece...make 800 prints and now the amortized equipment cost per print has achieved parity with the cost of the inks, and the total cost of each 8x10 equivalent print has dropped below $5 even when using expensive fine art papers. Hence, this simple amortization model justifies the higher capacity lower cost/ml ink cartridges only if you think you will print perhaps a few hundred enlarged prints or more per year.

Also, one probably doesn't want to keep two-plus-year-old inks in the printer (pigment particles can settle and/or aggregate, and thus cause color unwanted color shifts and increased clogging issues), so unless you can get through 720 ml of ink in two years (i.e 80ml x 9 cartridges which likewise yields about 700 8x10 equivalent prints), you are better off with the P600's smaller capacity cartridges. The smaller P600 also has a subtle but real quality edge which is noticeable especially in smaller-sized photos owing to its 5760 dpi highest-quality mode setting versus 2880 dpi on the P800.

Bottom line: The shock and awe factor of high priced inks is real but the true ramifications are greatly exaggerated. Home printing, all cost factors considered, will never compete with bargain basement photo finishing of 4x6 photos, but it wins by leaps and bounds over custom lab print prices after you've printed only a few dozen 13x19 or 17x22 enlargements on fine art media! It's the personal control over your print quality and the decision to print on high-quality non RC media where home printing really comes into its own.

*There's a $300 rebate at the moment. Thanks to iran ramirez and several other readers for pointing that out.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Dogman: "In my experience, ink cost eventually becomes a non-issue. In a time when most people never see a photograph anywhere but on a computer monitor or the small screen on their smart phone, your prints will amaze your friends, family and neighbors as you show them around. Having someone validate your art is priceless."

Keith B.: "Mike, I wish you had been there, back in 2007, to lay out the economics of the P800-sized printer vs. almost any smaller printer as clearly as you just have done. I, and many, many others over these last few years, went through the naive 'The small one will be fine...' self-con.

"If you are intelligent, hate wasting money, and love to make prints, the self-con will likely end the same way for you as it ended for me: Within a year or less, you'll no longer be able to tolerate the private embarrassment that you have chosen a clear path toward wasting money. Then, you'll buy the P800 you would have been wiser to purchase initially."

iran ramirez: "The P800 is $895 after rebate, just FYI."

Jeff: " The P800 really isn't much bigger or heavier than the P600: about 2.5 inches wider, less than a half inch deeper, an inch taller and 8 pounds heavier (without any additional roll paper option). The size differences are minimal compared to moving up to the 4900 (two more inks), which is the only Epson series that has not (yet) received a P-series replacement. The 4900 has had some serious clogging problems."

Steve Belanger: "I bought the P600 nearly one year ago and took advantage of the $250 rebate. I thought it was a great deal, especially considering that the P800 had no rebate offer at the time. Given it is my first experience with printing my own photos, I'm quite happy with the results, although I'm now annoyed to find out about the maintenance cartridge issue. I should also mention that I don't print daily or even weekly. I've not had a problem with clogging, as far as I can tell. I've been printing a handful of prints about once every six weeks. The experience of doing my own prints was been great. Better results and much more gratifying than relying on a photo lab!"

This is a real thing...in case you thought it was tough fitting a printer in your office. (I've been feeling guilty about not having enough room for a P800.)

It's the new Epson SureColor S60600. Epson's new large printers are on sale right now, in case you need an extra one of these for your bedroom. The price of this model is reduced by roughly the cost of two P800's. (Also on sale, for $250 off.) Final price after rebate $18,995. (The S60600, not the P800.)

I'm just happy I'm not tasked with keeping one of these on song. When I remember how hard it was to keep my B9180 going....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Brian Woolf: "I recently purchased an Epson P6000 24"-wide printer from B&H, they had a special that I could not believe—free shipping. Since shipping that monster was about $500, couldn't pass it up. It is less wide than your illustration photo but it is still large for only a 24" wide printer. It's a beautiful machine and, so far, looks after itself, doing nozzle checks randomly. I print every other day to keep it going."

Geoff Wittig: "For what it's worth, large format inkjets are generally a lot more trouble-free than their smaller desktop cousins. I presume that's a consequence of the quality engineering and better parts you get for the higher price of entry. I've been using a Canon iPF6300 for years, and it's been a paragon of reliability. If I leave it idle for a few weeks it has to run a cleaning cycle, but it then resumes cranking out prints without complaint. I find myself trying to resist the siren's song of deeper blacks from the latest generation of printers; I simply can't justify it when this printer just keeps going and going."

Ned Bunnell: "We're renovating our new house, and I'm adding a fourth bedroom/office to accommodate the P800. Can't imagine the space I'd need for this beast."

Keith B.: "It would be wise to find space for a P800, since the gouge-factor of the ink costs for any of the smaller units will eat away at your soul. Ask me how I know."

These were both comments to the "Open Mike" post on Sunday about learning how to print. I thought they deserved their own post. Bob recently retired from a career making beautiful high-end studio portraits of dogs (how can you not like that?), and Geoff is a small-town medical doctor in Western New York with a longtime passion for photography and a huge book collection. He has written many (more formal) book reviews for TOP.

Geoff Wittig: "Totally agree with the recommendation above for Jeff Schewe's books. The Digital Negative (second edition) was just published in September 2015, so it's pretty much up to date in terms of current versions of Photoshop/ACR and Lightroom. Schewe's approach to image processing is pretty much style-agnostic, giving you access to all of Photoshop/ACR and Lightroom's tools without dictating what your images should look like. Schewe gets right to the point and doesn't waste your time. The Digital Print dates to 2013, but that's fine because printer technology isn't changing as fast as software versions. It's excellent on how to translate the image on-screen to a physical print that reflects what you're trying to do artistically. The two books together pretty much give you all the information you need in a very approachable format.

"As of seven or eight years ago there were a goodly number of books on the subject. But it's a moving target, and print books are basically a perishable commodity as software versions and printer technology advance. Harald Johnson's Mastering Digital Printing was a good overview, but the latest (second) edition dates to 2004, so it's no longer very useful. Uwe Steinmueller's Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers (third edition) is pretty current as it was published in late 2013, and has some good information, but it's also packed with lots of redundant stuff about specific printer models and the writing style confirms that English is not his first language.

"George DeWolfe's B&W Printing: Creating the Digital Master Print dates to 2009; so it's a bit old, but he is a very skilled printer. Be forewarned that he's a bit dogmatic and is also trying to sell some software tools. Finally, David Taylor's Photographic Digital Printing is current (April 2015), but it's too elementary to recommended, and Rob Sheppard's New Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing is both too simplified and entirely Epson-based."

Bob Rosinsky: "The best way to learn how to print is to purchase a decent 'budget' inkjet printer [such as the Epson P600  —Ed.]. Avoid printers that use small ink cartridges. Start out using one type of paper—one that is RC and relatively inexpensive—Epson Ultra Premium Luster or similar. At the very least, start with a monitor that is 'okay.' I recommend purchasing a simple device for calibrating the screen. Start out with a photo editing program that allows for 'soft proofing.'

"Spend some time reading about printing. I think The Luminous-Landscape is a great site. I've gotten a lot of useful tips from well-known gurus who are willing to share hard-earned knowledge. The more you read and learn through practice, the more skillful you will become. If all of this sounds intimidating, try hooking up with someone who understands color management and has been printing for awhile. To become facile (meaning you hit it right on the first or second print) requires technical skill and artistic vision.

"Please bear in mind, I am a fastidious printer. I am 57 years old. I've been printing since the age of 14. A lot of the skills I acquired in the darkroom are relevant in the lightroom.

"As for casual printing, it is possible to achieve pretty good results. Like anything, the more you learn the more you'll become aware how much you do not know about what you do not know. It is highly rewarding to 'see' the final print prior to pressing the shutter button. It takes a lot of practice to achieve that."

And there you have it: study and practice.

Mike
(Thanks to Geoff and Bob)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post referred to "poly" as being short for "polyethylene." That's wrong—it's polypropylene. I never could keep the polys straight.

Come to think of it, my neice used to have a squadron of dolls named Holly, Lolly, Polly, Molly, etc., etc., collectively called "the 'ollys." And I never could keep them straight either.

Thanks to Michael Wall for this—the Polly Propylene correction I mean—and sorry for the error. —Mike the Ed.]

TOP reader Larry Jasper recently sent me some prints and I was impressed by the craftsmanship of his presentation. Thought I'd share.

The key protection is provided by the so-called "poly bag" (poly being short for polpropylene), which is extremely transparent and offers easy viewing plus great protection for repeated handling without dirtying the overmat.

Archival Methods poly bags, sold in boxes of 100, run about 60¢ each for 17x22" size and 33¢ each for 13x19" bags.

I deliberately caught a reflection here so you can see the bag. Except for reflections, polyethylene is crystal clear.

Larry's mat is "floated," meaning the edge of the overmat is set back from the edge of the picture. This demands precision in the cutting of the mat, because the gap should be equal all around (it doesn't look so below because of a trick in perspective, but it is), and it also demands that care be taken in matching the color of the printing paper and the color of the mat. But it looks more elegant and relaxed than an overmat that covers the edges of the print.

The latter has another disadvantage in that it can't show the exact edges of the print as the photographer intended.

Overmat, closed. Note the good match between the shade of white in the printing paper and the mat.

An overmat is created when two pieces of identically-sized mat board are hinged in the middle like the spine of a book. The print is mounted to the solid piece, and the piece with the cutout folds down on top of the print.

Overmat, open. The hinge is usually linen tape, a high-quality cloth tape.

The print is centered into the mat and then attached with a "T-hinge" of linen tape. One piece is attached to the edge of the print from the back, left partially sticking out; the part that sticks out is then taped down to the mat board from above.

T-hinge from above. A second piece of tape, sticky side up, is attached half to the underside of the print and half to the piece of tape you see.

Larry gilds the lily with a transparent photo corner on the bottom two corners; you really don't need to do this, though, except perhaps with very large pieces of paper.

Photo corner

A final touch is a studio emblem and a signature in pencil on the back:

Seal and signature

Signatures can go wherever you please; on the back of the print is the usual place, or on the front of the print visible in the lower right. It's up to you. The signature is sometimes placed on the mat board, either on the front on the lower right or on the back as Larry has done. The disadvantage of signing the mat is that if the mat board is ever replaced the signature is lost, so conservators don't like that practice. The most accepted practice is to sign on the back of the actual print, but behind the margin rather than behind the image area. Signing inside the actual image area on the front is considered poor practice by most, though I've seen it done.

This method of "bagging" or sleeving a matted print is ideal—and most common—for ready-to-frame prints stacked in bins allowing people to browse. Classically, matted prints in portfolio boxes are not bagged if they're intended to be viewed by curators. In that case, sometimes white cotton gloves are provided in the portfolio case to encourage the curators not to get fingerprints on the mats. Portfolios which make the rounds, however, are sure to get dirty and will need to be rematted eventually.

I suspect bags were frowned upon historically only because the plastic used to not be perfectly transparent. Curators hated to have to take prints out of sleeves just to view them. I don't know if poly sleeves have made that practice more common at museums, but I don't see why protected prints like this couldn't be used in a portfolio for more utilitarian presentations.

For storing prints privately, another great method that I like a lot—and that requires far less work—is to take a piece of archival mat board the same size as the print and the bag and place the print and board in the poly bag together. The board doesn't need to be attached to the print at all. The board protects the print from being bent or crimped, and the poly bag protects it from handling, pests, and atmospheric pollutants. It's not as elegant as Larry's presentation but it's simple and clean and it works.

The benefit of Larry's method for buyers is that the print is matted and ready to be framed—and is protected in the meantime. And the benefit of Larry's method for us (photographers, I mean) is that we get to control how we want our prints to be matted. I suppose a few buyers might re-mat an already-matted print, but I don't think very many would.

Mike
(Thanks to Larry)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Oskar Ojala: "Thanks for the presentation, I enjoyed reading. Couldn't be quite sure how the tape was supposed to be attached. I guess I need to get back to it tomorrow."

Mike replies: Does this help? The dotted line shows the bottom piece of tape, which is sticky side UP. It adheres to the back of the print, and leaves a tab sticking up. The second piece of tape (visible in the picture), sticky side down, crosses the top of the tab like a "T," hence the name T-hinge. Together they keep the print in position without obscuring any part of the front of the print.

The print is positioned in the window with the window closed, then weighted to keep it in position. Then the window mat is opened and the T hinge is made.

Much easier to show than to explain in words.

Ken Tanaka: "Nicely done. This is very similar to the standard storage format used for photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and every other museum with which I'm familiar. The core purpose of the hinged mat in an archival collection is to enable a print to be handled without being touched. May I add three suggestions?

1. For long-term storage and handling I recommend placing a piece of glassine or other acid-free archival tissue paper over the print and under the over-mat. This is inexpensive surface protection and is also very standard procedure in museum collections.
2. Consider skipping using photo corners. They represent more long-term hazard than benefit. They often dry out, fall loose, and can end up sticking to a print's surface. They can also cause wrinkling by constraining the moisture expansion of some papers in non-controlled storage environments.
3. Skip the sticker. Yea, I know it's a branding thing. But anything stuck to a print is ultimately trouble and gives conservators chills. Your verso inscription is enough to authenticate the print."

Epson recently announced the SureColor P800, which will parallel the workhorse 3880 in the new "prosumer" SureColor desktop lineup—a bigger version of the first SureColor model, the smaller P600 that was introduced to modest fanfare last September. The P800 is available for preorder (deliveries reportedly start mid-June, although no promises from Epson), and it's up on Epson's website.

The P800 will probably be the next-gen "sweet spot" home/desktop printer for avid amateurs and home enthusiasts, in the way the Nikon D750 hits the sweet spot among Nikon's full-frame traditional DSLRs*. Still, a printer like the P800 is for photographers who print heavily and at least once a week—like the carbureter in an old Alfa, it likely won't thrive unless it's driven hard and often.

[UPDATE: Several readers have said they leave their 3880s idle for considerable lengths of time without experiencing the head clogs Epsons were notorious for in the '90s. Still, it seems like heavier users are the ones who will see more benefit from a machine like this compared to a smaller paper-size printer with smaller carts like the P600 or Canon Pixma Pro-1.]

Like the 3880, the $1,200 P800 accepts 17-inch wide papers (sheets or rolls), and has large 80 ml ink cartridges (although the ones that come with the printer only have 64 ml). Ink carts retail for $60 each, making a full inkset $540 (about half the cost of the printer), although a full set of 3880 inks goes for $456 and the UltraChrome HD inks might eventually drift down toward that level.

Other big news: Epson expects the new UltraChrome HD inkset to have approximately double the print life expectancy (LE) of the previous generation of inks. The company is so far stating LE of 60 years, but has indicated that more extensive testing currently in progress will likely confirm 200-year LE for color prints that are stored, displayed, and protected properly, and as long as 400-year LE for B&W prints. The latter begins to rival the theoretical print LE of the very best-made silver-gelatin fiber-base prints, long postulated to be ~500 years. Personally I don't plan to live to be more than 150, so this is all sort of moot.

Finally, you can shrug off Epson's claims that the new P800 desktop printer is the smallest printer ever for its paper size. It might be, but it's only slightly smaller than the 10" high, 15" deep, and 27" wide dimensions, all closed up, of the 3880. Not enough difference to notice, much less count.

I'd recommend that anyone considering a P800 first read Michael Reichmann's P600 review over at The Luminous-Landscape.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews for the nudge)

*I can tell when a product hits this sweet spot because I want it even though I don't need it. Very annoying. But fun.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ed Hawco: "Well that's typical. I put off digital printing for years because I expected it would be too much trouble, too difficult to learn all the intricacies, and too expensive for my modest printing needs. Then I turned around in January and made the plunge; I got a shiny new 3880, expecting to spend a year learning the ins and outs of using it (and digital printing in general).

"Instead I spent about a week learning that stuff and now I know as much as I'll ever need to know. (Thanks to Ctein, by the way, for providing encouragement in a TOP comment that there isn't really that much to learn.)

"So now I have this great 3880, and I'm turning out beautiful prints on expensive Hahnemühle paper. Except that I don't sell prints, so I have an expanding pile of going-nowhere prints and a printer that just became obsolete. :-/

"Whatever. You always remember your first printer, and I'll remember this one for a long time because I'll be looking at it every day for the foreseeable future."

Steven Ralser: "I vaguely remember that you mentioned that Ctein was going to review the P600. Is this still going to happen? I need to replace my old canon iPF5000 and need to decide whether I should wait for the P800 or just get the 3880."

Mike replies: Plans to secure a review P600 fell through so Ctein has now requested a P800, since that matches his interests and the interests of readers more closely. We'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Epson has no review units. We'll keep trying.

Chris: "I want it I want it I want it I want it. But not enough to force me to replace my R2400. Not yet."

[Since Peter's personal Print Offer is ongoing this week, I thought it would be a good occasion to reprise his article about his friend and custom printer Voja Mitrovic, originally published in August 2010. —Mike]

The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Printers in Photography

Voja Mitrovic at the Coupole, Montparnasse, Paris, 1993. Photo by Peter Turnley.

By Peter Turnley

This is the untold story of one of the greatest printers of black-and-white photographs in the history of photography—Voja Mitrovic. It is time that this man, who has literally been in the dark since arriving in Paris from Yugoslavia in 1964, be acknowledged for his important part in the history of photography and his collaborations with many of the great photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Voja's story is also the story of the world-renowned photographic laboratory Picto, in Paris, created by Pierre Gassmann in 1950.

You've seen Voja's work without knowing it. He was a longtime printer for Henri Cartier-Bresson, from 1967–1997, and  has made prints for the past thirty years for the great Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. While others also printed H.C.-B.’s photographs, what is so important about the period Voja printed much of his work is that it corresponds to the time when collecting signed photographs first began to take off and change the public’s view of photography collecting and its connection to the art world. Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the key photographers whose work was bought and collected during that period. It was during the time when Helen Wright was representing H.C.-B.’s prints in the United States where most of his prints were collected. A large number of the signed prints of H.C.-B. on any wall in the world printed from 1967–1997 were made by Voja—this fact is little known. He also printed at various times for many of the world’s other master photographers: Sebastio Salgado, Werner Bischof, René Burri, Marc Riboud, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Man Ray, Atget, Helmut Newton, Raymond Depardon, Bruno Barbey, Jean Gaumy, Frederic Brenner, Max Vadukul, and Peter Lindbergh to name a few. I have had the great fortune that Voja has been my printer for the past twenty years. He printed the exhibition and reproduction prints for my books Parisians, McClellan Street, and In Times of War and Peace, and he has made all of my signed prints for collection.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, left, and Josef Koudelka, right, begging Voja Mitrovic not to retire at his retirement party, Picto, Paris, Dec. 22, 1996. Photo by Paolo Nozolino.

I first met Voja (by the way, the "j" in Voja is pronounced like a "y") in June of 1979. It was during my first sojourn of eight months in Paris in 1975 that I heard of the great photographic lab where Cartier-Bresson’s prints were made—Picto. John Morris, then the photo editor of the New York Times and an early and long-time mentor of mine, and the great Czech photographer, Josef Koudelka, who I had met one fall day in the Luxembourg Gardens after he photographed me kissing my then-girlfriend on a park bench, had spoken to me of this great laboratory, a center world-famous for amazing black-and-white printing.

My first visit to Picto was in late winter of 1976, and I will never forget the sight of men and women in their white coats looking over and discussing the tonal values of some Cartier-Bresson prints lying on a table. I had never studied photography—I had always thought from the outset that one’s vision was more a function of knowledge or experience with almost any other aspect or domain of life than photography and cameras, thus I was more interested in studying subjects like languages, history, political science, economics, and art. But from that first sight of H.C.-B.’s prints at Picto, while knowing that my life purpose was to be a photographer, I had a singular determination to come and work at this laboratory and to gain the practical experience of learning to be a great printer.

Picto was the creation of Pierre Gassmann (see my photo at right, taken in Montparnasse, Paris, in 1996), who had left Nazi Germany in 1933 to come to Paris. While working as a young immigrant photographer in Paris before the war and spending time around Montparnasse, Pierre Gassmann had met and become friends with the eventual founders of Magnum, Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and also with photographers such as Brassai and Gisele Freund. After the war, in 1947, Gassmann put his own photography aside and began to make prints for the Magnum photographers, and then created Picto as a commercial enterprise in 1950. There is likely no one who had more knowledge of and contact with the important members of the world photographic community of the twentieth century than Pierre Gassmann. He was a very important mentor to countless photographers, including me. The famous photography laboratory that he created would intersect with the destiny of multitudes of photographers—and have a profound impact on the destiny of the young Yougoslav, Voja Mitrovic, who arrived in Paris in 1964.

Both Voja and Picto would have a tremendous impact on my own destiny. In June of 1979, after arriving back in Paris, I went to see Pierre Gassmann at Picto and asked for a job as a printer. Pierre, with his tough-love gruff voice, asked me what I knew how to do—and I exaggerated and told him that I was a great printer and knew how to do everything with black-and-white prints. He said to me, "We will see. You will have a three day tryout, and if you aren't as good as you say, you won't get the job." On my first day of my try out, I was given 100 negatives and told to make 8x10-inch prints of each by the end of the day. At 4 p.m., a tall, handsome man with a foreign accent, one of the printers in the lab—Voja—came to my enlarger and asked how it was going. I told him that I had only printed 20 negatives. He said to me, "You will never get this job—give me the negatives." I watched him take the hundred negatives to his enlarger, and in one hour, he printed the remaining 80 negatives, putting each sheet of printing paper in a closed drawer after exposing each negative. At 4:50 pm, he took out 80 sheets of exposed photographic paper and went to the open developing tank. I watched him chain develop all the prints, and one by one put all 80 prints, perfectly printed, into the fixer. At 5:10 p.m. that day, Pierre Gassmann walked into the lab and said, "let’s see how you have done." He put his foot on the foot pedal to light up the fixer tank with bright red light, and went through my 100 prints laying in the fixer-and a few seconds later, looked up and said to me, "you are as good as you said; you are hired!" After Gassmann walked out of the dark room, I took Voja aside, and said, "thank you. I will find a way one day to thank you for this!" He looked at me and said, "I was an immigrant also. I know what it means to need work—we need to help each other!"

While I worked as a printer at Picto in 1979 and 1980, I saw first-hand the amazing work of Voja Mitrovic. After I left Picto, and had finished my graduate degree in international relations at Sciences Po in Paris (where I was a classmate of the current French president Nicolas Sarkozy), I began to assist Robert Doisneau in 1981, and then embarked upon my own career, traveling the world as a photographer. While at Picto, I eventually became a pretty good printer, but knew that I wanted more than anything else to continue being a photographer myself. I was clear about that before ever starting at Picto—but I am sure that my experience as a printer has helped me understand better what I want from prints of my own photographs, and it certainly has helped me appreciate even more the mastership of Voja's prints. I also knew that I didn’t want to spend a life in the dark, and realized early on that I could never be nearly as good a printer as Voja, who has now printed my work for most of the past three decades.

Voja was born in Foca, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, in 1937. His father was killed during the war when he was four years old, and from this early age, he became aware that he would have to work to help his mother and family. He came to photography by accident—his family had a cow, and daily he would deliver a liter of milk to the house of a local photographer named Radmilo Mazic. One day this photographer asked Voja's mother if her son would like to be his photographic apprentice. In Sept., 1953, Voja began to work as Mazic’ apprentice. Mazic had studied photography at a school in Zagreb with teachers from the Ecole de Graphisme of Vienna. It was during this apprenticeship from the age of 14 to 18 that Voja gained extensive knowledge and skills in photography and printing. At the age of 19, he was obliged to do his military service and entered a unit of aviation photography of the Yugoslav Air force. After his military service, Voja worked for five years in a photographic studio in Belgrade where he was involved in all aspects of photography, making photographs, and developing film and making prints.

In September of 1964, Voja and another friend decided to embark upon a trip around the world before getting married and settling down. He arrived at the Paris train station on September 4th, 1964, with one hundred French Francs in his pocket and a backpack full of clothes and sausages—the money being the equivalent then of not more than US$100 now. Voja quickly discovered that with his Yugoslav nationality, it would be difficult to obtain the necessary visas to travel to other countries, and within two days of arriving in Paris, he had already found a job retouching prints at a lab near the Gare du Nord. This first job enabled him to obtain a "carte de sejour" and a work permit, which enabled him to begin to learn the French language.

Two years later, on April 2, 1966, he answered an announcement in a newspaper for a job as a printer at a lab called Picto. When he arrived at Picto, he met Pierre Gassmann and was given a tryout with three other candidates. Gassmann told him that he had been happy with one of his previous printers who was from Yugoslavia, and that he felt that people like him, who came from Central Europe, were good printers and good workers. Voja was hired that day. He worked at Picto for the next thirty years, until his retirement on January 1, 1997.

While there have been several people who have printed for Henri Cartier-Bresson—people such as Georges Fevre, Pierre Gassmann, Philippe Jourdain, Toros, Daniel Risset, and since Voya’s retirement, Daniel Mordac—few people , even in H.C.-B's close entourage, are aware of the role Voja played in printing his photographs over thirty years, most importantly during the time of the “photo boom”, that period of explosive growth in the modern acceptance of photography, of print collecting and photographic exhibitions. Collecting signed prints of photographers began in earnest by a large public in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, Voja Mitrovic printed a significant  number of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s collector prints, book prints, and exhibition prints. While I was at Picto in 1979 and 1980, Cartier-Bresson came to Picto almost every week to sign prints that would be sent to collectors in the United States—and many of these prints were made by Voja. I will never forget H.C.-B.’s frequent visits to the lab—witnessing him sign a print was a powerful sight, like a final conclusive act in a process of great creation—and it instilled in me the sense that a signed collector print is the summit of the photographic art. There was always an amazing spirit of conviviality at the lab between the printers and visiting photographers, and always a tremendous level of pride and respect within the walls of the lab. Everyone was aware that we were all involved with people and a process of artistic creation that was unique and special.

Voja Mitrovic and Peter Turnley, at Picto, Paris, 1994.

This was also a time when an important change took place in the world of printing—the introduction of multi-grade paper and filters, which allowed for a subtler rendition of details in both the shadows and the highlights of prints. It was also a time when the highest quantity of silver was in printing papers. Voja has indicated that there are certain qualities of richness in gray tonal values that he could never achieve with today’s papers, that he was able to obtain in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties. Also, since Voja’s retirement, many people, including myself, have noticed that the later prints of H.C.-B., sometimes became too pale, lacking detail in the highlights. Voja has indicated that this is not the fault of later printers' skills, but mostly because H.C.-B. himself changed in his printing taste a bit, asking for lighter prints in his latest years. He would often say that he didn't want his prints to be "dramatic" in the manner that was popular with many American photographers.

Most anyone who has ever spent any time printing in a darkroom knows the emotional difficulty and joy of making a great print. Josef Koudelka said that Voja has the mind of a computer. While I often saw other great printers at one point or another arrive at a moment of emotional and mental block when they couldn’t achieve a result they wanted with a print, Voja was always the picture of perfect methodical discipline, patience, and consistency. He has explained to me that from early age he knew he would have to work, and he learned quickly that whether he was doing something, or re-doing something, it was still simply work, and he respected that, and he would never become frustrated and emotional about doing something until it was done as well as it could be done.

—Peter Turnley

[We'll reprise Part II later this week —Mike the Ed.]

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