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Color Output with Size, Speed and Quality

Andrew Johnson

Epson is a market leader in affordable, quality, color inkjet printing. The A2-capable Epson Stylus COLOR 3000 is Epson’s top-of-the-line model.

My office chose an A4 Epson color printer last year. It was clearly the best choice for fast, economical color output. We quickly moved into an Epson 1520 mid-format model for larger output with similar quality.With this experience of the Epson line under my belt I was keen to see where Epson was headed with this new printer.

Installation & Setup

Installation and setup was straightforward. This is a big printer so it takes up just about a whole desktop. The CMYK ink system consists of 4 very large ink cartridges. Each holds 100ml of ink to give capacity for long print runs of full graphic images. These go into their own slots behind a front cover on the left-hand side of the printer. The ink then makes its way to the print-head via 4 thin plastic tubes. After installing the cartridges, the printer automatically went through its self-priming routine which took about 5 minutes.

Test Rig

To qualify performance, the system this printer was tested on was an Intel 200MMX Pentium with 128 megabytes of RAM, 500 megabytes of swap space and at least 300 megabytes of free hard disk space. Scanner used was a Microtek ScanMaker E6

Prints

I scanned a favorite picture of my 3 year old son, Hugo. This picture contained combinations of subtle skin tones and shading to qualify it as a good test. I soon had a draft quality, full A2 print coming out of the printer. This was just on bond paper but it still impressed. I tried quality print settings and ran into trouble. I tried to print an A2 @ 720dpi. After generating a 250 megabyte printer file over a 45 minute period without the print starting, I aborted the print job. This printer can go up to 720 x 1,440 dpi so you can expect the print files to double again for this resolution.

Fine Tuning

A call to the technical support people sorted out the problem of long waits for the giant spool file. After a very long wait in the support queue, a very helpful person suggested the following procedure:

• Check the PC BIOS setting for the printer port was set to EPP (mine was OK)
• Print directly to the Epson driver by turning off the Windows printer spooler
  Start-Settings-Printers-Epson 3000-Properties-Details-Spool settings-Print directly to printer
• To enhance the quality of the 360 dpi printing, turn off "fast" setting in advanced settings of Epson printer driver.
  Start-Settings-Printers-Epson 3000-Properties-Main-Advanced-More settings-uncheck high speed

This made such a difference. The printer files generated without the Windows spooler were about 30% smaller and the rest of the process was also much faster. By printing 360 dpi quality so that the print-head lays ink when it moves from right to left but not on the way back, you remove visible banding evident in the default bi-directional print mode. Printing A2 at 720 dpi was now not necessary in most cases. These adjustments should also work for owners of other Epson Stylus printers such as 600, 800 and 1520.

My prints were now not only impressive but reasonably quick–A2 size @ 360 dpi in 6 minutes from Photoshop.

PostScript

With the printer sent for review came with an Adobe Postscript driver add-on. This came with ink value corrections built in to adjust the Epson inks to print on Epson media to give accurate output. During installation the Epson printer driver got modified and software was downloaded to the printer to upgrade it to work with the modified driver. The download of software to the printer can only be performed to a printer once. The software cannot be re-installed to another printer. The printers listed in the setup for this product included the Epson Stylus 600, 800, 1520 and the 3000.

Using Postscript adds about 50% to the normal printing time. The results are worth the wait. For really top quality output, skin tones and other hard to match colors become very close to the original.

I then produced some 720 x 1,440 dpi images on Epson Photo quality paper. The images were of very high quality and 200 % enlargement of a snap shot showed the printer was more than a match for my scanner. I rate the print quality very close to photographic quality.

This printer is not aimed at people wanting CAD plots at A2. There are cheaper solutions for colored line drawings. It is aimed at people needing higher quality output than plotters can produce. With CAD programs now able to add raster images to line work however, this printer would be of interest to CAD people doing high end presentation work. It is also a popular choice for graphic artists for proofing larger sizes.

The large capacity ink reservoirs are an essential feature of the COLOR 3000.   This printer uses a lot of ink.

Graphics printers use a lot of ink. If the cost of the ink is a problem and you are adventurous, you can get excellent results using 3^rd party ink refills. Office supply companies can usually supply quality ink that brings the ink cost of printing down to below one fifth the cost of Epson brand ink replacement cartridges.

Summary

Great printer, expensive but just the thing for the very serious mid format sized prints.

• Getting up into the price range of a plotter, but way ahead in print quality.
• Postscript option worthwhile for serious color work but watch that once only installation!

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