Printer + Print settings

[NM MSDK]

Hi everybody,

My company is going to get new printers, and finally discard the old ones.

Now i can decide what printer i would prefer, because i solely have to print the highest quality and with photoshop.

The prefrence of the company is the Kyocera : TASKalfa 3554ci-series.

Now is my question, do you all think this printer is a good enough quality? And also, what settings would you allk suggest? My old printer is some Utax but my prints are actually pretty ugly and low - detail, that could be the printer or the settings, but that would you all know better then me...

I would love to hear from you guys!

-Nick

[D Fosse]

Why laser and not inkjet? For photographic work, inkjet is superior. Laser is better for text and possibly some types of graphic, but I would mainly think "office use".

I just got a new photo printer at work for 17" roll paper. It was really between Epson and Canon, and eventually I settled for an Epson SC-P 5300. And let me just say, it's a beauty. The print quality, with the right kind of paper and corresponding icc profiles, is absolutely mindblowing, and a perfect match to what I see on screen. Just make sure to use papers that have an icc profile from the manufacturer.

And so far it's been very easy to use and reliable. There are bigger models for 24" paper and up.

A big part of the trick is a properly calibrated monitor. Make sure you set monitor white point to visually match the paper, and monitor black point to match max ink. Then your monitor profile takes care of the rest, and the result is that what you see is what you get. A wide gamut monitor is a clear advantage because you can see all the colors the printer can reproduce.

[NM MSDK]

Apologies, i maybe should have specified what kind of projects i work on.

I make manufactoring books on how to install greenhouse systems. First i render it out in another application and then i make a nice page with assembly vieuws on it, kinda like lego style.

So its not really photo's i work with.

And the reason its a laser is because the other people who will use it only print text, but this was decided between sales and the printer company, but i have some input in it, that why i ask it to you guys who have much more experience.

Also noteworthy i only have about 4 months of experience with PS.

Thanks!

-Nick

[D Fosse]

OK, got it - but then maybe Photoshop isn't the right tool to begin with. Photoshop is a raster editor and everything it does ends up as pixels. It sounds like you might be mostly handling vector data.

Sending that through Photoshop will impact sharpness and crispness because it will be rendered to a base document resolution, as opposed to vector which is always rendered at maximum available resolution regardless of scale.

[NM MSDK]

Yeah i heard that before. 

Thing is it was recommended to me by the guys from the other application, and then after months of asking i finally got a year subscription, only to find out its not really the best fool for this situation..

But after a few weeks of trial and error it works kinda OK now so i have to work with what ive got.

[davescm]

For book layout, InDesign is the tool of choice. It was designed for that purpose and it is very easy to print booklets directly on a laser or output PDFs for commercial printing.  You can prepare raster images in Photoshop or similar, vector images in Illustrator or similar and then combine them with text and layout the page in InDesign. That way you playing to the strengths of each application.

I have both the Epson SC-P5000, the predecessor of the printer mentioned by D Fosse, which is excellent for photo quality printing. I also use a laser (Brother-L8690) that is limited to A4 sheets, but I use to produce booklets in A5 signature size printed directly from InDesign. The quality is laser, not inkjet photo, but the ouput is two sided and , under the control of InDesign, the pages are output in signatures ready for stapling or stiching. Each A4 sheet contains four A5 sides.  Your proposed laser looks like it would do the same but in larger paper size (an A3 sheet will fold to make four sides of an A4 booklet).

In short, for your proposed purpose, the printer you mention looks fine, but I would reconsider the software package you are using to drive it.

Dave

[NM MSDK]

Ok, i will look into it.

I dont know if Adobe supports cancellation mid-subscription but maybe i could convince my higher ups to switch from PS to InDesign.

Thanks for your response.

[NB, colourmanagement]

@NM MSDK For your use with booklets InDesign is certainly the better solution. 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management