Printing Euphoria

If you been onto my Photo Porfolio site recently then you will probably know that I recently acquired an Epson Stylus Pro 3800.
Not to repeat that information here but the printer prints in 9-inks up to A2 size.

I have printed out about 10 photographs on it so far and I am still blown away every time a print comes out of the machine!

Today I did my first black and white print on Epson UltraSmooth A2 Fine Art paper in matte.


The quality of this print was simply amazing and I am definitely going to pursue some more fine-art black and white prints. They just have such an aesthetic attraction for me. I'm not sure what it is but often a black and white just communicates so much more than a colour image. Perhaps it's because we are not used to seeing these stark contrasts on a daily basis. Anyway, I love it!

The Epson uses about 2-3ml of ink when swapping from Matte to Glossy ink and this was/is a criticism of this printer although it is a lot better than previous models apparently. So I guess one has to a little thoughtful when printing matte and glossy during the same run to minimise the ink loss. It may add up but at this stage I haven't really let that ink loss bother me too much.

Today, I also printed a panoramic view from Bloubergstrand of Table Mountain. This time in full-colour glossy on A2 and unfortunately I still need to get a better handle on soft-proofing on my monitors at home. Even though they are pretty well calibrated the initial print still came out too dark and dull. So a few quick few curves and saturation adjustments in Photoshop and the second print was so much better. So yep, unfortunately a wasted R100 or so (*gulp*) but I guess I have to anticipate this as I still learn a bit.



One of my favourite prints so far has to be of the Glossy Ibis in the sunlit morning mist and this came out better than I could ever have hoped for. It certainly is one of my favourite images just for it's originality and inspiration that I felt when I did the post-processing. It was taken at Rondebult Bird Sanctuary on the East Rand in Gauteng, South Africa. It was a very overcast morning and the original RAW image is quite dull. Needless to say a lot of creative juices went into the post work and the results certainly appear to be worth it.



Clearly I'm happy with the printer that goes without saying. Next week I shall be taking the prints in for framing and I reckon they are only going to look even better! Luckily I've got wall space at home to hang these up and I reckon some of my existing prints will be coming down. *blush* They look quite lame in comparison to some of these. :)

I will try and take a couple of pictures of the framed prints if anyone is interested in seeing them. Now, we've just got to get the sales process to start rolling. Anyone want to buy one??