Printing vs Lab threshold

Congrats on getting yourself set up!

I have the P600 and find the print quality to be excellent. The ink cartridges of the P900 are double the size at 50ml so you'll get some decent runs out of them in the smaller size prints.

goalerjones wrote in post #19494525
Okay, found a factory refurbished Epson P900 for $900 @ Adorama, will be here next Wednesday. I'll check Red River for paper suggestions. Looking forward to this part of my photography journey!

The P900 looks like a really nice update over the R3000 that I have. It has one more ink (violet) and the waste box looks to be easily replaceable. If the waste container gets full on the R3000 (after years of use) Epson expected you to send the printer back to them for service, or just toss it and buy a new printer. Once I get to that point I'll try one of the online "fixes" to tube up an external waste collection bottle and reset the counter.

That was the fate of the R3000. It clogged up and looking at a head clean, it was just easier to buy a replacement. I printed regularly with it each week but not enough evidentially.

When I heard the Canon Prograf 1000 weighed 70lbs I decided the Epson was the way to go.

Monitor is now color calibrated with Spyder X Pro. First image has printed and framed without telling the lab to color correct on their Fine Art paper. P900 is here, just need to find the right place for it and then set it up.

Here's a few things I'd do to get your printer set up:

1. Download the paper ICC profiles specific for your printer. Epson papers: https://epson.com …SPT_C11CE21201#​iccprofile

2. If you use LR, set up some user templates for the different papers, print sizes, bordered/borderless prints. Here's some of mine:

And ...

4. Under "Print Job" make sure you have the correct resolution, paper profile, etc. selected for each template. For Epson printers you'd typically pick 288 or 360 (1440/5 or 1440/4), but frankly if your images are around 300ppi then you could leave the setting at 360. I don't believe that there is an advantage to select 720 if your image files are below 360. 288 was suggested to me years ago and works really well, but I'm probably going to change all of my templates to use 360. For 13" x 19" prints or smaller I doubt I'll be able to see a difference.

It's my understanding that you'd select 300 (or 600) for a Canon printer.

Okay, in at the deep end

Printing is a whole new thing. Not intuitive at all. Ordered a test paper kit from Red River. Also got a 100ct 4x6 matte paper to work with as well.

I'm going to have to do testing for awhile until it becomes 2nd nature. However, I've had some early successes and am already selling home made prints. Colors on matte papers though, for instance one image the red was ridiculously out of balance, and I had to defeat it to the tune of -50 before its stopped wrecking the image. I learned rather quickly to turn on "print preview", and at first I didn't believe what I was seeing.

goalerjones wrote in post #19505819
Okay, in at the deep end

Printing is a whole new thing. Not intuitive at all. Ordered a test paper kit from Red River. Also got a 100ct 4x6 matte paper to work with as well.

I'm going to have to do testing for awhile until it becomes 2nd nature. However, I've had some early successes and am already selling home made prints. Colors on matte papers though, for instance one image the red was ridiculously out of balance, and I had to defeat it to the tune of -50 before its stopped wrecking the image. I learned rather quickly to turn on "print preview", and at first I didn't believe what I was seeing.

Pretty easy to suffer from out of gamut colors when printing on matte paper when everything prints fine with glossy or lustre.

In the develop module select "Soft Proofing" (bottom of the image) and make a proof copy. Then, under the histogram, select the profile for the paper you are printing on. Also click on the Destination Gamut Warning at the top right of the histogram.

For your matte paper profile you'll probably see colors that are well out of gamut. Under HSL/Color select "Saturation" and reduce the saturation of the out of gamut color until it's comes within gamut.


If you print with colors out of gamut you can get some pretty awful results. Soft proofing is your friend.


Here's a good video by Julieanne Kost: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=56eafUEqkBA

goalerjones wrote in post #19505819
Also got a 100ct 4x6 matte paper to work with as well.

Does that make you print borderless ... does printing borderless spray ink inside the printer ?

lacogada wrote in post #19506222
Does that make you print borderless ... does printing borderless spray ink inside the printer ?

That’s an interesting couple of questions.

From what I recall the overspray ink for most (all??) of the Epson printers is picked up by an ink pad, so at least won’t end up on the back of prints. Printing with even a tiny border would extend the life of the pad.

I don’t print a lot of borderless, so haven’t been that concerned with overspray. I also usually print 4x6’s with a border just because I like the look better … but for sure borderless is pretty common/typical for that size.

If one of these printers was cranking out a thousand or so borderless 4x6’s per year I wonder how long it would take to saturate the ink pad from overspray? 4 years? Much longer?

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The more of the posts in this thread that I read, the happier I am that I do not do any printing myself. . And the more the big printing house services look like bargains.


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I print 13x19s and smaller and even cut and make mats. It is easier than it sounds actually with the right gear and tools. A 13x19 costs me about $2 to print at most.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19506563
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The more of the posts in this thread that I read, the happier I am that I do not do any printing myself. . And the more the big printing house services look like bargains. .

Some instance it is. When I walk in the back entrance to my lab, I see what is in their dumpster. The amount of paper from prints is fairly substantial. Part of the CODB so that is why prints from them are $. For the DIY'er that is not dialed in,spitting out a full print to reject it hurts but it all has the same lost $ effect if sending out or in house.

The runs I'd send to the lab because in quantities they have a price break and the technician knows the look of my prints to nail it. I prefer what I get off the Epson in small format yet when it comes to big stuff the Fuji Digital Pearl is gorgeous. The machine and paper profiles make printing fairly uneventful as it should be whether at home or lab.

As long as you are charging enough per print, the wastage is part of it and once dialed in that will become less of an issue.

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The only prints I have done anymore (for the past 9 years) are big prints on metal. . Like minimum of 30" by 20" but more often 42" by 28" or 48" by 32".

I imagine it would be a ton of money to tool up for that, both in terms of the printer needed and the huge sheets of aluminum. . I only do like 5 or 6 per year, so I think at those small quantities it is probably much more cost effective to let the labs do it for me. . If I am wrong about that, please let me know.

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