Ultimate print quality?

[ehasler]

I'm looking at doing some prints of a few of my favourite photos in an attempt to sell them (or more likely give as gifts), and was wondering what method would give the best quality (sharpness, fade-resistance, accurate colour etc...) for a reasonable price.

I'd be happy with the output from my Epson 2100 hanging on my wall, but haven't compared it with the pro lab type printers (Fuji Frontier etc) or the more expensive Dye Sub printers, so don't know what I'd be gaining by getting prints done by a lab rather than doing it myself.

Any thoughts?

[dcw@pr]

What size are you looking for?

[ehasler]

Sorry - forgot to include that!

A3 and A4 from a 4000 dpi scan of a 35mm slide.

[Mrs Fish]

300dpi at actual size is more than enough to get a decent print.

[ehasler]

Sorry - slight misunderstanding! I always re-size my images for output at 300 or 360dpi on my inkjet, but mentioned the source res just in case any of these other techniques require more pixels.

[bacchus180]

just had a conversation with someone about printing and colour management this week from a well respected retail outlet. we discussed at some length the pros and cons of a dry thermal against an inkjet, funnily enough I will be buying an epson 2100 for colour work and setting up shortly, currently I use a canon 9100 for monochrome, with the right profiles and right inks the printer you have is excellent, have a look at Lyson fotonic inks with there darkroom satin paper, totaly archivable and very good colour balance, .... again all this depends on setting up your colour management correctly, I have spent days configuring my monochrome seyup and sometimes just wanted to throw it out of the window, but at last I am happy with the results, I use small galmut inks, 6 tones of black,
if you profile the machines you are going to use at a retail outlet even the Fuji machine at Tescos will give you good results!!

I lokked at a dry thermal printer like the current Kodak range but it seems the colours were quite neutral, the clear advantage of these machines is speed!!, but if you have time, the injet route with the right inks is unbeatable for quality

[GetCarter]

I too use the 2100 and have tried several times via pro labs to get prints as good. No luck yet - but I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

I'm just getting bored of spending shed loads to get naff scans (most formats) and prints back that are worse than my £1 per copy A3 print.

Let me know if you find anyone - and if you're interested, e mail me and I'll tell you the dogs I've tried.

Steve

[ehasler]

Hmm - interesting.

I just assumed that a £65k lab printer would give better results than a £400 inkjet, but it appears otherwise!

I'm keen to see how much better the next range of inkjet printers are though - the A3 version of the Epson R800 should be very impressive indeed!