Decent printers under $200.00? - FM Forums

Register · Search · Software · Join Upload & Sell · Hosting

Moderated by: Fred Miranda

FM Actions & Plugins support
Workflow Guidelines

FM Forums \| Post-processing & Printing \| Join Upload & Sell	Search Used
1 2 end

Archive 2010 · Decent printers under $200.00?

SoundHound
Offline
Dedicated FM
Upload & Sell: On

p.2 #1 · Decent printers under $200.00?

The total cost printing really depends on the cost of ink/paper and the printer. It maybe a more expensive printer will cost less. Anyway Costco sells excellent photo paper at a fraction of the cost of Canon or Epson.

Feb 06, 2010 at 06:26 PM

tomm101
Offline
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #2 · Decent printers under $200.00?

Why I don't like doing photos on letter sized printers. They are almost universally not covered with profiles by the manufacturers. My suggestion would be to see if Photo Paper Glossy (not II) is in the drop down. The other alternative is to use Ilford or some 3rd party paper that has a profile for this printer, I have liked the Ilford profiles with my printer. Folk often say Red River papers are excellent and decently priced plus they have a lot of profiles. You can always get a profile made, you need letter sized paper for this, would cost $25 or so, Eric Chan, who is on and off the group has a good reputation.

Tom

Feb 06, 2010 at 06:45 PM

snegron
Offline
Dedicated FM
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #3 · Decent printers under $200.00?

tomm101 wrote:
Why I don't like doing photos on letter sized printers. They are almost universally not covered with profiles by the manufacturers. My suggestion would be to see if Photo Paper Glossy (not II) is in the drop down. The other alternative is to use Ilford or some 3rd party paper that has a profile for this printer, I have liked the Ilford profiles with my printer. Folk often say Red River papers are excellent and decently priced plus they have a lot of profiles. You can always get a profile made, you need letter sized paper for this, would cost $25 or so, Eric Chan, who is on and off the group has a good reputation.

Tom

Thanks again Tom!

Feb 07, 2010 at 01:23 AM

tach18k
Offline
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #4 · Decent printers under $200.00?

snegron wrote:
tomm101 wrote:
Color management doesn't have to be hard.
Have a monitor and video card that can be adjusted, I use 2 old but good CRTs, a Lacie and a Sony so in a way I'm lucky, way more adjustable than an LCD. If you have a cheap LCD and it is being a pain to adjust, get a Dell 2209Wa, about the cheapest ips LCD on the market.
Get your brightness setting below 110 (can't remember the units). Calibrate the screen.
If you are on a PC set the color management in your printer driver to default to off, from the start menu, settings, printers & faxes(I'm on an XP unit now) set it there and you can't make the mistake of not turning off color management, you can always turn it back on if you have to.
Have an editing program that is color aware, even Photoshop Elements is fine. Go to print, have the program manage colors, set your profile here, with earlier Photoshop versions you had to use "Print with Preview"
Profiles, are a matching of ink, printer and paper. Most printers are good enough now that the canned profiles from paper manufacturers are good enough, maybe not perfect but good enough for a nice print. If you change the paper use the profile for that paper, you need to do that now until you are more confident. If you change the ink you need to make a new profile ALL inks are different. So if you are using 3rd party inks a ColorMunki is not a bad idea.
So if your monitor is calibrated you have the right profile for paper/ink/printer, the right paper, you should knock off a good print without trying hard. Seriously this is all I do.

Tom

Thanks Tom! I am currently working on a PC laptop with LCD screen using Windows XP, Photoshop CS2. The printer is a Canon ip4700, ink is the standard ink it came with, paper is Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (4"x6" size). I didn't see the paper profile in the drop down menu for this particular Canon paper. I remember downloading paper profiles for Epson a couple of years ago, however, when I went to the Canon website there was no updated paper profile info to download.

The only choice I get from the color management tab in the Printer Properties box is to either set to to automatic or manual; no "off" slection possible. It is highlighetd on CNBJPRN3.

Read the note with the canon paper plus, it says to use CPP Plus Glossy paper choice. I had a same sort of problem, I'm using a Win7 64 Unltimate OS, and there is no real driver for Win7 and my IP4200, so I used th XP 64 bit driver for my IP4200 and used canon special easy photo program. Worked way better than anything else so far, back to basic stuff. I do have the Dell 2209W screen

Feb 07, 2010 at 04:06 AM

snegron
Offline
Dedicated FM
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #5 · Decent printers under $200.00?

tach18k wrote:
snegron wrote:
tomm101 wrote:
Color management doesn't have to be hard.
Have a monitor and video card that can be adjusted, I use 2 old but good CRTs, a Lacie and a Sony so in a way I'm lucky, way more adjustable than an LCD. If you have a cheap LCD and it is being a pain to adjust, get a Dell 2209Wa, about the cheapest ips LCD on the market.
Get your brightness setting below 110 (can't remember the units). Calibrate the screen.
If you are on a PC set the color management in your printer driver to default to off, from the start menu, settings, printers & faxes(I'm on an XP unit now) set it there and you can't make the mistake of not turning off color management, you can always turn it back on if you have to.
Have an editing program that is color aware, even Photoshop Elements is fine. Go to print, have the program manage colors, set your profile here, with earlier Photoshop versions you had to use "Print with Preview"
Profiles, are a matching of ink, printer and paper. Most printers are good enough now that the canned profiles from paper manufacturers are good enough, maybe not perfect but good enough for a nice print. If you change the paper use the profile for that paper, you need to do that now until you are more confident. If you change the ink you need to make a new profile ALL inks are different. So if you are using 3rd party inks a ColorMunki is not a bad idea.
So if your monitor is calibrated you have the right profile for paper/ink/printer, the right paper, you should knock off a good print without trying hard. Seriously this is all I do.

Tom

Thanks Tom! I am currently working on a PC laptop with LCD screen using Windows XP, Photoshop CS2. The printer is a Canon ip4700, ink is the standard ink it came with, paper is Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (4"x6" size). I didn't see the paper profile in the drop down menu for this particular Canon paper. I remember downloading paper profiles for Epson a couple of years ago, however, when I went to the Canon website there was no updated paper profile info to download.

The only choice I get from the color management tab in the Printer Properties box is to either set to to automatic or manual; no "off" slection possible. It is highlighetd on CNBJPRN3.

Read the note with the canon paper plus, it says to use CPP Plus Glossy paper choice. I had a same sort of problem, I'm using a Win7 64 Unltimate OS, and there is no real driver for Win7 and my IP4200, so I used th XP 64 bit driver for my IP4200 and used canon special easy photo program. Worked way better than anything else so far, back to basic stuff. I do have the Dell 2209W screen

Thank you! I was looking for some info on the paper that came in the box, but there was no mention of what paper profile to select. Thanks again!!

Feb 09, 2010 at 01:36 AM

snegron
Offline
Dedicated FM
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #6 · Decent printers under $200.00?

Seems like I found a temorary fix for my images printed with my Canon iP4700. All my prints looked too warm. No matter what color profile adjustment I made, all the prints looked the same. After much trial and error, followed suggestions posted here, the images still looked to warm. I ended up lowering the saturation on the original image to about -35 in order to get a print that matched the original image. I then print the low-stauration image in "quick print/easy preint mode. The prints are very close to waht I see on screen. I'm happy with the results as I only plan on printing for relatives and friends; anything higher end wilol be sent to online printers.

I hope this helps anyone who is planning on getting a Canon ip4700.

Feb 17, 2010 at 05:01 AM

glort
Offline
Upload & Sell: Off

p.2 #7 · Decent printers under $200.00?

I have 3 Canon Mp630's which have the same print engine as the 4700 only they are a multifunction rather than a straight printer.

I was prepared for some fiddling round to get them right but they were well and truly close enough for me straight out of the box using the canon easy print software. When I use Acdsee they are iffy but PS is also fine.

I have had no trouble installing the print head or with any other setup.
Because i am using these things for my sports event business and also printing literature for other things with them, I invested in a CISS to save on the outrageous ink costs.
That has also been brilliant and in side by side test prints I have found in some ways, the non OEM ink gave me prints I slightly preferred.

I mainly use the Kodak ultra paper but I have printed on a few different papers including some no name stuff I thought was fairly questionable but the prints have always been consistent and very impressive. I am looking to get CIS systems for the other 2 machines and If I can find another printer ( discontinued here now) I'll get one or 2 more and set up four machines with the ink systems.

Feb 17, 2010 at 08:49 AM

1 2 end
FM Forums \| Post-processing & Printing \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 end