[Leica] Printing on Glossy Paper

[drodgers at casefarms.com (David Rodgers)]

I just thought I'd share a recent experience. I've never been a fan of
glossy prints. But my recent purchase of an Epson R800 changed that
opinion. 

I bought a Refurb R800 from Epson intending to print BW with K7 inks.
But before even ordering the inks from Cone, I used the UltraChromes
that came with the R800 on some glossy paper samples that I've had since
forever.   

My first attempts on glossy were a disaster. The problems turned out to
be software related. Once I got everything configured properly the
results were amazingly good.   

Setting up and using profiles can be tricky business. I had multiple
problems which I won't go into here. I almost gave up. 

I finally struck gold on my last sheet of glossy paper. Color glossy
prints from the R800 are superb. They're as good as the best color
darkroom prints I've made. The blacks are deep and rich. The colors are
bright. Best of all they don't look like inkjets. There is no sign of
bronzing. Most amazing is that this is from an inexpensive printer (the
refurb R800 was $200 delivered from Epson). 

I tried BW on the R800. Daniel Ridings mentioned he'd had problems
getting consistent BW from the R800. I had problems getting uniformly
neutral prints with the color inkset. Using Epson supplied profiles and
PS color management (the method I use for color printing) was a complete
waste of time for BW. However, I figured out how to make rich neutral BW
prints using only the Epson driver. It's not 100 percent successful but
I'm getting close. Only one print in 10 that I made yesterday had any
sign of green cast in the highlights. 

I'm so impressed with the results from the R800 that I'm going to keep
it for printing color and for printing bw on glossy. I bought bulk R800
inks from MIS and refillable carts. I bought several boxes of Kirkland
Pro Glossy letter sized from Costco (great stuff) and several boxes of
Epson Pro Glossy in 4 X 6 (which right now is 2 for one at Office Max).
I spent yesterday printing 4x6 borderless prints of numerous images.
I've gone through a lot of printers over the years. I think I'm going to
really like the R800. 

I plan to print a lot and these will keeps the costs down. I haven't
used the MIS inks yet but I will be soon. Some people say they look
better than Epson's inks. 

I'm going to have to figure out another solution for BW. I'm probably
going with an Epson 220 with UT3 inks and QuadToneRip. 

daveR