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The prints match my calibrated monitor and the range is much greater than with the non Epson paper. I was using a non Epson premium glossy paper that had worked for me before in my old Epson. Of course the ink cartridges could be larger and a little less expensive but that is true for almost any photo printer. I was primarily using my local printer for proofs.
I may look at getting a CIS system if I can find one that has quality inks. I went out and bought some Epson premium photo paper and it made all the difference in the world. I was also looking for something with a good enough quality that I could just process smaller jobs in house for equal or less price then having to send them out.The first couple of photos that I printed were disappointing as they looked dark and did not seem to have much of a range between the highlights and shadows. I send most of my work out to be printed but needed to upgrade my in house printer to something better then the 6 year old Epson I was using. They were also what I would call semi-gloss rather than glossy.
I would recommend using Epson paper or at least a paper that advertised that they were Epson equivalent.
I took it to a local guy who is an Epson repair guy and he explained what the manual and on line help never did. When you ask for help on line they send you references back to the manual which is how I got in trouble in the first place. Just don't count on Epson to help you in the more arcane areas. Print quality and inks are fabulous and fabulously expensive. The manual lacks all kinds of finer aids when you try to print larger formats. The product and the output are terrific for the price.
and now I'm stuck with a $500 paperweight. for $500, I would assume it would work better.Why did I buy Epson against what I believed. When it prints you get a shadowing effect. when it works. So I called up tech support and determined that it needed to be returned.So 6 months later on the 2nd printer, it is now not feeding correctly. I feed it in (by the way I had to go online to get the correct instructions for this printer) and now I get "General Error; turn off the printer and clear out any foreign objects" I'm thinking "the only object in there is the PAPER" so I unplugged it and now it's sitting there.
what a pain in the butt. I was already weary of Epson, but work needed this type of paper feeding.We bought one last January. The ink cartrige carrier would not move. sigh.So I called up tech support and they said to buy the cleaning sheet. And it worked well for less than 6 months. This product is good.
it broke. So almost 2 weeks later I get the sheets.
I've gotten consistently excellent print quality with this printer, but the ink costs are exorbitant; $0.019 per SQ" / $1.50 for an 8X10, at current Epson prices.Epson has built-in methods of wasting ink, such as when replacing one ink cartridge, the printer charges all the cartridges, unnecessary waste considering that each cartridge has a chip that could be configured to charge only the one that's been replaced.
I, like some of the other reviewers here, was a little hesitant in purchasing the R1900 newer model because of some of the negative reviews, but knowing that some people just get dud merchandise at times and having a pretty good experience with the printer at school, decided to take the plunge. I didn't have to do anything like that. A piece of cake.The quality is just as good, if not better, than what the R1800 printer produces at school, which is the great quality my photo professor is always looking for and grading on. and expecting the worst.
I'm off to get my final prints done for the end of the semester and will report again in the future about how it is going. Even my professor says to leave the optimizer off, so there you go. Since I like the added contrast, I use Epson 5-star glossy for my 8.5x11 prints and 5-star luster for my 13x19 prints. I usually shoot with film cameras and process and print my own stuff in one of our darkrooms, but have been recently seriously delving into digital work. Our university digital print lab uses the R1800 model, but I was tired of sharing printer time with multiple students and having to be confined to building hours of operation so I decided to invest in my own printer. There was a separate mini sheet in the box for Snow Leopard users and a sheet for OS X with instructions for higher than 10.4 users so I followed that one, expecting to have to download annoying drivers, etc. I ran the installation CD and followed the directions and had the whole printer up and running in about 20 minutes--no driver searching and downloading at all.
So far so good--exactly what I expected in quality and even better with the set up. I am an older, final year photography student. I realize this is an early review since I just received the printer yesterday and set it up today, so I'll write more at a later date as an update.I have an iMac with OS 10.5.8. As far as the gloss optimizer comments, I have not noticed a bit of difference in the quality of prints with it on or off so I leave it off--hence, it doesn't run out as fast as others are commenting about.
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