Epson Advanced Black and White on Epson P10000

[xX_M@m!yaL0v3r_UXx]

Hi everyone,

I'm printing a portfolio of prints using an Epson P10000 using the Advanced Black and White feature. I did some tests compared to the P8000 (using Canson Infinity Baryta Prestige II 340gsm), and found that the gray scale was better with the P10000, with slightly more dimension/tonality in darker grays than the P8000. But, I also found that the P8000 was noticeably sharper than the P10000. I'm printing scans of 4x5 negatives (scanned with an Imacon x5), and I could see every spec of grain on the 16x20 print than compared to the P10000, which was a bit softer. It seems like the P10000 isn't printing the full resolution of my files. My question is, is this a limitation of hardware? An issue of the print head not being aligned properly? Or could this issue be addressed in the way I'm printing it in photoshop? I'm not doing any resampling of the files, as they are high enough resolution that the DPI is easily over 300; the files are between 400-600 DPI when sized at 16x20. Could it be that the printer has a max resolution it will accept, and I need to accommodate for that in order to take advantage of the maximum resolution of my files?

Thank you all!

P.

 

[koraks]

It's a different print head, apparently, so it's possible that the P8000 outperforms its larger sibling. Based on specifications I wouldn't expect the different to be all that big, though. The first thing I'd try is to do a head alignment on the P10000, and also verify media settings and paper feed performance. I've not used the P10000, but I take it this one has the vacuum-suction paper feed, right? I can see how head-paper clearance issues will degrade print quality by causing excessive bleed/dot gain.

Could it be that the printer has a max resolution it will accept, and I need to accommodate for that in order to take advantage of the maximum resolution of my files?

It looks like the native resolution of the P8000 is 360dpi while the 10000 is a 300dpi machine. It's possible that a file that's optimized to print at 360dpi (or a multiple, such as 1440, 2880) will print poorly at a 300dpi machine due to interpolation. It's easy enough to do a side by side test with a 360- and a 300-optimized file. In my experience, the Epson driver dithering algorithms avoid problems in this field very effectively (i.e. it doesn't matter what you feed them, they tend to print fine anyway), but maybe this situation is different.