</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Aggie @ Mar 28 2003, 09:11 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Trillium press... They are totally against epson printers for many reasons, but the one that stood out was the problems of color and the print process. For those of us home bodies that do not attend a special class to learn that there is also another gizmo needed to get the color balance right for the epson printers. So consider this if you are going to use any kind of home printer for use with photoshop.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
I'm not sure what Trillium press is referring to nor do I profess more knowledge then they, but epsons, in my experience are not much different than any other output device. Epson printers, as in all digital and to lesser or different degree traditional ink on paper printers, require that the printer either be calibrated or the file must be 'prepared/adjusted' prior to being printed so that it looks as it did on your monitor.
For digital printers one way to do this is to have an application that prints a scale to the printer, measures the scale and creates a look up table (lut) or something equivalent to a curve in Photoshop. This LUT is applied to all images prior to printing. These apps require a reflective densitometer. This includes adjustments being made for individual papers or printing materials.
Some printers (most professional printers) have the ability to calibrate themselves either through an 'onboard' densitometer or via input for an external densitometer. These printers will either keep separate 'profiles' for all the calibrated print materials (and in some cases, like colorspans, keep tables for different inks and papers) or recommend recalibration when ever the media is changed. None of epson's printers have this capability -- not even their 'professional printers.'
This doesn't, in my mind, make them bad printers nor is it to say that their are not a lot of good reasons to dislike epson's products.
In fact unless you wish to spend in excess of 5k they are by far the best bang for the buck. Just make sure you buy it with replacement insurance, replace their ink cartridges with a good quality continuous flow system, and keep all the packaging and cartridges. This last bit is so you can put it back to its original state when you return it for a replacement when it dies.
