(This is a loooong post. Good to read if you’re looking for a fine art printer or masochistic!)
As I said in my earlier post– I ordered an Epson R2880 to start making prints of my own. I’m definitely still going to order from iprintfromhome as well (they use the same inkset and paper as I am) but I wanted to be able to make archival, museum-quality prints on demand. The printer arrived earlier this month and I’ve had some time to test it out. I must say: IT’S AMAAAAAZING!
I ordered it refurbished because it was a LOT less expensive, Epson guarantees their quality, and will replace it if something doesn’t work. It arrived with absolutely no scratches or blemishes to show that it’s a refurb, and was just like new.
It was easy to set up and I was ready to work on making a print about an hour after opening the box. This printer made stunning prints straight out of the box, but I did end up purchasing a monitor calibrator since my screen was way off for printing. I won’t go into what calibrator you should buy (I’m not an expert), but I will say that this is a vital part of professional printing to get your monitor colors accurate.
I bought the Spyder3 Express Calibrator which worked great after some trial and error, and for paper I purchased Epson Watercolor Radiant White paper for test prints (it’s thinner at 190 gsm and is wood pulp, not cotton) and the more expensive Epson Velvet Fine Art paper for final prints (thick at 260 gsm, 100% cotton and totally archival) which produces the most beautiful textured and rich prints I’ve seen so far.
I wish I could accurately show how nice the prints look, but all I have are bad photographs. In any case, you can see the depth of color and the great texture of these prints– in person you really can’t tell that they are not my originals without a magnifying glass!
I am no kind of expert when it comes to printing, so I can’t write up an educated review… But I have been doing a ton of research about what people look for in prints and I can describe my experience for anyone else thinking about purchasing a printer for artwork.
Choosing a Printer
Basically, my needs for a printer were this:
- It needed to use pigment inks, which are much more stable than dye ink
- It needed to print 13×19″
- It needed to handle thick matte fine art paper
- The color print quality needed to be freaking awesome and professional (which means it would probably use at least 8 inks to capture all those colors)
- It needed to not be absolutely enormous
I did some research within the Canon, HP, and Epson brands. My initial list that seemed to have many of these features looked like this:
- HP Photosmart Pro B9180
- Canon Pixma Pro9500
- Epson R1900
- Epson R2880
- Epson R3800
Some quick research showed me that the Epson R1900 was not what I wanted– it is an excellent printer, but aimed toward glossy printing and unable to handle heavy fine art paper well. Good. One down!
Next, I ruled out the Epson R3800 (kind of a larger 2880) because it’s crazy big and prints up to 17″. It was also too expesnsive. I hesitated a bit, because the R3800 has ink cartridges so large that it ships with over $500 worth of ink, but space is an issue and I did not want to go crazy. I can always order 17″ prints online if I need.
Deciding between the rest was more difficult. The Canon Pixma 9500, HP B9180 and Epson R2880 all seemed to be great printers, with fans of each. Each could print the same size with at least 8 archival pigment inks. Each had different pros and cons. I eventually decided on the Epson R2880 because it definitely had equal-to-better reviews in terms of print quality, it’s smaller and faster than the HP and Canon, the Ultrachrome K3 inks are drooled over, it can use one of highest reviewed fine art papers (Epson Velvet), and the main complaint for it–the fact that you have to waste ink swapping black cartridges for glossy vs. matte paper–wasn’t an issue since I will never use glossy paper anyway. It uses the same inkset/paper as they use at iPrintFromHome, so I already knew the prints would look awesome.
The Canon and HP did feature larger ink catridges (Epson’s are ridiculously small… another con) but since I am not yet a high-volume printer, I was not too worried about this. Basically, the Canon and HP didn’t have any outstanding positives to outweigh the Epson.
If you’re an artist like me looking for a high quality printer, all the ones I listed would be great. I chose the R2880 because it had the qualities I needed, but the others might be perfect for someone else! Just make sure the printer uses archival inks and can handle archival paper, so that your customers will have prints that last for decades.
