Archive for the 'Inkjet' category

Sometimes, the economy is not faring well, sometime it’s too good. In both cases, it may lead to astonishing bills. I found some cases, I really loved.

The biggest single US dollar bill

This is not even really a bill since it’s more a tool to manage gold exchanges in an economy that was based on gold: a gold certificate. It was never circulated in the public since 1034, and is only visible in museums.

Source: PurpleSlinky.com.

The weird Zimbabwe bills

In a country where the economy totally collapsed, the Zimbabwe dollar has no value left: Inflation reached several tens of thousands of percents (much more than what hit the German economy of the 30’s), crushing the mere value of any bill in just days.

As a matter of fact, this 10 million dollar bill does not allow you to pay anything (valued a few euros a few months ago, it’s really worthless now).

A guide published by Canon to help you better manage colour with photo cameras and photo printers from this brand.

Canon color management guide (2MB PDF file)

Would you know what colour cerulean is? Or peach? Or spruce? Or watermelon? Or plum? Or rust?

The HP online color thesaurus is a great way to identify these and to get the precise formal definition of such colours. You type in a name, and it will give you the color, similar ones and anonyms.

Canada’s National Archive experts are worried that we don’t have enough knowledge about how inkjet prints age. They fear that most of them will die early because the dried ink is much more exposed to external stresses than the pigments of traditional photo paper.

So, they turn to Henry Wilhelm of Wilhelm Research to get some additonal information.

Source: New York Times.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

Do you happen to know that 5% of all male population is actually affected by some form of color-blindness (females are much less prone to it). It means that plenty of activities that tend to rely on color identification by the user is significantly flawed for about 2-3% of the user population. This can become a real issue for companies willing to support equal employment opportunities for all.

In software, if this was not reason enough to think seriously about it, we should also think about the impact of printing onto black & white printers (they are color-blind too and this affect 100% of B&W printer users). Most of the problems could be alleviated by following some simple rules that should be part of any software requirements.

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Choosing a photographic inkjet printer able to produce high-end A3+ printsis not an easy task even though the list of candidates is much more limited than for A4+ sizes. Nevertheless, as prices are steep, it’s worth avoiding errors. This makes the comparison done by our firends at photo-i the more interesting.

They oppose three impressive printing machines:

• Epson Stylus Photo R2400
• HP Photosmart pro B9180
• Canon Pixma pro 9500

I will not hide the conclusion, the HP B 9180 runs ahead for its excellent price, its auto-calibration, its ability to keep heads unclogged by auto-cleaning every 6 hours, its Ethernet connectivity (on top of the USB) and its photo quality very similar to the others (the differences really became small at this level).

Link: Comparison of 3 A+ pigment inkjet printers.

I previously wrote about the various techniques used for inkjet printing, but a good reader (thanks Daniel!) made me notice that there is a technique less common than the usual dye-based or pigment inks. I admit easily that I did not know it before. But it is a slightly older technique that was used by Epson for desktop printers and that includes both a solvant and a heat-sensitive dye.

To use it, you absolutely need a paper whose special surface has been prepared taking that ink into account and making the surface relatively sensitive itself to heat (polyester cover) in order to open to heat (creating micropore allowing the ink to enter the paper, then closing behind it) or a very hard surface (metal or ceramics, for example, where the ink will be cooked on the surface). This is specifically the technology used in giclées (printing solutions using a surface that looks a lot like a painter canvas: sublimed ink on a canvas heavily coated with polyester).

Rather uncommon today on the desktop (both at home and in the office), this technique must be rather difficult to handle photo-quality colors (the importance of good ICC profiles cannot be stressed too much), forces to adapt to prepared papers (special surfaces like cotton are not usable) and must have a rather good shelf life (the ink is preserved at the bottom of the closed micropores).

Sources:

• Dye Sublimation information.
• Info sur la sublimation de colorant (giclée)

Complementary information about the possible use of such an ink on an Epson R800/R1800: These inks are supposed to be used with printers that never were designed for them (far from it!), UltraChrome ink Epson printers (R800/R1800). There, it smells really funny; The more because these good printers normally use a rather complex combination of inks including a varnish or “gloss optimizer” transparent ink used to manage correctly the bronzing effect so common on pigment inks. I would stay far from this odd combination (I would be afraid to damage my printer…)

Alan Taylor created a nice representation of the largest bodies of the Solar System (it takes into account the new classification used since last Summer). A really good job of Photoshopping many images together in order to produce what could easily become a landscape poster if somebody decided to print it.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

Adobe has been observing the desktop application market and specifically seen Google challenging Microsoft with its online Google desktop suite (spreadsheet, text processor, agenda, etc.). They determined that they want to go the same way in order to ensure a bright future for the Photoshop line.

Currently, Adobe has already split its market niche between entry-level Photoshop Elements and high-level PhotoShop CS suite. From what has been told this week, they wish to go one step further by introducing online version of their image editing tools. It should be free even if limited to a subset of functions.

It is definitely interesting. Do not expect that to translate into free professional-level tools (no free CS4 suite). However it means that, depending on your needs, you will be able to choose from the widest possible spectrum:

• Free online
• Low cost (PS Elements)
• Pro-grade (PS CS suite)

The user (you and me) get maximum choice, the software company (Adobe) covers all bases and reduces the risk of being out-sold from the lower level and provides a consistent upgrade path from $0 to $1000 products. This is the way technology innovation should be used by companies willing to protect their market while serving user needs.

Others, please, take notice.

PS: You should also notice that Adobe is already ben starting this kind of move in relation with video edition announcing Remix, an online video mixing/remixing tool.

PPS: According to Monkey Bites, it would be launched within 6 months and supported by ads.

Again, I come back to the issue of free fonts of great quality. DaFont holds links to hundreds of character fonts readily downlodable for both Mac and PC. Usually, this leads to a bunch of crap fonts. Here, the top 100 list is really of impressive quality. Waltograph is copying Walt Disney’s signature, Evanescence is both sophisticated and elegant, Loki Cola will remind you of some cola brand, Shanghai is the archetypical Chinese font, and all the others are really pleasant.

Now, what is often left aside in most font libraries is the presence (or lack) of accented letters. DaFont tells you clearly which ones have those internationally-needed letters and adds also the Euro sign to it.

It’s pleasant to merely go sight-seeing.

After posting previously about 25 top quality fonts, I also got a link to an interesting web site providing a LOT of free fonts. It does not mean that they are all useful, interesting or good-looking, but you have some impressive choice: 13,000+ fonts in one search engine.

SearchFreeFonts

If you ever dreamed of printing images in much larger size than what your personal printer allows (let’s say 3′ by 6′), you have either to buy a very expensive printer or use a very expensive photo printing service. You see the common words here: very expensive.

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool-looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

The quality is only limited by your ability to correctly assemble the pages.

Nota bene: It’s much better if your printer uses all the surface of the paper and does not leave a white border.