Archive for the 'Inkjet' category

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

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.

Some people wish they could cover their precious iPod nano with a decorated paper. The first solution is merely to go and buy to Sector29. But, I really think that $19,95 is a little too much for a piece of colored and folded paper.

The solution? Do it yourself without spending so much. Use the template available on WikiHow. As for a nice confection dress, the template will allow to draw the piece of paper or cardboard to the exact dimensions and to cover precisely your iPod nano. You don’t need to limit yourself to plain white paper. It’s about time your imagination kick in with your photos and your drawing talent.

Feel free to show your trials here.

In the rush for higher resolution images, HAL9000 Iconos has a significant advance over the competition with its 8600 mega-pixel image.

They obtained this enormous image by assembling it from 1145 individual photos of about 12 Mega-Pixel each.

The result is on the Italian web site of HaltaDefinizione.com and it is impressive. You can also get a printed poster copy of the image, if you want to.

Plenty of web sites try to attract you with free fonts (or other free items) and fail to deliver this. If you are lucky you will find a couple of ugly (but still free) fonts. Now, it is quite exceptional to find true top-quality fonts on the web. Vitaly Friedman just did this on his notebook with his 25 Best Free Quality Fonts.

According to my tastes, one of the best is Cardo. Have a look.

Version 1.0.5 fixes a bug around wrongly displaying the number of continuous shots which can be taken and adds a semi-gloss paper option for direct printing (on PIXMA Pro9000 and other PictBridge-compatible printers).

Download the new firmware, copy it on a memory card and the Canon EOS 30D will update itself on startup.

Who was not hurt by the weird colors of a digital print? Often, the solution is to use the right color profile from the printer manufacturer (depending on paper, ink, printer, etc.). But it is not always enough. If you have an old printer, you may not find the color profiles; If you use generic inks, there may be no adequate color profile. Worse, for some applications like Black & White printing, the slighest color change is perceived by even the less technical observer.

There is another solution. It can be applied by anybody, provided that you bring some patience: Black and white printer profiling (of a sort).

This is the question I started asking myself after seeing the cover of the July-August 2006 issue of Chasseur d’Images (” HP révolutionnne le A3 “, “HP revolutions A3″) then reading the corresponding article.

(more…)

If you want to see photos of Paris by night, I have collected some of them on a specific page of my web site. They have been there or quite some time, but some people seems to have difficulty finding them again. So let’s help.

Eiffel tower – Tour Eiffel

This is the mere symbol of Paris: The Eiffel tower, more than two centuries old is standing there.

(Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the image).

The other photos.

When looking into the details, you notice that the inks used for our inkjet printers are quite different from one brand to the next or from one reference to the next. Let’s check what the competing technologies are and the impact it may have on us photo users.
(more…)

Choosing a paper for your photo quality inkjet printer is always a difficult task. It’s even worse because tests tend to require a lot of expensive paper, expensive ink and annoying time.

Today, I look into an Ilford paper supposed to combine quality and price: Printasia Premium Photo Glossy Paper.

(more…)

All inkjet papers were not born equal. For example, their surface can be varying a lot from one paper to the next. Maybe, you thought that the only difference was in the weight of the paper, whether it was glossy and its price. Oh boy! Were you wrong…

As a matter of fact, paper manufacturers don’t even speak about it (marketing droids don’t want to frighten people with technical details…) but a new generation of papers has hit the market of inkjet printing:

Microporous paper

Let’s see what it is all about.

(more…)

All inkjet papers were not born equal. Not even all papers. Far from the surface quality, one of the characteristics easiest to evaluate and most important to appreciate a good paper is its weight. But quite often you will hear paper industry specialists and printing experts speaking about the paper’s hand.

What is this and why is it so important?

(more…)

As all cats, felines from the Masai Mara National Park (Kenya) have fascinating eyes.

(more…)

Epson will have to worry about this.

While during a long time Epson was the undeniable champion of ink jet print longevity thanks to its unique pigment-based inks (inherently more durable than dye-based color inks of its competitors), Canon just announced a new professional ink jet printer, the iPF 5000 (MSRP $1,945) using a 12-color pigmented Lucia ink system that includes black, matte black and two shades of gray to improve on black&white prints.

Additionally, Canon introduces the Pixma Pro9500 (MSRP $849) which uses 10 colors (including two black cartridges and one gray one), and printing in A3+.

Everything leads us to the conclusion that Canon is preparing an extension of this approach to cheaper products, for the obvious pleasure of all consumers willing to produce great photographic prints.

Today, inkjet printers are everywhere outputing photo images. Yesterday, silver-based prints were known for their good permanence (lasting up to a century). But is it the same for the latest inkjet prints? Henry wilhelm (of Wilhelm Imaging Research) is really the expert in evaluating this. The web site contains links to consumer-level articles (e.g. PDF copies of PCWorld articles), technical white papers for the high-end consumer, and news for the expert.

Reprint from 2005.