 Michael S. Swaffar |
Printing with Kodak 1400, color issue I've heard only great things about the Kodak Professional 1400 printer. I love how fast it prints but I'm having problems with getting my colors to come out right. The image is not as sharp as the same image printed from my epson 2200. My B&W's tend to look green. I'be been working on calibration but seem to be getting nowhere. If anyone has advice or tricks that could help , please let me know. Thanks. Michael
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robert G. Fately |
I too love my 1400, Michael. I haven't had a color rendering problem yet, though I am not comparing with another printer - perhaps it is a calibration issue to some degree (dye-sub printers are supposedly difficult to calibrate). Perhaps the sharpness issue has to do with the technology of dye-sub compared to ink-jet. The Epson can spit out extremely tiny drops of ink, which, when used on the proper type of paper, do not smear or bleed. It is the combination of those microscopic dots in various densities and ink colors that lead to the final print you see. Dye sub, meanwhile, works by heating the ink ribbon (at a "resolution of 301 dpi on the 1400). As a spot of ribbon heats, the dye embedded in it sublimes - that is, turns from solid to gas without a liquid intermediate stage - and the gaseous dye is absorbed into the porous surface of the special paper (that's why you have to use only the paper provided by the vendor). You can imagine that as gaseous dyes blend and merge, they produce wonderful "photgraph-like" tonalities, but at the same time they are not as precise as picoliter dots of ink. In fact, printing typed text, for example is discouraged on dye-sub printers for thiw reason. My point is, the sharpness issue may be alimitation of the technology itself - perhaps there are sorts of images that you don't want to print from the dye-sub. Meanwhile, as for the green cast of your B&W images: again you might be better off using the ink jet for this type of printing. Dye sub ribbon is CMY (the older Kodak dye-subs had both CMY and CMYK, but I believe the 1400 ribbons are CMY only). Getting true B&W out of a color printer is notoriously difficult even in ink-jet land - witness the 3rd party companies that sell ink for Epson printers specifically for B&W use - I doubt that the 1400 will produce decent B&W no matter what you do. I am hardly the final word, though - I suggest you sign up to www.dpreview.com, and post your question in the Printing forum there. A fellow named Bob Collette, who works at Kodak, has been very gracious in answering users' questions about the 1400 (mine included). I hope that helps, anyway.
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Michael S. Swaffar |
Hi Bob Thanks for all the info. I was wondering if you print from the Kodak easy share software. If so, under printer properties/color adjustment, it has the option "shaprness" none,low,high. and can't tell the difference between the prints.
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robert G. Fately |
Actually, I print from a Mac, and I believe the drivers are different.
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