Meesh
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My Printing Adventures | Part 1: The Matte Battle
🕑 Added 2019-03-27 21:09:39 +0000 UTCAfter returning from ANE, I had prints on the mind. I ordered a batch of 100 prints of six of my illustrations from my girlfriend (who owns a professional Epson printer), and she did an amazing job with them. They did pretty well at the convention, and it got me thinking about going full-scale with print-making and having a prints-on-demand storefront.
After researching for a couple days and looking through half a dozen or so prints-on-demand sites (and reading a ton of fine print) I was getting discouraged. I ordered a sample from one site that promised quality, but the product I received was so embarrassingly shoddy... It looked like it was printed out of a $50 printer and it arrived very curled up, and I couldn't get it to lay flat even after a couple days under a very heavy box.
This didn't bode well, and it made me concerned about leaving the quality up to an outside company. So I began to look into getting my own printer and selling the prints myself, so that I could be sure that the prints came out looking good. Enter the Canon Pixma Pro-10:
Excitedly, I began to try out some test prints of my artwork. I wanted to go with a high-quality matte paper, since that's what my girlfriend provided for me. But I noticed something amiss right away...
The large print here is a 13x19 test I made on matte paper, and the smaller is an 8.5x11 on luster paper. The darker colors were very rich on the luster, but looked dull and flat on the matte. I couldn't figure out why, until I did some more testing...
Canon has a special setting for the "Fine Art Matte" papers, so I tried that one out. And the blacks did indeed come out richer, but this huge margin showed up. I looked into it, and the Pro-10 has a "Photo Black" and a "Matte Black" ink, with the latter having much more density and showing up as a darker black. It'll allow you to use this premium ink, but not without enforcing an enormous margin on the paper.
I looked around the internet for some explanation and the prevailing theory is that this is done to prevent the edges curling because of all the ink, and to try and avoid a printer jam and damaging the printer. Apparently Canon printers are the only printers that do this, at least from what I could find out. There are some programs out there that can override the Pro-10 drivers and gain access to the nice ink and all of the page at once, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it, being such a printing newbie.
I was pretty frustrated because my girlfriend was able to produce deep blacks on matte paper without much fuss, and it seemed I wouldn't be able to replicate it purely because I bought the wrong printer. So my conclusion is that if you ever want to print on matte paper, go with an Epson printer or be prepared to waste even more ink and paper than I did tweaking with a third-party driver.
And waste I did indeed, as I tried to find a sweet spot while still staying within the artificial constraints given to me by my expensive new toy...
No matter what, I couldn't seem to get the blacks deep enough to match the print that my girlfriend made, who I don't believe spent more than 10 minutes tweaking the file. I then wondered why I was so hell-bent on sticking with matte paper, when the luster paper came out of the gate looking pretty damn good. So I decided moving forward, luster was the way to go.
This post is getting pretty long, so tune in next time for another exciting episode of My Printing Adventures!
Comments
invidious
That table full of gaping Maid Marians is pretty much how I envision heaven, lol
Kujiiro
Fuck, printers are a nightmare for everyone xD hope you find that sweet spot you're looking for.
Criss Rudolf
thats why i have a Canon PIXMA iP8750 A3, perfect with any paper and already poster size :3
Ponpokora
Didn't know you had a girlfriend! :O Unfortunate about the matte prints but glad the luster ones came out as deep and rich as they did!
Meesh
Wasting money and ink is just a part of owning your own printer! I expected to have to sort out a lot of stuff before I got off the ground, and once it's figured out then it'll be smooth sailing :)
Nicnak
I totally understand the frustration! Took me quite a while (and going through lots of paper and ink) to properly figure out the right settings..and even still I find myself messing around with the odd one (dark colours are definitely my weakness when it comes to printing x_x) But once you figure it out it'll get easier, both on you and your wallet, haha! Hope it works out though, seems like you're figuring things out at a good pace (:
Meesh
At first I was converting my files to CMYK for the printer, but for some of them, I had been using overlay affects that CMYK definitely does not like. As for the outcome on the paper, since I have originally drawn all my images in RGB, the color relationships seem to fit better vs CMYK, and were easier to tweak to my satisfaction. So in the end, I've just been printing out of the raw RGB file with minor tweaks to hue and saturation. I probably will never get a printing gold star for this method, but it works for me!
Meesh
Good to know about glossy paper! I didn't think of using pantones, but I've been getting better at making sure the prints look right by the second or third tweak.
Tylor
Have you through about printing using pantones to calibrate the printer? It's much cheaper to do then printing out a whole full page. Also, glossy paper reflects more light. (including luster paper) Which means the colors are more vivid and saturated. (including black) Sense the ink isn't absorbed as much, less ink is used, and you don't have color bleeding into each other as much, meaning fine detail is easier to see. Sometimes printers let you set the exact paper your using. It's really worth setting the paper details as much as possible. Because then the printer can print more precisely to the paper you are using.
Just wanna make sure your printing these in cmyk right? Might Get thing more accurate from screen to print.
Meesh
The killer here is that the Canon Pro-10 does indeed have a richer black specifically for the fine art matte papers, but refuses to use them without that ridiculous border. So stupid.
Meesh
I don't know if I'm in the mindset of wanting to return this printer and getting another one, since it's only shortcoming is its aversion to matte paper. Although if I do end up making enough through prints to make back the costs of what I've already done, I may purchase an Epson to replace it.
masklayer
Unless I'm misunderstanding the issue here, I've had a very similar thing happen w/ large format epson photo printers at work (surecolor p7000, stylus 4900). Contrast/black/dark colors seem to be trickier to get right with matte paper due to absorbing ink differently.
Priruk
This is a bit of a stretch, but if you used a credit card to buy the printer, many credit cards have perks to them, one of them being extended return policies, allowing you to get money back. <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-benefits/credit-card-return-protection-guide/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-benefits/credit-card-return-protection-guide/</a>
Yoshiba
Was it, uh... Warhol? That had the same picture repeated side-by-side over and over? The image of all the Maid Marian print-outs on the bed kind of reminds me of that! You should make some furry porn Warhols. :V
Salvatore Mendez
Keep up the good work :3 we are all proud of you
Craig from Omaha
This was surprisingly more interesting than I thought it would be from the title of the email.
Craig from Omaha
I’m on such a tier with Miles-DF, in fact. I’d raise my pledge here if Meesh gets this whole ordeal worked out.
Renaissance Wolf
I use a Dell E525w myself. It's a color toner printer that makes really nice photo prints.
iceFox
x2
iceFox
Doing prints does seem pretty stressful, although I'm sure once you get the hang of it, it'll become much easier!
Robert
A print reward tier to think about in the future would be awesome Meesh.
Moralis
I hope all of your technical issues get resolved. I hope to eventually purchase some of your physical art when it is available.
SketchyBug
This was actually a really informative post. I'll definitely keep this info in mind if I ever decide to do prints!
sonicmega
Every Patron's brain right now: "...do you think you might raffle off the rejects?"
Duplicatename
"I couldn't seem to get the blacks deep enough to match the print that my girlfriend made" :3c
