Favorable
opinion on the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 and Epson Stylus Pro 9600.
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| Dr.
Nicholas Hellmuth and John Lorusso testing the Epson 9600 at
Parrot Digigraphic headquarters. That's a FLAAR photo of an
indigenous Mayan textile from Guatemala. |
Epson
has cleverly designed the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 and 9600 with precisely
the features that overcome the majority of problems which were legendary
with earlier models.
Epson
has decided to overwhelm Encad, Kodak, Canon,
and Hewlett-Packard in the market consisting of hobby photographers, pro-sumers, and
professional photographers on a budget. For example, Epson is the
only printer company in the world who offers a 24" wide format
printer which accepts pigmented ink.
The
Epson 7600 will also be used to produce giclée prints by
artists and photographers who are just starting into this business.
The ability of all Epson printers to accept the thick water color
papers has endeared this name brand to artists across America and
Canada.
FLAAR
now has an Epson 7600 in addition to two 7500s, one at each university).
So far everything we have heard about the 7600 suggests it is better in every
respect over the 7500 other than slowness, ink usage and ink costs. But thousands
of eager artists and photographers won't care. They will buy these new Epson
printers by the truckload because the designers of these printers have listened
carefully to what end users asked to have improved over the older 7000 and
7500 models.
The
Epson 7600 and 9600 can dial out banding. Horizontal banding defects
was an entrenched problem with almost all piezo printers of previous
generations.
The
Epson 7600 and 9600 have worked hard to eliminate or minimize metamerism
color defects. Metamerism had been a serious problem with almost
all piezo printers before summer 2002. The metamerism of the Epson
7500 and 9500 inks were legendary.
Besides,
there is no alternative. Neither Kodak, Encad, Lexmark, Canon, nor
HP offer a comparable printer of this print quality, with pigmented
inks, and at such a low price. The fact that the RIP costs more
than the printer itself won't phase most eager buyers since they
won't buy a RIP at first anyway. Epson makes outstanding printer
drivers so you don't need a RIP unless you desire advanced features
of color management such as linearization or ICC color profiles,
or unless you print text (which requires PostScript to remove the
jaggies of alphanumeric symbols which requires a RIP).
We recommend Parrot Digigraphic as a reliable place to learn about
the new Epson 7600 and Epson 9600 and related digital photography,
fine art giclee, color management, scanning, and related matters.
Contact imaging@parrotcolor.com.
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| Here is the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 in different trade shows. |
First posted August 12, 2002; updated May 14, 2003; last updated Aug. 22, 2003.