Fine colour

The Epson Stylus Photo 1400 is the first A3+ printer in Epson's repertoire to use the new Advanced MicroPiezo head technology. This head claims to fire more droplets per second without any sacrifice in quality, than it's predecessor the 1290, in fact Epson say's it can achieve an increase of approx X1.5 throughput speed. The droplets can be as small as 1.5 picolitre, this will render the finest of detail. The new head also makes use of Epson's Variable-Sized Droplet Technology which uses up to 5 level of droplets, thereby ensuring very smooth gradations in sky areas etc.

I have used the close up of Sophie's eye top see just how much detail can be extracted from a print with this new head.

Eye detail at 600dpi	Eye detail at 1200dpi

Looking at doth samples above, the 600dpi is slightly soft and lacks clarity in detail. The 1200dpi print clearly shows a pattern - the magnification is much higher than I would normally view a print. I am going to perform a head alignment and see if the quality can be improved. To do this you have to right click on the printer icon which is located on the task bar and select head alignment. Load plain paper and then manually set the value best looking test patch. Canon and HP printers do this automatically.

Eye detail at 600dpi - Photo	Eye detail at 1200dpi - Photo
Eye detail at 600dpi - PhotoRPM	Eye detail at 1200dpi - PhotoRPM
Epson R1800	Canon Pro 9000

Running the Head alignment utility has improved the overall result, but the pattern can still be seen in the Photo quality setting. Using the higher quality setting of Photo RPM (5760 x1440dpi) improves the pattern but produces an overall softer image. At no stage in the installation process was I prompted to run a head alignment routine. This is normally an essential step when setting up any printer. I should emphasize that the enlargements you are seeing are extreme and under normal viewing the pattern would not be a problem.

Claria inks.

Epson make several claims on their Claria dye inks.

1. A wider colour gamut - I wouldn't question this, as the prints I have in front of me look stunning. The yellows are exceptional and the reds look like red - not an orange red. The printer driver also has an Adobe RGB printing mode, this should ensure accurate colours.
2. More resistant to fading - I haven't the facility to test this, but I wouldn't doubt that the inks have been dramatically improved over earlier Epson dye inks.

Next B/W printing