First Prints

One of the most exciting aspects of reviewing any new printer has to be the anticipation of seeing the first print. Looking at the Epson R1900, I am asking myself, is this printer going to be better than anything I have seen or tested before? or will it be just another photo printer?. Last year when I tested the Pro 3800 I thought we had already seen the ultimate printer with the Epson R2400, the HP B9180 and Canon Pixma 9500 amongst others. Yet, when I saw what the quality of photos the Pro 3800 was producing, I had to sit back and rethink my testing methods. Manufacturers have achieved perfect photo quality with their printers, and have addressed the longevity issue, so where do we go from here?

The one area most photographers have problem with is colour management. The question I get asked more than any other is "how can I produce a print with the same colours that I see on my monitor" . Most manufacturers do supply excellent profiles with their printers, you should be able to produce an excellent photograph straight out of the box, assuming of course that you are using the recommended media and that you have calibrated/profiled your monitor correctly. So for our first print test I am just going to set everything to Auto and let the printer driver decide what to do.

OK, so it is not the first photograph, but it is the first print I produced on the R1900	The same section produced on a HP 2600 colour Laser printer

Just to keep everything honest in this review, the first print I produced was the Windows Printer Test Page printed on Plain Paper (100gsm). I also produced the same test print on a HP2600n colour Laser printer. You can clearly see that pigment inks do not have the same vibrancy or colour depth on plain paper. Although the HP print looks better, it does have an overall screen dot, so it would not be your first choice for photo printing - maybe proofing. I will return with more plain paper and other media types later in this review.

Here we go with our test chart picture, please feel free to download the image for your own personal use, right click on the first image "Original file" and select save target as. The first print was produced using Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper with the printer set to Best Photo, Gloss optimise set to Auto and Photo Enhance On. These setting were set automatically when I selected the media type.

All the R1900 review prints will be scanned in using an Epson V750 scanner with SilverFast Ai software. The prints are left to dry for 20 minutes before they are scanned, this is just to let the colours settle down.

Original file	First print Fully Auto

The first A4 print took 1 minute 29 seconds to complete, but is looking positively cool, Sophie looks like she has just had a cold bath on a winters night. The second print was produced using "Let Photoshop Manage Colours" and the correct profile for the PGPP was selected etc. This produced an identical result, I also tried the same with the Gloss optimise turned Off, just in case it was introducing a colour shift - it wasn't. The third print was produced using the "Let Printer manage colours" and then selecting the PhotoEnhance with the People setting in the scene correction. The resulting print displays excellent colour throughout, although at this early stage I am not seeing any advantage in the new Orange colour. We will try other images later. It has taken six A4 sheets of media to get to a result that I am happy with, of course subsequent prints should be spot on each time.

Original image file

Epson Stylus Photo R1900

Epson Stylus Photo R2400

Epson Stylus Photo R1800

HP B9180

Canon Pro 9500

Just comparing the R1900 with other current A3 Pigment ink printers, we can see that the colours are on par with the other printers, maybe they are slightly more vivid especially the green reel. Having spent most of this afternoon printing test print after test print, I am still not 100% convinced that I am getting the best results from this printer. So far I have been using Premium Glossy Photo Paper and I will try another surface type later on. I am not sure that the SPR1900 Epson Premium Glossy profile is right. Both the Brown and dark Red reels display a cool tone.