richard@mee.tcd.ie (06/13/91)
We're considering buying a colour postscript printer for our lab, with the idea of printing 24-bit colour images. While I realise that we're not going to get anywhere near photographic quality, any sample prints I've seen all seem to be from drawing packages, with very little variation in intensity. I've seen output from colour photocopiers, the quality seems to fit our needs exactly, but my question is is it possible to get printers that come this close to photographic quality ??? If anyone has seen the NEC Colormate PS 80 in action (they have yet to sell one in Ireland ) I'd really appreciate their comments, or indeed anyone who has experience in this area. thanks, Richard Richard Bolger // Trinity College Dublin // rjbolger@vax1.tcd.ie Republic of Ireland //
larry@csccat.cs.com (Larry Spence) (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun13.142139.1@mee.tcd.ie> richard@mee.tcd.ie writes: >We're considering buying a colour postscript printer for our lab, with >the idea of printing 24-bit colour images. While I realise that we're >not going to get anywhere near photographic quality, any sample prints >I've seen all seem to be from drawing packages, with very little >variation in intensity. > >I've seen output from colour photocopiers, the quality seems to fit our >needs exactly, but my question is is it possible to get printers that >come this close to photographic quality ??? The Canon CLC-500 is a color photocopier that also can be used as a color raster printer. Our company helped develop a Windows driver for the CLC recently. The output quality is incredibly good, including scanned image reproduction, but the printer is very expensive. It's not something you can sit on your desktop, either. %) At the lower end, there are printers like the QMS ColorScript (the CLC is not a PostScript device) which have very nice, saturated, glossy output, but which generally require that you tweak images in PhotoShop/ImagePrep/whatever for color correction, etc., in order to get faithful reproduction. Of course, the QMS costs a fraction of the Canon's price. As usual, it's a tradeoff. If you have to have a PostScript device, one of the thermal transfer 300 dpi color printers (QMS, etc.) is probably the best you're going to do at a reasonable price. Then it's a matter of working out the gamma corrections and other tweaks for the types of images your want to feed it; buy a copy of PhotoShop (Mac) or PhotoStyler (PC) and learn to use it. As long as you're not trying to match monitor colors to printed colors, you might even make it through the process with your sanity intact. %) %) -- Larry Spence larry@csccat.cs.com ...{uunet,texsun,cs.utexas.edu,decwrl}!csccat!larry
andy@research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman) (06/16/91)
In article <4330@csccat.cs.com> larry@csccat.UUCP (Larry Spence) writes: >The Canon CLC-500 is a color photocopier that also can be used as a color >raster printer. And 24 bit colour scanner. >like the QMS ColorScript (the CLC is not a PostScript device) which have ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The CLC can be used as a colour PostScript printer using the recently released PS-IPU. -- Andy Newman (andy@research.canon.oz.au)