Dogger Blue
09-13-2004, 08:36 PM
Hello, I'm brand new here, but I am very curious as to whether anyone has noticed that the quality of Epson's printer drivers has deteriorated in recent years. I have detected a problem in Epson's printer driver dithering in newer printers, and I have done the scans to show what I'm talking about, and I'm posting them below as links.
Since dithering algorithms are independent of inks these results may well apply to the R800 and other Epson printers, although the test I performed compares an old Stylus Photo 780 with the new Stylus Photo R300.
Here's the close-up scans I have made of my resulting printouts from the older printer:
Epson Stylus Photo 780 Dither Sample (http://thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/samblown_sp780.jpg)
Now here's a close-up scan of the same exact file printed on the R300, from the same app (Photoshop), with the same settings (maximum Photo quality available for each printer) on the same paper (Epson Premium Luster):
Epson Stylus Photo R300 Dither Sample (http://thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/samblown_r300.jpg)
As you can see, the dithering just falls apart in the shoulder area. The rest of the picture came out alright, but not these red highlights. They're a real mess on the newer printer with the supposedly tinier droplet size. The R300 passed a nozzle check with flying colours, by the way, before AND after making this print. To me this seems like poor driver programming. Does anyone have any better idea why this is occurring?
I am looking for other people who own the R300 and/or an older Stylus Photo and are willing to try to print out my photo at maximum quality with Epson inks on Epson gloss or semi-gloss paper, and see if they can replicate my results. Does your R300 resemble the nice smooth red dither from my Stylus 780 or is it as bad as my R300? If you want to find out, you can copy and paste the following link to retrieve the entire file I actually printed:
thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/gardensamurai.jpg
I would love to hear about your results printing this shot; which of my samples does it resemble more, and if you have any experience to share about the inferiority of the newer Epson printers or printer drivers.
DB.
P.S. My tests were done on a Mac with OS X Jaguar.
Since dithering algorithms are independent of inks these results may well apply to the R800 and other Epson printers, although the test I performed compares an old Stylus Photo 780 with the new Stylus Photo R300.
Here's the close-up scans I have made of my resulting printouts from the older printer:
Epson Stylus Photo 780 Dither Sample (http://thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/samblown_sp780.jpg)
Now here's a close-up scan of the same exact file printed on the R300, from the same app (Photoshop), with the same settings (maximum Photo quality available for each printer) on the same paper (Epson Premium Luster):
Epson Stylus Photo R300 Dither Sample (http://thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/samblown_r300.jpg)
As you can see, the dithering just falls apart in the shoulder area. The rest of the picture came out alright, but not these red highlights. They're a real mess on the newer printer with the supposedly tinier droplet size. The R300 passed a nozzle check with flying colours, by the way, before AND after making this print. To me this seems like poor driver programming. Does anyone have any better idea why this is occurring?
I am looking for other people who own the R300 and/or an older Stylus Photo and are willing to try to print out my photo at maximum quality with Epson inks on Epson gloss or semi-gloss paper, and see if they can replicate my results. Does your R300 resemble the nice smooth red dither from my Stylus 780 or is it as bad as my R300? If you want to find out, you can copy and paste the following link to retrieve the entire file I actually printed:
thedigs.dnsalias.net/posted/gardensamurai.jpg
I would love to hear about your results printing this shot; which of my samples does it resemble more, and if you have any experience to share about the inferiority of the newer Epson printers or printer drivers.
DB.
P.S. My tests were done on a Mac with OS X Jaguar.