At home I have a whole series of photo frames and from time to time I like to swap the contents of them. One of the things I have noticed is that often when I open the frame a ghost image has appeared on the inside of the glass.

As the image doesn't touch the glass - how does it happen? Well apparently it is caused by solvents in the inks "out gassing". I came across this article that explains why this fogging occurs and how to stop it.


In a nutshell Epson recommend:

1. After printing, let the print rest for 15 minutes.
2. After 15 minutes, place a sheet of plain paper (not photo paper) on top of the print and let
dry for 24 hours. The paper acts like a sponge to absorb the gasses and accelerate the
outgassing. (You may stack the prints if you are printing more than one. Be sure to
interleave each print with a sheet of plain paper.)
3. After 24 hours, remove the plain paper. You may notice the plain paper is wavy. If it is,
repeat the procedure again with a new sheet of paper for another 24 hours, after which the
print should be ready for framing. If it is not wavy, this indicates that the solvents in the
print should now be completely dry and the print should be ready for framing
immediately.

I'll have to try this and see how it goes.

---

Related Posts

Mounting and Finishing Photograpraphs

Labels: cleaning, framing, Mounting and Finishing Photographs, Printers, Printing, Workflow

So having decided to continue printing my own photos I have been waiting for a replacement of the Epson 2400 to appear on the shelves. Finally the Epson 2880 has appeared.

Is it any good I hear you ask? Well the best place to see a full review is photo-i - I have to say it looks pretty good to me. But, knowing the volumes of printing I do, I started to wonder about the costs of those tiny ink cartridges and how it compared to the Epson 3800 Stylus. First I checked out the review, well it looks good and robust with high print quality and it does A2!

Hmmm, A2 now that's a nice-to-have but how much extra will I be paying for a feature I am unlikely to use very often. Time to do some maths.



So before we launch into the comparison, let me say that these are the prices I found first when doing some Googling. They probably aren't the cheapest around but I think the comparison is still valid.
In addition I have not included P&P, if you order your print carts on-line or, the cost of money when you buy a lot of ink up front. I leave you to decide if these elements will affect your pricing decisions.

	2880	strong>3800
Purchase price with additional 2 year Warranty	£629.00	£1,062.18
Epson Trade Up Discount	£-	£150.00
Purchase Price	£629.00	£912.18
OK so its an extra £290 of the queens pounds which is not to be sniffed at (even if it does do A2), but out of interest I thought I would take a look at the price and size of ink cartridges.
Cartridges
Individual Cartridge Price	£10.95	£35.80
Price for a full set of cartridges	£87.60	£286.40
Cart size in ml	11	80
Price per ml	£0.9955	£0.4475
Well that gets a little more interesting 2880 ink is twice as expensive as 3800 ink (and the 3800 does A2).
Now here is a thought - each printer comes with a full set of inks. If we subtract the cost of the inks provided we should get an indication of the actual price of the printer. This gives us:
Price without ink	£541.40	£625.78
So in effect you can go from an A3 printer to an A2 for only £83!
I'll assume that ink usage on both is pretty much equivalent and I will pick 100ml worth of to represent my usage for a year or so.
Prices for 100ml worth of printing
Price for a full set of cartridges	£87.60	£286.40
No of sets in 100ml	9.09	1.25
100ml price	£637.09	£286.40
Total price to print 100ml worth of prints	£ 1,266.09	£1,198.58

So it seems that when I take into consideration my normal running costs the more expensive printer is cheaper! Oh and did I mention it does A2 as well!

Labels: Printers, Printing

I've been looking at buying a new printer to replace my ageing Epson 2100 Stylus, and I started wondering if its worth printing my own shots at all or should I just use a lab?

Back in the days of film comparatively few people used to print their own shots at home or in their studio. Of course there were many enthusiasts who converted a spare room in to a dark room, but few had the facilities for colour work or large formats and these were usually left to the professionals.
Now you can buy a simple printer that you plug the camera into and out come your pictures as if by magic. Larger formats are simply a question of buying a bigger printer and reading the manual.

So now we have all this flexibility - but should we use it? Is there still a place for professional printing or should we run everything off on our own ink jets ?

Well as I think about it, there are advantages and disadvantages to either method.



Using a Print Lab
Generally for most print runs a lab will be cheaper. They have the economies of scale that you can't achieve unless you are producing fantastic volumes of prints.
There are no start-up costs associated with using a lab, before you can print yourself you have to purchase A printer, paper and all those ink cartridges.

On the negative side you have a less control. If the lab starts printing your shots darker than you think they should there is little you can do about it except complain or go elsewhere. Lead times can be a pain. Print something large, spot a fault with it, get it printed again and you could lose a few days (more if the post office are playing up) on a tight schedule.


Print your own
Printing your own works takes you into a whole new world of printer, ink and paper choices. Allows you to fill whole cupboards full of different types of paper that "really work well with this shot". All the learning opportunities about profiles and sharpening for output. Hours of endless fun printing with the wrong profile or spending a happy evening trying to retrieve the tiny bits of paper out from the rollers after a nasty paper jam. The joy of discovering you have just printed that 42 page spreadsheet on fine art paper instead of plain.

But when it works you do get complete control. If I spot a flaw in an image I can easily fix & reprint it in a few minutes. I can choose from a vast range of papers exactly the paper I want my image to appear on and use a completely different paper for the next shot.
I suppose I print stuff myself for the same reasons I mount pictures myself. I really like the idea that what I have produced is all my own work so that when I hand someone a signed limited edition print that I captured, printed and mounted it's all on my own. It gives me no one else to blame if it all goes wrong............but I can live with that.

Labels: Printers, Printing