Re: ALPS printers

[P3D John Ohrt <johrt@xxxxxxx>]

P3D wrote:
> 
> David Clark wrote:
> 
> >They do print some interesting demo files (one has fish under water), but
> >you will not be able to duplicate that quality with scans of normal images
> 
> Why is that?  I mentioned today that their demos were likely chosen to
> show the printer at its best, but what would be different about scans of
> normal images?  The demo print in the materials I got from them (French
> sidewalk cafe scene) was printed with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, thus presumably
> is something one could, with sufficient skill and effort, replicate.  Is
> it a question of the scanning, the nature of the image, or something else?

Fish under water is a classic example of an image easy to print.

Note that the majority of the scene is approximately cyan, and that the
human eye is less proficient at depecting subtle changes of intensity in
the cyan thru magenta portion of the spectrum.  The highly colorful fish
are very contrasty with lots of yellows and red in them (usually, I have
not seen this image), all easy colours to produce and with high colur
contrast the eye again tends to ignore subtle shading.

A tough test of any printer is human skin tones.  Race is irrelevant. 
We are very used to seeing these tones, and in certain cases
instinctivily que on them. Subtle tonal differences are readily noticed
by the critical eye.


> It appears the printer is *capable* of really good output.


That is the objective of all advertising! And everyone does it.

I just went to a Staples last night who had printed demo images on all
their printers based on the demo image of an Epson 400.  Granted, Epson
has great dye technology and inkjet technology in general.  But that
demo image is predominently colored balls whose hues are the primaries
and secondaries of the Epson ink :-)

Didn't have the heart to tell the kid he had been conned by Epson.  He
did all this work on his own time to help his customers decide!  I
didn't want to discourage that kind of thinking.  Besides, Epson was
clearly better than the printers half its price, as anyone would expect.


Regards,
John
--
John Ohrt,  Regina, SK, Canada
johrt@xxxxxxx



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