[Gerry Monaghan]

Hi Guys,
Well I went to the Mac World Expo at the Javits Center in NYC just to see the Epson 2200P in action. The Epson area was big and full of displays. Everybody was hanging around the 2200, and grabing prints off the tray before they hit. Lots of questions from all sorts of perspectives; I hung around there for hours. Several high end digital artists who beta tested it for Epson, using it as a proofing printer for their larger format printers. I can tell you what I learned.
First the good news. the print quality is stunning. Even the most jaded of users had trouble finding green cast or flattness in black areas. There are 7 ink colors, black, light black, magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan, and yellow. Inks come in 7 seperate cartridges each retailing for $12. They had 2 kinds of black which they kept swapping in and out depending on the surface of the paper.
Now the not so good news. In order to increase the "gamma", color richness and saturation potential, they have cut the archival rating on the inks in half from the pigmented inks used in the 2000P. They were making claims of print life of 50 to 75 years using the Wilheim Standard. For single color b&w prints, they are maintaining the 150 year rating.
I have developed my production strategy so that I am using photo prints from a Chromira system which have a print life of 50 to 60 years. I came away wondering if prints from the 2200P weren't giving me a second product in the same niche in my product line. I am also wondering if we aren't being set up for a next generation of photo printing inks which have the qualities of both. I wonder if their engineers can manage to get the improved inks into a cartridge that fits the 2200P? Or if we are going to have to go out and buy yet another printer.
I am happy to have seen the 2200P in action. It chugs along printing 4 and 5 mg files in under 5 mins. I am glad I haven't pre-ordered it. The show was a blast, I told at least 50 people about Retouch Pro. I need to get out more! Gerry

[Doug Nelson]

Thanks for the report, and thanks for the PR

I'm looking forward to the 2200. Personally, I think 60 years is fine, as long as no one struts around calling it "archival". I just read an article yesterday about how museums have to install special low-level lighting so their prints don't fade under the infra-red of full lighting, which made me wonder if we're just tail-chasing when looking for "archival".

[G. Couch]

Fantastic info Gerry! I think I'll wait for the first reviews to come out before purchasing this printer but 50-75 years is still pretty good considering the print quality, plus is sounds considerably faster than the 2000p (not to mention cheaper!). Thanks again for the "on-scene" report!

By the way...what else did you get to check out? 17" imac? "jaguar"?

[Gerry Monaghan]

Yes, I was amazed by the leaps in design and technology I saw. I live in such a back water. The new 17" flat screen on the imac gives it a big screen feel. The Jaguar edition of System X has some exciting possibilities for Apple to finally get the market share it deserves (but please don't tell me about improvements to the Stickies Utility). My good buddy David is now a sales guy with Tek Serve (a super Apple only store in midtown Manhattan) and I got to go to their reception at their store. Lots of video and sound recording professionals there. What I learned is that Apple is the platform in the professional sound engineering field and the video editing field. Very exciting.

I saw Asiva Photo being demonstrated. http://www.asiva.com/index.html It is a very powerful photo editing tool which is well worth the +- $300. Best way to describe it is like the next generation of Streamline (questionable analogy). It edits digital photos using the postscript language. In the interface, you create vectors on the color spectrum, thus choosing areas in a photo quickly and cleanly. This relates to the Select Color Range function in Photoshop, but you are not creating pixel based masks (memory intensive and troublesome). The resulting postscript data (on the green leaves, or the blue wall, for example) is tiny in file size (around 10k of memory), and so it is a 15 second operation to choose areas and edit colors and saturation. You also don't see pixelation in the margins. They were recomending 1,200 dpi for best results. Could be very useful. Gerry

[DJ Dubovsky]

Gerry,
Great review. I was curious about the latest version of Epson printer. I have the 2000P and I love it but there are definate problems especially with metermarism. I also wish it had seperate color cartridges. This one sounds pretty interesting. I think I will wait til the next one comes out. With the way things are going they should have a perfect machine by then.
DJ