My first order of business is to run a profile evaluation print for each of the papers I expect to use. In my nearly five years of printing on the Canon iPF 5000 I'd sampled a lot of papers. I'd determined my "favorite" papers and which was appropriate for various purposes and subjects. In my early days using the Canon I'd purchased many sample packs of papers from various makers, including one from Red River Paper. As it turned out, there's nothing there I'd want to use, but I had some sheets left from that pack, so "wasting" some to get started with the new printer seemed a good idea.
I downloaded from Red River a profile for their 68 pound UltraPro Gloss. This is a thin, very glossy paper with a rubbery feel. At the printer I inserted the paper. One aligns the paper to a scribed mark and then lowers it into the printer until it stops. Unlike my Canon, there's no hard guide against which the paper's edge is placed. It feels loose and lacking precision on the Epson. I then used the printer's control panel to set the paper type per Red River's instructions, and then moved to the computer, which is not in the same room as the printer. I opened the evaluation file I've been using for years. This is from Digital Outback Print (DOP), which not only makes the image freely available, but also has a very nice page explaining its use.
During my years using the Canon printer, I'd printed only from Photoshop. I used Canon's excellent printing plug-in for PS, which means I rarely used the standard printer driver. Epson offers nothing comparable to Canon's printing plug-in, so I was stuck using the driver, which seemed pretty foreign. I worked my way through its layers, turning off the driver's color management ("Photoshop Manages Colors"), selecting the correct profile and rendering intent, checking the Center Image box, and then moving to the Print Settings dialog and completing the page set-up there. I saved the settings and then clicked the Print button.
I'd read that these printers are very quiet; as it began processing the print job, the 7900 seemed about the same as the Canon I was used to. And like the Canon, after the printhead had made a few passes the machine quieted considerably. Not that I'm keeping score, but in this regard I'd call it a tie between the two machines.
The 7900 is fast, and this was a small print, only 7.5" high by 10" wide on the letter size sheet, so the job completed quickly. I ejected the page and noticed immediately the image was not centered. The top and bottom margins were .5" exactly. But the left margin was .25", while the right margin was .5" wider. Clearly, the "Center Image" checkbox in the printer driver doesn't. Otherwise, the evaluation print was excellent. I won't be using Red River 60 pound UltraPro Gloss, but if you're looking for a bright-white, high-gloss, thin paper with a typical RC paper feel, you might want to check out the UltraPro Gloss.
Except for the centering issue, my first print was a success. I could tell right away I wasn't going to be very happy with the 7900's paper (output) basket. It seems to be designed to either dump the print onto the floor, or flop it print-side down into the basket beneath the printer. I may not be deploying it properly; I suspect I'll have more to say about the basket.
--Jay
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