Rolling Along

Since my last posting I've made a number of prints each day. I'm working on a job for a client, photographing some original artwork and producing smaller-than-original prints. The originals are colored pencil drawings on sheets of textured, very warm-toned drawing paper. The sheets are 22 inches high by a little over 27 inches wide. I photographed each drawing in four "strips", which were then stitched together using Photoshop's PhotoMerge application. This resulted in a high pixel count file for each picture.

I had some challenges matching the prints' colors to those in the original drawings. Getting that right is what took most of the hours I've got into the job; this isn't related to the 7900, so I won't spend time on that part of the story here, except to say the prints from the Epson are excellent matches to what I see on my monitors (which are profiled, of course).

I made the first print five days ago. Prior to that I'd not used the printer in several days. As usual, I started by printing a nozzle check print. No clogs were found. I then made several test strips on a cheap matte paper, tinkering with color between each. The last test strip looked fine, so I loaded my roll of Moab Entrada Natural (a 300 gsm matte paper) and made the final print.

The 7900 handles roll paper very nicely. It's easy to load and unload rolls; once the roll is physically placed in the printer and the paper inserted into the paper path, the rest is automatic. In this regard it's very similar to loading roll paper into my old Canon iPF 5000. Unloading is also similar: press the ePlaten button (who names these things?) and the paper is wound onto the roll, leaving the printer waiting for me to load whatever's next.

Unlike the old iPF, the Epson has only one paper path. This means if roll paper is loaded, it must be removed before a sheet can be fed. I never expected this to be a problem, but given the need to print a nozzle check before doing any other printing, and since it makes sense to print nozzle checks on plain bond paper (cheap), it means unloading the roll, feeding the sheet for the nozzle check print, and then reloading the roll once all nozzles are clean. Fortunately, as already described, loading rolls is easy.

I had a number prints to make for the client, the job requiring several days to complete. Since I was making test strips from each image, and making those on an inexpensive matte paper, after the first day's printing I stopped printing nozzle checks, and just started each day making the first test strip I needed. I saw no evidence of clogged nozzles.

Prior to starting work yesterday (24 November), since I'd not done it in a while, I printed a nozzle check. No clogs found. It's now been nine days since the last clog. I've done at least a little printing most of those days. Since I have the 7900's auto-nozzle check (ANC) turned off, and since I've not switched from MK to PK ink, I assume no cleanings have been done. The capacity of the maintenance cartridge has remained at 53% for some time, which is evidence that no cleanings have been done.

Final thought for today: It is easier to get a print centered on roll paper than it is on sheets. Of course, it's all but impossible on sheets. For my client's final prints, I created a custom paper size of 17" x 14". I set the top and bottom margins to 0.6", the left and right margins to .25", and checked the Center image checkbox. The roll paper is 17" wide. After printing, the 7900 cuts each print 14" high. The printed area is not quite the same for each print, but they're pretty close. They are nicely centered on the paper, with the margins being roughly 1.4".

  --Jay