Working With Roll Paper, and the Last Profile Test (for a while)

I accomplished two things today: I printed a profile test image on Moab Entrada Natural 300 gsm, and I printed on roll paper for the first time with the 7900.

Entrada Natural is a beautiful matte paper. The 300 gsm version (there's a 190, also, which I've not used) is very thick and stiff. The paper has a texture bordering on too much for my taste, but for some images it's very nice. Having no OBA, it's a warm-toned paper. It's reasonably priced, too. I've had a 17" roll for some time, having used this paper with my iPF 5000. I've printed a couple of my own panoramas on it, and I have a printing client who loves this paper.

I downloaded from Moab's site the profile for the 7900/9900, installed it, and then set up to print on the roll of Entrada. As usual, I printed a nozzle check sheet on plain bond paper (no clogs). I then followed Epson's instructions and loaded the roll of Entrada. As has been discussed at length in various forums, the 7900's spindle-less roll feed system is very nice and a snap to load. Once the paper is pushed through the paper path, the printer looks it over just as it does a sheet, moves it around a bit, and is then ready to print. I chose the option to have the print cut the paper when the print is finished.

On the computer I loaded the profile test image into Photoshop and then went into the printer driver. I set up a custom paper size as recommended in the Epson documentation. I made this 17" x 8.5". On the Printer Settings tab I made sure Roll Paper was selected, and set the media type to Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper per Moab's specification. On the Roll Paper Settings tab I chose Normal Cut, Auto Rotate, and 17 inch, and then saved the settings. Back on the Photoshop printer dialog box I unchecked the Center image box, set the top margin to 0", the left margin to .25". The profile test image is 10" wide X 7.5" high (landscape orientation). What I hoped to get from this was .5" margins top and bottom, since the printer insists on .56" minimum margins top and bottom, and a .25" margin on the left.

The image printed, far toward the left edge of the 17" wide paper, and the sheet was cut. Overall I'd say the 7900's handling of rolls is pretty nice.

I'm very impressed with Moab's profile. The test image is excellent, with nice detail in the blacks, no color problems I could find, great skin tones, etc. An excellent paper made better by an excellent profile (in my opinion, of course).

With the sheet oriented normally in my hand, the left margin is .5". The right margin is several inches wide, this being a 10" wide image on a 17" wide roll. The top and bottom margins are slightly less than 5/8". The cut width of the sheet is about 8 5/8". When I cut the sheet down to 11" wide, the image was centered left and right, with those .5" margins. I came pretty close to getting my image centered, although the sheet size is 1/8" too high. This matches the .06" greater than 1/2" each margin should be.

  --Jay