My Oddest Print Job—Wrap-up

My plan to post daily while completing the job described in my last posting went the way of best-laid plans, due in part to a visit by family that took us on several day-trips. But the job got done even if my planned postings didn't; what follows is a wrap-up of what turned out to be a completely uneventful printing project.

As mentioned in the earlier posting, the job consisted of making 40 unique small prints. I'd planned to print ten per day over four sequential days.

Day two: Nozzle check was perfect. In the print studio relative humidity (RH) was 63%, quite high for here, temperature 70°F. Ten prints made, all perfect.

Day three: Due to other commitments the printer sat idle yesterday. Today's nozzle check was perfect, RH 54%, temperature 68°. Ten prints made, all perfect.

Day four: Nozzle check was perfect, RH 55%, temperature 67°. Ten prints made, all perfect.

You might think this proves the "theory" that printing daily prevents clogs or other ink delivery problems. That theory is certainly bandied about the forums and is, I think, widely accepted. I find otherwise, however. There's plenty of evidence that regular printing, while it may make for a less-troublesome life with the x900 printers, does not eliminate clogs. As proof:

I got a job to print four small (26 inch/66cm wide) panoramas. I printed these the day after I completed the movie stills job (that is, the day after "Day four" above). Studio conditions: 56% RH, 68°, right in the middle of the conditions over the days of the movie stills job. The nozzle check showed the lower 1/4 of the LC channel missing. Since standard cleanings rarely solve these problems for me, I did a powerful cleaning of the LC/VLM pair. This improved the LC channel, but still left six small voids in the pattern. I then did a standard cleaning of the same pair, which cleared the problem. The panoramas printed fine.

Two days later, after a thorough inspection of the movie stills prints, I decided to reprint five of those, after making some exposure and color adjustments to the files in Photoshop. Once again the studio conditions were similar to the previous days. Nozzle check was perfect, as were the prints.

I think I've proved only what I've often said: printing with the x900 series Epsons is a completely random experience. You can't know before you start any job whether that job will be smooth, easy, and fast, or require spinning your wheels waiting for cleanings to clear ink delivery problems. One must accept this as a condition of membership in the Stylus Pro x900 club. To make up for that, the prints are outstanding. Each of us must decide whether that's a fair bargain.

  --Jay

My Oddest Print Job—Day 1

I received a call a few weeks ago from the writer and director of a movie that wrapped up shooting here in Montana several months ago. She'd been referred to me by another client (always a nice thing!). The job would be to print 40 stills from the film, one copy of each. A number of back-and-forth emails nailed down the details of paper choice, print size, delivery date, and, of course, pricing. The prints would be made on letter-size sheets of Epson Luster.

The director would be away for a couple of weeks, after which I was on a shooting trip for a week. Ordinarily I leave the printer in standby mode, but since I was gone I'd powered it down. While I was away the print files arrived. I've no idea what software was used to grab the stills from the film, but the files sent were .pct, the old Macintosh MacDraw format! I hadn't seen any of those in years. Each file was 8.3 megabytes. Photoshop CC refused to open these files. Several programs are available to convert .pct to other formats. The only application I already own that'll do the job is the Mac's Preview app; the only format it will convert picts to is PDF. Hardly my first choice, but I learned through experimentation that Photoshop opens these PDFs just fine, I can make the necessary adjustments as usual, and print.

I decided to print five to ten images per day, in part to spread the job out and exercise the 7900 over a period of several days, and in part to allow time for other work. I'll document each day's print run, mostly out of curiosity to see if similar runs in similar conditions produce similar results, or if the Epson will behave in its well-known random fashion, producing good nozzle checks one day, showing clogs another, along with any other weird behavior.

Speaking of conditions: we've had wetter than normal weather here, with nice rains in June and early July. That's kept the humidity somewhat higher than usual. However, there's been no rain for a week, and it's very warm (near 90°F most days), so things are drying out.

Day 1:

Last printing was twelve days ago. The 7900 had been powered down for the last six days. Upon powering up the nozzle check perfect. In the print studio relative humidity (RH) was 55%, temperature 70°F. Ten prints made, all perfect.

I'll post again when the second batch of prints is complete.

  --Jay

A "New" Mac OS X Driver 9.17?

According to Epson's U.S. site, the driver for OS X is shown as being updated 14 July, but the version is still shown as 9.17, which was released back in September, 2013. As usual, the site gives no information about the driver. It's not clear what, if anything, has changed to warrant a new upload date.

The downloaded file is named "epson16258.dmg".

  --Jay