[frownyfrank]

I'm in the market for a new printer and scanner. I'd like to hear from some other designer-types what they would recommend. Lately I've been dealing with photographers, so I need something that will do them justice. Most of my output will be for the web, but that doesn't mean I don't want accurate high-resolution.

Printer-wise, something that can handle said photos, and my own Postscript design work. Last time I bought a printer, it was considerably extra to buy one that understood Postscript. Is that still the case (inkjet, I'm talking about)?

At this moment I'd probably go buy an Epson 3200 (Pro/Photo.. what's the difference?) scanner and an Epson printer with with an ink cartridge of at least 300 colors (are they going to stop anytime soon?).

Thanks for any help!

[Eric_Henao]

The Epson 3200 is good. But forget it if you want to scan negatives, slides or transparancies.

As far as printers go... keep in mind the price of the printer cartridges. THose $100 photo printers have $25 cartridges usually 25 for blk and 30 for the color.

I have the Epson C60 and the EPSON cartridges cost 20 and 25 respectively for the black and the color cartridges. There are non EPSON cartridges out there off the net that you can get of various quality. We got some cheapos at $9 each. Works great! Granted I'm not doing color correction nor is this work for clients. But my wife is using the outputs for the wall in her art classroom for Elementry Kids.

RIPs are still gonna cost you. Expect the $400 plus range. Really not necessary unless you need color correct outputs or if you want to print 19"x44" panoramas on a Epson 2200.

The EPSON 2200 is a great printer, but the mac drivers suck, and windows users have lots of problems with it as well. But if you're luckly, it makes FANTASTIC prints. I heard recently a guy gets 6 19x22 prints per hour with a RIP on the 2200.

There is a Yahoo group about the EPSON 2200.

Oh and for paper, I'd recommend Red River paper. Cheaper and just as good if not better than EPSON.

Eric Henao

[bmmp]

I have a Stylus Scan 2500, and it is awesome. Got a good deal on it too. Bought it over a year ago for $250 and the ink is $3.00 black and $4.00 for color. Sweet.

But I dont use it for my freelance jobs. Its absolutely invaluable for me to make xerox copies instantly and scan stuff for the web, but the scan and print quality are no where near what they could in individual devices.

Since you do business, I would higly recommend getting separate devices. What you gain in convience you lose in quality and that goes with anything in life, not just multi-fuction devices. Non of the MFDs, I've surveyed came close to the quality of a decent seperate devices.

Check with the magazines for recent photo printers and scanners for current reviews (new printers come out often), and be sure they work on your system. Mac/PC, USB/SCSI/Firewire.

[bmmp]

Also, Eric is right, RIP software is going to cost you, which is another reason to buy a sep printer. RIP software is often hardware specific and developers won't make RIP software for low-quality devices such as inkjet MFDs.

But you dont' need a PS printer to print PS work, you can get by with an good injet. You can use photoshop/illustrator/acrobat to distill PDFs to print, otherwise, you could shell out the Gs for a color laser, which is expensive, but quite worth it if you do alot of press work.

[Eric_Henao]

Here are two FREE RIPS for the mac. I think that they only run OS X, you must use one of the inkjet printers with it, and only use custom quadtone black ink set. If this is your sort of thing...check them out.

Open Print Maker is a free mac rip look for it here
www.bowhaus.com/inkjetcontrol/

Also Roy Harrington has a free RIP for mac system 10 here:
harrington.com/QuadReadMe.html