Printers are often not understood as thoroughly as necessary to make decisions that will give you the satisfaction and enjoyment that you desire. Often a printer is bought based upon print speeds and little thought to on-going costs and capabilities.
There are two types of color printers: Those with the nozzles attached to the cartridge and those with the nozzles on a sliding bed attached to the printer mechanism. Both have their points.
| Comparison | |
|---|---|
| Nozzles on cartridge | Nozzles on carriage |
| HP | Epson, Canon |
| Costly | Cheaper |
| Nozzles replaced each usage | Nozzles permanent |
| Idle to 6 months | Use monthly |
| Ink tank includes jets. | Jets inside printer |
One of the key differences in the style of printing is that if the ink dries because of non-use for several months in the Epson or Canon, resurrecting the dried-up printer is a severe chore that usually requires professional support and repair. This is a great deterrent if you are only an occasional user of a color printer.
Then again, if you are guaranteed to use the printer at least once a month, you will not normally have a problem and the replacement ink cartridges will be a LOT cheaper than a cartridge that includes the electronics and heads. All depends on your usage. Not having at least some color capability is not an option for some of what I do. If I print a page of a picture, having the knowledge that the ink is all I will be purchasing is a comforting thought - especially if there are lots of pictures involved and the jets are known good.
On the other hand, if you are an intermittent user, on a HP printer, the fact that nozzles dry out and cake often can be resurrected merely by removing the heads and applying a wet lint-free pad to the nozzles and then reinserting the cartridge. Higher reliability for infrequent users, but a stiff price.
And then there is the option to not use a color printer at all and go for a laser printer. It is black and white, fast and has no color at all. Cheapest option by far.
On the color printer, if I have any doubts that the color printer is ready to go, I have bookmarked a color wheel that exercises all of the colors. I print the color wheel as necessary for a test. Not needed much.
I have resolved the what-to-get dilemma by having two printers on the computer. The laser is used for 95% of the output leaving about 5% for color printing. I do enough maps and once in a while a web page that has enough color to keep the heads clean and ready to go. And because all I am replacing is the tank of ink, color operation is considerably cheaper. I do have techniques to resolve plates that have been clogged because of infrequent use, but have not had to use them on my own equipment.
Maury introduced Tom Tuttle, our presenter, and his partner, Sandy Novac, a web designer and artist. Tom is the author of Santa Barbara Gold. Biographical information on Tom is at www.tomtuttle.com. Tom started with PhotoShop 3, but was a traditional photographer before that. He's done a lot of professional work for companies, and travel photography. MetaPhotos.com has hundreds of free photos you can use for any purpose, royalty-free for now. He uses a Konica Dimage Z3, with 12X optical zoom, 4 megapixel resolution, a gigabyte card, will shoot up to 60 minutes video, too. He then runs virtually all of his photos through PhotoShop.
Tom showed examples of what students did in some of the classes he has taught. He then showed some of the photos he's taken and modified in PhotoShop. He'll often start with an image, and then edit it to get the effect he wants. Sometimes this involves adding elements, such as clouds, objects, fireworks, or reflections; or changing the colors, warming or cooling the feeling. Layer masks are very useful, you should find out about them (try PhotoShop Help, or Google layer mask photoshop) and practice using them. Many of his finished products are composites, or collages, where many elements have been combined.
The red-eye tool is useful; just a click and you can fix that problem. For the old-style manual correction, when you select the second eye, hold the Shift key, that lets you add to the selection, so you can do both at once. Play around, there are numerous ways to change the eye color (in addition to fixing the red-eye). For example, adjust the hue. The left- and right- bracket keys make the brush larger or smaller; keep pressing until the size you want is obtained.
PhotoShop is not perfect. If it doesn't work right, take a break. Sometimes just clicking on different things will correct the problem. If that doesn't work, close the program and restart it. You may even have to restart the computer. Take a break, have a cup of your favorite beverage, go for a walk, shoot some more photos.
Tom demonstrated using layer masks to superimpose a '55 Chevy on a cloud. There are lots of techniques to blend to two images, so it looks like one photo. Then he showed how to create a panorama from four individual photos using the photo merge function. You usually have to clean up a few small details, but the process is really quick and accurate.
PhotoShop Elements is about 70% of PhotoShop at 20% the price. They removed mostly the features for professionals from Elements, so most amateurs won't miss anything, and would never use. Tom recommends it for virtually everyone, even his students. Place the cursor, click Alt, and all the layers are turned off. Click Alt again, and all the layers are turned back on.
Tom doesn't use plugins. They may be useful, you'll have to experiment.
Sandy painted a black-and-white photo with very vivid colors while questions were discussed. After painting everything, she reduced the opacity of the colors. The transformation was amazing, and got a round of oohs! and applause.
Tom uses 72 pixels per inch for optimal screen resolution displays. To print, he'd use 150 or more pixels per inch. He doesn't use RAW, mainly because his camera doesn't support it. He doesn't feel any need for it. Tom has a Canon scanner that does up to 2000 pixels per inch; he also has available a huge expensive scanner at work. So why does he have a 4 mega-pixel camera? He likes the camera, it's comfortable, lightweight, portable, has a handle, and is totally retro. The high resolution came with the camera. The high resolution does allow cropping. He doesn't like the flatbed scanners with slide attachment, but some could do a decent job. The difference between an amateur and a pro is that the amateur wants to keep everything, while the pro knows what to throw away. He takes dozens of pictures just to get one good one - different angles, lighting, exposures, distance, etc.
Dave Iuppa of Caboodle Cartridge told us why we should use the cartridge and toner recycle service offered by them. High quality, low-cost, and the environment are the main reasons. The company is based on providing a recycled ink jet cartridge or laser toner cartridge that is approximately as good as the OEM replacement. The product is remanufactured or refurbished at the factory in Santa Clara under strict engineering conditions, then distributed to the franchise owners around the Bay Area. Our Palo Alto franchise CA06 is run by Amy, and is located at 3773 El Camino Real. You can call her at (650) 739-0766.
The ink in a cartridge is about $60 per ounce - this is more than twice the cost of Chanel No. 5! Caboodle pays less than $2 an ounce for the ink they use. Laser toner cartridges are disassembled, refilled, and reassembled with many new components, and still sell for 40% less than a new one. The inks used use high quality dyes from a German ink manufacturer.
The environmental impact of discarded cartridges is heavy, and growing rapidly. Not only the bulk of plastic and metal, which last 1000 years or more, but the residual ink and solvents leach into the water supply. The manufacture of cartridges uses prodigious amounts of petroleum products. 90% is recyclable, but only 20% actually is recycled.
Some advice to improve your recycling experience:
• don't allow an ink cartridge or the print head in the cartridge holder in the printer to dry out. Have a replacement ready to install, then put the almost-empty cartridge into a sealable plastic bag (don't put tape over the head).
• don't damage the print head, treat it carefully.
• if you have an unusual or uncommon printer, check with Caboodle first; they may be able to special order a cartridge if it's not in stock, or they can advise you to "bite the bullet" and get the OEM product.
Perhaps you're eyesight isn't quite what it used to be, or maybe the websites you're visiting are using tiny unusual fonts. The easiest way to enlarge or reduce font size is use the IE menu View - Text size options. If that doesn't satisfy you, go to IE's Tools - Internet Options - Accessibility... (on the General tab) and check either one or both Ignore Font Styles and Ignore Font Sizes (you could also Ignore colors, if desired). Make sure the Fonts... selections are appropriate for you (I like Times New Roman and Courier New, but some prefer Arial or Verdana). This will change the way web sites that use Font tags or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are rendered, including the SPAUG web pages, but might make them more readable to you. To solve the small font size in pictures, install the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) toolbar in IE6 and you can blow the whole web page up to 5X bigger. One other "trick" - try holding down the Ctrl key and roll your mouse wheel to resize text.
Eric Raymond has been described as one of the ten most famous computer scientists in the world. He discusses why open source software products (such as Linux) are better than closed-source products (such as Microsoft). He has received numerous honors, including the Norbert Weiner award for public service from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. If you're interested (it is a fairly long article), it's posted here as an RTF document - it should open in your word processor; or download it, and open it with Wordpad, Word or almost any other word processor: Open Minds, Open Source.