The paper seemed a bit thicker and stiffer than Costco’s and Bay Photo’s and felt about the same thickness as the Precision print. I purchased the mid-grade “Premium Photo Paper Glossy” and the tests above were done with this paper. The office supply store had a limited selection of Epson photo papers. The Precision camera print handled the sky properly as well as the Epson. The smooth blue to white transition abruptly changed causing a band across the sky. I mentioned in my Precision Camera printer test that there was one gradient in the sky that gave both Bay Photo and Costco problems. Bay Photo’s prints were darker and might look better under ideal lighting but I think for every day use the Epson’s dynamic image may appeal more to consumers. The Epson may sacrifice a bit of color and contrast accuracy for more “pop” in the photographs. The photos were sharper, brighter, more colorful and contrasty. Out of the three, I think the Epson will appeal most to consumer tastes. The lab prints seem to have a wider color gamut and the Epson has more contrast. Both the Epson and Precision prints were brighter than Bay’s. I still think Bay photo has the most accurate color, as justified by my unscientific comparison to my uncalibrated iMac monitor. There were aspects of each I liked better. I’ve only printed 4×6 prints so far but all the prints were also brighter and sharper than the lab prints.Ĭomparing the Epson prints to Bay Photo and Precision camera was less conclusive. The color was more vibrant and matched my computer screen more accurately. Epson’s photos were consistently better than the Costco prints. I used the same photos that I used in these lab tests and compared them to the Epson’s output. A second followup, Round 2: Precision Camera’s Print Quality compared the output of the first two to a local Austin camera store. Bay Photo, I compared high-end Bay Photo’s output with Costco’s. My test resultsīack in September last year, I wrote two blog posts about print quality tests I performed at some photo labs. These inks are fade resistant and Epson claims a tested 98 year life under glass, 4 times longer than lab prints. Each ink cartridge can be replaced separately. It does however, use their Claria inks in 6 colors, black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, and light yellow. Epson has many more serious printers for photographers. The Artisan 810, while being a solid and full featured consumer printer, is nowhere near the top of Epson’s printer line up. Well all of my perceptions changed when I saw the photo output of this new Epson Artisan 810. My own experience using the four-year old, admittedly lower end, HP printer only reinforced my doubts about the ink jet printers. For these reasons, I was not expecting much from my new Epson. Yet I find that there are serious photo websites that do their special art prints on ink jets. Which makes better prints, ink jets or minlabs using a traditional chemical photographic process? They said, while ink jets were really good, they thought the traditional prints were still better. I’ve asked professional photographers, that have high-end printers.

Ken Rockwell, that runs a popular photo website stated that inkjets are dead. I haven’t tried all of these features but wanted to give a quick review of its print quality.Īs a photographer, I’ve heard mixed and conflicting information about ink jet printers.

It also works well for everyday needs and between the built-in scanner, duplexer, auto-sheet feeder and fax it has more than its share of bells and whistles. Reviews indicate that its has great photo printing, which as a photographer, was one of my key features. It’s last year’s model and basically seems identical to this year’s Artisan 835. The Artisan 810 is a multi-function printer that sits at the top of the consumer line. After a bit of research, I decided to upgrade. My current 4-year-old HP printer was starting to get a little flaky, burned though lots of ink and didn’t have the wireless printing feature that I wanted. An Epson printer that I was eyeing last year was sitting on the clearance rack and had dropped in price to a very tempting level. Last week, I was at Office Depot to pickup some supplies when I noticed a great deal.

Epson printer artisan 810