@danielmr wrote:
How do you feel about a 44" comparable Epson or HP ? I know the epson replacement heads are very expensive compared to Canon. You say there is a steep learning curve and I cant help but wonder if its related to photoshop or Mac OS interfacing with Canon drivers or software , even though you say it isnt. Why doesnt epson have a similar learning curve? I've also read that Epson tends to be more finicky and less friendly although it has great results when working right. Is the Canon software just more complicated? and less user friendly? And what is the big difference between the 6 color and 12 color Canon?
ive used (owned) both epson & hp professional photo printers...comparatively, canon is far ahead of the game. all my epson printers & hp printer became paper weights & money pits, never really worked right.
my experience with epson was that they did not have the best customer service/experience, hp being the worse. canon spent over two hours expertly helping me one day with the workflow getting me familiar with the printer & they sent a guy out on the delivery date to my house to make sure it got in ok & stuff.
both epson & hp were crippling to my studio workflow & the prints they produced subpar compared to what i was used to. i have an organic darkroom background & was also on the apple photography team as a master trainer for several years, worked with their engineers & have produced photographs for galleries in europe & usa.
the learning curve on canon was a little steep for me to precisely fine-tune the printing process but now that it is set up im getting 'what you see is what you get' prints from calibrated displays, proper paper profiles with soft-proofing prior to printing.
there is some software to load & learn which i would like to see made into one unified application... the bottom line though is that the pro-4000 produces very exceptional prints from RAW photo files, museum quality with almost no wasted product. we're printing large 44'x72' prints on different papers that are exquisite from nikon 800 RAW 7000x4000 pixels files & believe it or not we've printed client files from 'gasp' phone photograph files which came out outstanding at 44''x72"
not sure about the difference between the 6 or 12 color canons.
i would suggest taking a look at the different prints from the printers you mentioned, side by side, & see the difference. if youre in hollywood, california, 'freestyle' on sunset bl. has a great display of prints on different papers from different printers you can see, that was my turning point when they showed me the canon prints, the detail & richness theyre able to print. ask for eric joseph he's their pro there.
side note, the engineering/design of the canon pro-4000 is precise.
we're using, affinity photo, lightroom (stand alone) & photoshop 5.5 sent to canon software 'print studio pro.'
we're also using ipads/pencils with affinity photo app to edit photos then airdrop the files to the mac to be printed to canon printer.
calibration is from basiCColor software with squid3, custom .icc profiles for each monitor/display on apple macs.
during editing we're making sure the RAW files conform to the histograms, luminance - the blacks (shadows), grays, whites (highlights) tonal ranges & chrominance - hue & saturation so we're getting all the detail & styles we want from the images in the soft proofs before printing.
canvas prints are stretched/wrapped on frames (stretcher bars) with stainless steel staples before placing in frames.
