Epson Stylus Pro 7600 and Epson Stylus Pro 9600

Also last summer we found a print shop that had both a 7600 and also a 9600. We thus wrote up a report on these for the FLAAR Premium Report Series on Wide Format Printers for Signs.

So check out those reports. In the meantime, here is a note by an actual user of the Epson 7600 in Switzerland. He got tired of the poor gamut of his Epson 5500 and tried out the 7600. Here are his comments verbatim.

Hi Nicholas

Finally I have got a 7600 printer. I am running it with a ( RIP) on a Windows machine. The results are great. I really don't miss the (Epson) 5500!

Regards, Markus

With the Quality of Epson today you don’t need an Iris to do Giclee

The picture here shows us in front of an Iris 3047 giclée printer . One print is from the Iris; one from an HP 5000ps, and one from the Epson 7600. Frankly for under $3,000, the Epson 7600 sure looks professional. Of course if you need an Iris, then you need the $45,000 Ixia. But to start your career in giclée printing, the Epson sounds like a more economical entry level selection.

When the Epson 7600 first came out it was the only 24” color printer of its kind. But this year Canon came out with a 24” printer with pigmented inks and HP has produced a 24” with 80-year dye inks, so there are alternatives for commercial photography, fine art photography and especially graphic design.

The university lab did a comparison of print image quality this summer, and we were surprised at how differently the Epson and the HP 130 handled text, especially fine details at 2 pts through 6 point lettering. This is, to our knowledge, one of the first objective benchmarking studies documented with a QEA image quality analysis system (basically a macro camera that looks at the actual dot quality). This is what a university lab does a good job on.

Of course today the Epson 4000 would be another option during 2004. With 22 inkjet printers in our two labs, we tend to use the printers that produce the color gamut and freedom from gloss differential defects.

Today newer models are available, such as the Epson 4800. In wider format the Epson 11880 is just announced.

For information on the Epson 4000 and Epson 7600, contact Parrot Digigraphic, imaging@parrotcolor.com. fax (978) 670-7744, Tel (978) 670-7766. They can also provide help on Creo scanners.

Epson 7600 arrives at the FLAAR test lab at BGSU
The comprehensive report is now available, one of the few independent reports in this depth yet written on any Epson printer