The p-Code Machine

In the past, I’ve always avoided printing my own photo’s. I’ve always considered printers temperamental devices not really worth my time. Thus I’ve always sent my photo to be printed at online labs like foto.com. I’ve always been reasonably satisfied with their quality. And their prices are almost unbeatable, at 50 eurocents for a 30cm by 20cm print. There was only one downside to it, I had to work with batches. Otherwise shipping charges would drive up the price point per photo.

So, about a week ago, I said what the heck, let’s try some DIY photo printing. I currently own a HP Deskjet 5940 printer. It’s not a purpose built photo printer, it does however take a photo cartridge. So I picked up a random set a photo paper, and went to town. The beauty about HP printers are their Linux drivers (hplip), which almost fully support almost every Deskjet HP has ever made. Other printer manufacturers aren’t even in the same ballpark when it comes to supporting Linux. The hplib drivers for example fully support full bleed printing on my specific model.

Even though my printer did support full bleed printing, I expected to go through hell to get a Linux application to actually do full bleed. Boy was I wrong! When printing photos from F-Spot, an extra tab appears. There you can select “Full Page (no margin)” printing. Another option to consider would be “Fill”, as I’ve always cropped my photos to a 3:2 ratio, as this is the standard ratio for photos. The “Fill” option stretches your photo to accommodate the current paper size, which in Europe is A4, which is not exactly 30cm by 20cm. The stretch is hard to notice, and saves you from having to cut away the white borders. Then make sure you select “1200dpi, Photo, Full Bleed” mode on the “Advanced” tab. At last just hit “Print”, and sit back, wait for the print to come out.

When comparing my home prints with the online lab prints (from foto.com), I noticed the home prints produced more vibrant colors, but suffered from some subtle dithering. The lab prints have no visible dithering what so ever.

Satisfied with the quality my printer could produce (using genuine HP Vivera ink), I set out the try different kinds of paper:

• Office Centre Photo Supreme Satin (also sold as Staples brand paper)
• HP Premium Plus Photo Paper, Satin-matt
• HP Premium Photo Paper, Glossy

All papers produced excellent quality prints. Personally I’m partial to a satin finish, and HP’s satin-matt finish is very coarse, I wouldn’t recommend it. Office Centre’s satin finish is excellent though.

But there’s always a catch. It’s called print permanence. HP’s Premium Plus paper (combined with HP Vivera inks) is rated to last a hunderd years by Wilhelm Imaging Research. Neither HP’s own plain Premium papers, nor Office Centre’s papers assert such a claim.

Funnily enough Wilhelm actually did a study on Staples Photo Supreme papers combined with Staples refill ink, which only lasted the equivalent of a couple of years in their tests. Wilhelm tests encompass both light and air based aging. Now which of these would be the proverbial red herring? Is the paper just fine, with the ink spoiling the results. Or are both substandard products?

After doing some research, light (UV) based aging mostly depends on the ink, and air (ozone) based aging mostly depends on the paper. Original inks from HP, and competitors like Epson, have seen substantial development regards to uv resistance, and should last at least a couple of decades, not withstanding excessive abuse.

HP and and other manufacturers produce paper to accompany their inks. But only their best papers get the hunderd years mark from Wilhelm. As far as I can tell paper can be divided into two categories:

• Porous papers easily absorp the dye, and allow the water in the ink to quickly evaporate. Producing the instant-dry effect. However this also allows pollutants such as ozone to easily access the dye in the paper, leaving the dye vulnerably to fading.
• Swellable papers have a coating, which slowly absorbs the dye. This coating then swells to two or three times it’s initial thickness. Take quite a while to fully dry (up to a week), the coating finally returns to it’s normal thickness, fully encapsulating the dye. Protecting it from air based pollutants such as ozone. Keeping your dye safe.

That said, most papers are of the porous type, only a few are swellable, including HP’s Premium Plus line. Now I’m just bummed HP makes a crappy satin finish. My quest for a swellable paper with a good satin finish continues…