Hello all!

Well, my dye-sub printer just bit the dust. I need to replace the printer because fixing it at this point does not make sense. So I am faced with the question of whether to stay with dye-subs or go ink-jet. My budget is $500-600.00. Any ideas on where to start?

Need more info:

How much printing do you do? What the largest size requirement? Do you sell these prints, if so what kind of longevity requirements do you have?

Give me answers and I'll give you some recomendations!

Thanks John,

The answers to your questions are:

Not as much as I'd like--none since my dye sub starting acting up quite a while ago; 11X14 in house should be sufficient for now; Yes I'd like to be selling a lot more prints so longevity is certainly an issue.

I've heard good things about the Epson R1800..any comments?

There are many good printers available. If you're looking to sell prints than you can narrow your range down to pigment pritners only. Not that in some cases dye printers can't deliver decent longevity it just that to do so limits what you can print on and the over all versitility of you investment.

You mention the Epson R1800 and by itself not a bad printer. The issues I have with it is the ink set configuration. It is pigment but by adding the red and blue ink, you loose the light Cyan and light Magenta. Not a fair trade off as it will not produce good b/w output and lacks color fidelity. You'll also handcuff yourself with third party software for the printer because it doesn't use what we call the profesional ink set.

Epson does make consumer models that use the profesional ink set configuration. Today, that printer would be the R2400. It's going to cost a little more but well worth it in the end.

HP has a new pigment offering called the Photo Smart 9180. I think Canon has a new one as well but I'm not sure of the model number.

Thanks John...I'm clueless here so I really appreciate the feedback. Stan had questioned the inks too...guess I'll have to come up with an extra $300.00 for the R2400.