Now I finally managed to print the same page - some black text, and one photo - on the Epson Stylus with a Windows machine, and also from my Linux system. Under Windows, I just chose the "Automatic" quality setting, under Linux I set the gimp-print IJS to "720sw" which is 720 dpi x 720 dpi standard quality. There are clear differences:
- The photo produced by gimp-print is clearly sharper than the one from Windows. Why is that so? I checked what the Windows "Auto" mode had actually done: relatively cheap and quick 360 dpi - not really the right thing for photos. You can set it in the print dialogue under "Advanced"... - The colours produced by the Windows system are quite good, the ones from the gimp-print are not. To be specific, gimp-print put too much ink onto the paper, and the photo got much too dark, and a little bit too red. This can be corrected by making some manual adjustments to CMYK, gamma, brightness, contrast, and density settings. Bottom line: The gimp-print driver has a high maturity level for Epson ink printers, but it requires some tweaking to produce the right colours. The Windows driver for Epson produces good colours, but if you want good quality photo printouts, you have to go to the "Advanced" settings in the print dialogue. Print speed was not significantly different, taking into account the different resolutions used on both systems. Generally, the "pages per minute" data supplied by Epson only apply for very cheap parameter settings. Printing times for highest quality photos can be about ten times longer than the slowest speed given in the product data sheet. For example, the C61 data sheet says "Photo A4 - 168 sec per photo", and they have even pictured the photo on the data sheet. The computer system driving the printer is also specified. The only thing they do not mention is at what resolution and quality setting they printed the test page... Certainly not highest quality... So far for the difference between sales brochures and the truth. Go to the shop, and they will show you print samples printed on the highest quality settings, but no one will be able to tell you how long it takes to print these. Cheers, Helmut. +----------------+ | Helmut Walle | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +----------------+
