Printing

Our test print was made using Epson Premium Lustre media with the Colour handling set to "Printer Manages Colour". The Epson media profiles are very accurate and require very little tweaking. There are plenty of options in Photoshop and other applications that have colour management facilities. To use custom profiles when using third party media. you should ensure that Photoshop Manages Colour, and then select the correct profile for the media in use.  The printer took 1 minute 30 seconds to produce our A4 test print, an A3+ print took 2min 15 seconds. A3+ Fine Art media using the front tray took 4min 32sec.

Pigment ink printers generally produce softer colours when compared to Dye ink prints. Our test print displays a good range of vibrant colours, clean yellows, greens and blues. The new UltraChrome HD inks are a marked improvement over previous generations of UltraChrome pigment inks and are delivering prints with stronger dynamic colours.  

The black cotton reel produced a good solid black whilst still holding all the detail in the thread. This is due to the high density black ink 2.86DMax when using Premium Glossy Paper.  The brown reel displays good colour saturation. The white cotton reel has kept all the subtle detail in each thread. The two red reels are also showing a good depth of colour as are the yellow and green reels.

The colour swatches display solid colours and the RGB gradients which transform from paper white to colour are smooth with no visible banding. The grey gradient is smooth from white to black and each of the 11 grey patches are clearly defined.

For text printing the SC-P800 produces clear type for both black text on white and white text on black. No bleeding of ink is noticeable, although when using poor quality media you may encounter some character edges bleeding.

The prints produced by the Epson SureColor SC-P800 are certainly some of the best quality prints that I have seen in 15 years of reviewing printers.

Black and White

B/W photography is still popular with photographers and collectors alike. Inkjet printers can introduce a slight colour cast, which can be especially noticeable in mid-grey tones, this is generally due to a poor profile. Epson use the three black inks to produce neutral greys; Photo Black or Matte Black, Light Black and Light, Light Black. Using this ink combination eliminates any colour cast. The B/W photograph on our test print displays a deep solid black and maintains excellent shadow and highlight detail, in short it has the feel of a quality darkroom print.

Fine Art Media Printing

The Epson SureColor SC-P800 caters for the photographer and artist who needs the highest quality fine art printing. The printer can handle thick card as well as a variety of media types. Loading Fine art media is not that intuitive, the front LCD panel gives fully illustrated instructions on how to load the media.

First depress the front straight paper tray to open it and open the rear media support (not the Auto sheet feeder). Now load the media using the front media tray, printing surface upwards, align the media with the guide line mark on the tray and then press the OK button. The media is drawn into the printer and is loaded into the Speciality Media tray. Close the front straight paper tray and pull out the bottom media catcher tray. Now you are ready to start printing. Using the printer properties panel you must ensure that you select the correct media tray, i.e. Front -  Fine Art. Although Epson refers to this as a straight paper path, in reality it isn't, the paper does go through a 45 degree angle when making an exit at the rear media support. However, for thick card (up to 1.5mm) there is a straight paper path, but as mentioned  this requires sufficient clearance at the rear of the printer.

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