Anyone printing on roll media/printers?

Hardware
1

I’d like to hear about others’ experience with printing on rolls. It’s not fundamentally to printing on sheets, but the choices/availability of hardware obviously narrow the field:

  • Which printers are you using?
  • Which drivers are you using?
  • Which application/s are you printing from?
  • Have you managed to keep it all open source or is there some proprietary software which fills the gaps?
  • What does your colour management workflow look like?
2

Hello,

I’m using an Epson SureColor P7000, 61cm or 24’’ wide.
Epson made a .deb file for that printer so I can use it with Linux.

About a year ago I bought an second-hand iMac, just for printing.
Sorry to say - I’m an open source adapt - but printing from the Mac gives me more control.

For printing I use the Mac app Preview for PDFs and Epson Print Control for JPGs and TIFFs. With the last app I can specify the image dimensions in millimeters and the print comes out exactly that size. On Linux I didn’t always succeed with that, often a couple of mm off. Exact and centered margins are another problem on Linux, and to be honest sometimes also on the Mac. :rage:

In the printer driver I can choose between lots of paper profiles, so that’s my colour management workflow (yes, I’m lazy, but it comes out fine and that’s what counts :upside_down_face:).

I often use Ilford Studio Matt 235gr to print artwork on. I also have Ilford Studio Satin 200gr among other papers, but I don’t like that that much (it was a client who asked for that paper). Next to that I also use a normal paper 120gr to make affiches/posters and even artwork.

The longest print I made till now was 61x420cm, for an expo.

Final remark. I used to print to the P7000 from Linux with open source apps for about 4 years. But now I think that the purchase of the Mac was a very good idea, my printing workflow has completely shifted to the iMac.

Regards, Paul.

1 Like
3

Hi Paul, thanks for the info!

Do you remember where the .deb file came from? I just had a look on Epson’s website and can only see drivers for Windows and Mac.
That’s definitely a problem with dimensions being off - I’m asked to make prints to fit pre-existing mounts fairly often.
And is it possible with the Linux driver from Epson to use your own icc printing profiles?

Thanks for your input :slight_smile:

4

That deb is somewhat hidden, but you can donwload it here.

Yes, just embed them in the file and tell the printer driver to turn off color management.