Hello comrades,
I am in the market for a good photo printer. I think I’ve been really close to hitting the buy button a few times on an Epson SC-P700 but the linux story is… um… nonexistent really. Does anyone have a recommendation for a photo printer that works well in Linux and has Airprint support ? Honestly speaking probably the main use in terms of volume will be printing from an ipad but it seems so wrong for Linux support to not be a thing!
Thanks in advance —
Andy
Hey Andy, welcome to the forum. I have the Epson SC-P600, and I really like it, though I might be a but biased because I worked at Epson for 5 years.
If you want Linux compatibility, Epson does offter Linux drivers for a few printers: EPSON Download Center
Be advised that AirPrint is a really stripped out driver and won’t give you all the photo options you need.
Hello, TurboPrint provides a printer driver for Linux for named printer. It’s not free (nor expensive) but you can try it for 30 days.
Funny, I looked at another Epson site and they said “no Linux driver available for the SC-P700”…
I can’t speak towards the Ipad experience, but Linux support for photo printers is possible by third party drivers by TurboPrint.
Since I’m cheap, I print to my Canon Pro-1000 through Canon’s printing software running on a Windows10 VirtualBox Machine. I use a shared folder to export my print files to that I can reach through Windows on the VM. The big limitation on the Canon print software (free) is that it only handles jpgs. With zero compression, the results are fine. A work around if you want to print tiff files is to use the Canon plugin in combination with Photoshop on the Windows install.
Thanks all for the information. What a funny situation, to have to pay to install aftermarket proprietary software for a printer whose manufacturer certainly has already made similar software — but here we are I guess! I will give the SC-P700 a go with turboprint, good to hear that a workable solution exists. Thanks very much for the pointers!
If you want to try, you can extract a .PPD file from the Mac installer for Epson, and CUPS should be able to load this PPD.
Call that the Linux advantage! 
Just a note though. I own an Epson from the SureColor series and a Linux driver is available indeed, but they are unsupported, that means not official. So you can’t call Epson in case of printing problems. That’s not a big deal.
More important is that the Linux driver for my printer lacks some functionality compared to the Windows driver, for example the Draft mode for print quality, that is Windows-only. Worse (and in some cases a show stopper) is that I can’t tell the Linux driver to not use color management, which is important when you embed a printer/paper profile in your photo. In these cases I’m forced to print via Windows (I don’t have a Mac).
On the plus side: in Windows I’m unable to tell my printer not to cut roll paper automatically - it always cuts, even with the option Do Not Cut selected, in the printer and in the driver! The Linux driver works as expected here.
I can’t use TurboPrint because they don’t support my printer and don’t have plans to do so in the future, they told me.
Is there a reason the Gutenprint driver doesn’t get mentioned here?
Gimp:Gutenprint@SCP600 seems to work rather well for me.
Left to itself, an iMac on the network uses Gutenprint to print to this printer, also.
DarkTable seems a little unforthcoming about how it drives the printer. Rather well in some instances.
darktable uses CUPS or TurboPrint.
How are the SureColor printers on running costs? I am also in the market for a printer and the ET-8550 caught my attention too, due to the tank design, its ink is really cheap. If the photo quality isn’t that inferior, It could also be a good solution.
The lab I get good prints from charges 15-20€ for a 30x45 Hahnemühle Photo Rag print, it would be great to have the option of printing at home for less money, even if at reduced print quality. I’m able to trade that for convenience and over time costs.
After some searching, it seems that the larger P900 has larger cartridges and the ink ends up to be cheaper overall. This is of course disregarding everything else that consumes ink on the printer like the cleanings and so on.
For people that print a lot, it seems advantageous to splurge the extra money which will be quickly regained with ink costs.
For Info, Epson provides the app Epson Ink Cost Calculator for wide-format printers for photographic or office use. The P600 and P800 are listed there, as well as other wider-format printers. In my experience these estimates are rather correct (and are in line with the calculated ink costs in the links above).
Coming back to a very old topic. I ordered roughly 70 images from my preferred print service for roughly 70 Euro at 10x15 and 20x30 sizes in various paper qualities. While I think this is reasonable I was wondering if printing at home had become more practical in the last years. All my home printing activities failed of various reasons: hardware defects, unavailable supplies, image quality terrible, … I must admit that I never spend much money at it. Now I simply have a monochrome laser printer from HP with a storage tank for the powder.
Can someone advise if home printing is feasible if you print 2 times a year 50-100 photos of the above mentioned sizes. Ideally explain your workflow.
My 0.017 Euro:
You spent roughly 1 Euro/print. I do not know what types of paper you use, but that is at or lower than sheet cost for a lot of paper. That doesn’t include ink or sunk costs.
If you were to get a printer that handled roll paper that drops the paper cost significantly, but I still think the total outlay to print at home (at least on a higher end printer) would mean the time to recoup your investment is pretty long.
I own, and love, a fancy printer (Canon Pro 200). As well as a number of non-fancy printers (Epson XP8500, Canon SELPHY, INSTAX).
But if you’re happy with the print quality you get from the shop, and the paper choices they give you, and don’t need prints right away; then a print shop is simpler and cheaper.
Printers don’t like to sit idle for long times. After sitting idle for too long, they will need at least a cleaning cycles (which wastes ink), or they clog and need to be unstuck. At least that’s what “they” say. My inkjets never needed more than a cleaning cycle, even after months of disuse. The higher end pigment printers may be more capricious.
For up to A4, a simple six-ink desktop printer such as an Epson XP8700 is not that expensive, and prints a similar quality to a normal lab print. Inks don’t last forever, but they’re relatively affordable (€100 for a full set), and the printer itself is affordable, too. Ink and paper probably won’t be much cheaper than the lab, but you get to print at home and experiment with stuff. I’ve used my XP8500 for many years, and the photos come out great. They last many years, too. Perhaps not “archival” quality, but easily good enough for a few decades.
For A3 prints, my Pro200 produces better prints than a lab, at full archival quality. But neither the printer nor the inks are cheap in any way. So that’s probably not the right route for you. It’s one of the least expensive top-quality printers, though, if you don’t print large volumes and don’t require pigment inks.
The other option is a photo-capable inktank printer, the Epson ET-8550. Here the ink will last so long, so as to no longer play a large role in your price per picture. It probably produces fractionally nicer black and white prints than my Pro200 (more black/grey inks), and maybe slightly lesser color prints (fewer color inks). But probably easily on the same level as a decent lab. But the printer itself is expensive.
Keep in mind, good photo paper is expensive, too. You’d be hard pressed to save significant money over the lab prints just on paper cost alone. Factor in inks and the printer, and home printing just doesn’t make much sense financially.
But you do get to play with various paper stocks, you get to experiment with layouts and things, and you get to do it at home, without waiting for shipping. For me, it’s a thing I enjoy doing, and that makes it worth the cost.
So much this!
I also have a Pro200 and can vouch for this. The only problem is the expensive ink but besides that it’s a wonderful printer. Quality is better than everything else I’ve had from a lab except some fancy 15€ hahnemuhle photo rag prints. Canon’s paper is priced okay especially due to the fact that you don’t need to calibrate it as long as you use the printer’s built in profiles. So the money of a calibrator can be used on a set of inks.
Exactly. The immediacy is great and sometimes if the opportunity arises you can spontaneously print some photos for someone on the spot so they can take with them.
What ever you do, don’t get addicted to these prints: DSI Digital Silver Prints® Silver Gelatin Directly from your Digital File They look really, really nice, I have a few 8x10s from them.
I guess that is 8 x 10 inches?