Printing from XDP X9 - resolution issues

[Albacore]

Very little need to print in A2 but when I had to was given one by work, for the use of, for a few months. Found I had to use PS for soft proofing as reds were a bit in your face, maybe amplifying that slightly, when using xara. Found the options were easy to config, found that paper type was so important to set. Also you can turn off High Speed print and go unidirectional printing which is slower and is supposed to give higher quality printing, don't know if it does. Think I used 1440 dpi for the poster I was doing and it had large bitmap of 2 faces with text and semi transparent background. Again think I tried Adobe RGB 1998 colour in PS and I think this is where Xara falls down as the profile is un-tagged when using the higher resolutions giving a blurry print. I am no expert here but I have wasted enough ink & paper to know that the only info that Xara reads is EXIF data and it needs to recognise but fails to tell what colour space the image was captured in therefore the soft blurry prints. I maybe wrong but I think you need to use PS and get PS to recognise the colour space for higher res. prints certainly that was my finding when using 1440 dpi and set up the config. for Soft Proofing.

[mwenz]

A color profile has nothing to do with imaging quality (softening, aliasing, etc.). Color profiles are only used for consistent color (or not if using multiple, mis-matched color profiles).

Especially when printing to printers using interpolated DPI, such as the high DPI Epson and Canon printers, it is important to understand there are sweet spots in the resolution of the images. This means, typically, using divisible DPIs of their non-interpolated (actual) print resolutions.

[gdavidson]

Thanks Shakirov - that's what I had tried in my original post but it can cause other problems with printers that have a clear ink cartridge - the clear coat can end up in odd places outside the photo area.

I think exporting to PDF may be the way to go. Interesting point, mwenz, about the resolution - I try to aim for 720dpi when printing to the Epson 3800 or 7880 as it appears to be their native resolution when printing at 1440/2880 dpi.

For straight image to paper jobs, Qimage is great for large prints and can apply sharpening to the image at the native printer resolution before it gets sent to the printer, giving the image that little edge. However, as soon as I want to add anything to the print such as text etc, I'm reaching for Xara. It's a shame Xara limits its own bitmap output to 600dpi and in print I think the print-time rescaling to 720 dpi is going to be non optimal.

I even tried Drawplus and PagePlus but both of them have a 64 Mpixel limit!

The next time I print, I'll go the PDF route to see how I get on.

Albacore, you raise an interesting question in my mind - from a colour accuracy stance, does Xara correctly handle colour profiles in photos... My printouts look spot on but they are in sRGB with the printer handling the paper colour profile. If I used Adobe RGB I wonder if things would go awry.

Printing... it can get so very complex!