I made some prints for a client this week directly from Aperture 3.4.3 to an Epson 2200 and they are coming out too soft. In the Aperture print dialogs I can set the dpi to 72, 360 or custom. I tried via custom to set it to 1440 and the max it will let me set it is to 1000.
Have I done something wrong? The Epson can print up to 2880 dpi. Why can't I select up to that dpi in Aperture? I'm very dissatisfied.
I filed a bug report with Apple.
Have you tried the “Auto” setting? You may be trying to over think it.
The Print Resolution setting is for the resolution of the file sent to the printer driver. Anything more than 360 is overkill. The printer driver handles properly converting from the dots in the image to the drops of ink needed to reproduce it.
Check out this discussion of the topic.
You can also sharpen the image in the “Image Adjustments” brick of the print dialog.
Thomas
The link posted by Thomas above is a good one. But just to clarify, and it bears repeating because it’s something I see over and over again on photography discussion fora:
_Don’t confuse image resolution with printer resolution_
Image resolution is the number of pixels per inch. Printer resolution is the number of ink droplets that the printer will spray on the paper.
So “dpi” for images is really “ppi” (i.e. pixels per inch) whilst for a printer, “dpi” is really “ipi” (i.e. “ink per inch”). As an example you have an image you want to print at 300 pixels per inch, if you set the printer at 1440 dpi, it will use 1440 ink droplets to print 300 pixels. If you set the printer at 2880 dpi, those *same* 300 image pixels will use be printed using more ink.
Image dpi determines print size for a given number of megapixels, printer dpi does not.
Also, the law of diminishing returns applies and there’s probably no point in having a printer dpi above 2880 dpi unless you own shares in Epson, whatever image resolution you print at.
Russell
Thanks Thomas. This is very disturbing. I can see a very noticeable difference between Aperture and Adobe product printing. The Aperture prints using the same printer, paper, print paper profile and source file turn out much softer in a way that is very indicative of too low a resolution being sent to the printer. Very disappointing. The prints via Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop show far more detail. I’m telling you something is wrong with Aperture printing.
I tried the Auto setting and the results were no different. Maybe I need to delete and add the printer again and make sure Aperture is getting all the info it needs to know about the printer?
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
Walter, make sure you have updated the system printer drivers via Software updates and/or the OS X App Store … there have been several for Epson in the past year or so. I’m not sure how many of those updates may apply to your specific printer … but it couldn’t hurt to make sure you are up to date.
I routinely print from both Aperture and Lightroom and can see no discernible difference between the resulting prints as far as overall sharpness. Though I do prefer the canned print sharpening settings Lr offers over the manual print sharpening settings available in Aperture. Even then, I see no significant degradation in the resulting sharpness of the Aperture generated prints.
As far as resolution goes, I always leave the option unchecked in Lr and always use “Auto” in Aperture … which auto, is what you get in Lr when you leave the option unchecked. I think allowing the print driver to work this out on it’s own seems to just fine for most prints … however, if I need a print much larger than the original file … I will resize in Photoshop and apply any necessary sharpening there …
Thanks Butch. I have Nikon D800 raw files and even my 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 prints all look soft. They look like you tried to print a low-res “sized for web display” JPG someone sent you via email, though not that severe. The details simply aren’t there in the Aperture print. I do have the latest Epson drivers, latest OS X updates, and latest Aperture update.
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
How about to use other printer, is it possible that the print result would be great as expected?
Designs | http://digitekprinting.com/