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bilhook

Member

Registered: 2024-02-13

Posts: 78  

printer photo image file format

A well to do friend from Florida just gave me a hardly used Epson XP-900 A3 inkjet printer that was his late uncles.
I have numerous digital cameras, compact that just shoot JPG, Lumix that can shoot RAW, and Nikon that can shoot TIFF.
I use Windows & Linux & Android.
Most of the time I shoot JPG, convert to PNG, process (i.e, contrast, brightness, levels etc.,) save as PNG and usually send with a smartphone to a HP wireless printer.
This XP-900 got a sdcard slot so I put a PNG on it.
Does not recognise PNG, I guess it recognise JPG but not happy with that.
So, using ffmpeg, I tried TIFF, & TIF.
Nope.
BMP.
Whew.
So I will do BMP, no problem.
I think maybe all printers convert to BMP anyway.
Maybe it will do netpbm, I doubt it.
GIF, questions.
In the 90's when I made my first website the on mouse over change colour images were BMP.
Deprecated. Wankers.

swanson

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 104  

Re: printer photo image file format

Interesting! I used to run the computers in an advertising firm and file formats and printers (and color correction) was an everyday chore.

I found this in the manual for the 900; "JPEG with the Exif Version 2.3 standard taken by digital cameras DCF*1 version 1.0
or 2.0*2 compliant"

Maybe you could convert the pics to this format? (BMP seems stone age )

bilhook

Member

Registered: 2024-02-13

Posts: 78  

Re: printer photo image file format

Something I like about this printer is it's regular CMYK inks, the later model (XP-970,) is more inks, i.e., light cyan, light magenta etc.
Regular CMYK is outstanding, I mean the droplets on the white paper are so miniscule, our eyes and brain are happy viewing the print on a wall, not under a 40X microscope.
Up to A4 I print colour laser (doesn't fade like inkjet,) onto supergloss paper, anything bigger I email to a photo lab for printing on photographic paper.
UV protection, there are choices.
People who think laser photo printing is crap, are buffoons.
Today in the mail I got a full set of cartidges for 8 bucks delivered, and 20/25 sheets of paper for 10 bucks delivered.
So I've just printed an old perfect exposure photograph of my cat, and the result is absolutely perfect.

You can't modify a JPEG without quality loss.
You convert the JPEG to a TIFF|PNG, this conversion there is no quality loss.
Then you optimise/enhance incurring no quality loss.
Then you send to the printer.
It is my understanding that all printers, so your latest laser from HP, and your latest inkjet from Epson, convert to BMP.
The situation is ridiculous, NASA are working with TIFF, which was superceded by PNG, which is also redundant obsolete.
A lot of software cross platform will not work with TIFF, generally JPEG and PNG is contemporary, and I guess GIF.
I don't have a problem with any of this nonsense, I use ffmpeg to modify contrast|brightness with luma burn, which is superior to anything, and can only be found in ffmpeg, and I prefer YUV 2 colour colour model, to RGB.
NASA (e.g., Mars rover,) depends on ffmpeg.

aluma

Member

Registered: 2022-10-26

Posts: 646  

Re: printer photo image file format

Something I like about this printer is it's regular CMYK inks,

Yes, this is acceptable for home models.
Additional cartridges are needed for accurate color reproduction.

Png is needed by web designers for a transparent background.
If the question is only about photography, then there is no need to recode anything. You either use jpeg from the camera, or get jpeg after processing the RAW file. You send them off for printing without losing anything.

Tell the gurus at dpreview that they have been using the wrong format all their lives.