The TurboPrint Thread

[Hyperspeed]

I'll start this thread with a little help for Epson Stylus users like
myself:
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I have an Epson Stylus 740 (used to have a Stylus 600) and I use
TurboPrint 7.50.

Ever since TurboPrint 5 I've been trying to fine tune the settings and
through comparisons with PC printouts and the RGB values onscreen I
believe I have found the perfect Epson settings!

The holy grail has come to me, Eureka!

It's taken boxes of paper, dozens of cartridges and the only
difference is a few slider clicks. But I believe they are the happy
medium, the lowest common denominator to get good printouts of text,
photographs, organic and pastel shades and vibrant colours.

I'll explain each `TAB' setting in the TurboPrefs and why I have
selected each configuration.

1)Printer - Put your printer model in the box, best to have the EXACT
match and use the latest driver if it says "New" next to it. Put your
port as Turbo-Par for the highest possible speed.

2)Config - You decide what you want for text, but make sure your GFX
print mode is UNI directional. Bi-directional is very grainy in
comparison (and not much faster). Disable 1440-dpi mode (it has
absolutely no effect, Irseesoft need to look into this just like the
non-functional PPC tickbox). Put your density as #3 - 720x720dpi as
1440dpi doubles your print time and does not actually put the Epsons
into microweave mode. Keep it on 720-dpi paper and at Turbo-Quality,
other papers will automatically alter your colour settings so I'd
stick with just one for consistency (the official Epson driver for PC
is a lot better at altering this than TurboPrint), Turbo-Quality will
take more memory but will print the top of your pictures crisp and not
dithered. It may also have less banding on the 740.

3)Gfx-Size - Keep it on Bounded, measurements in mm, width 211, Height
297.

4)GFX - Diffuse, Super-Diffusion, 16m colours, pure black, smoothing
off (only useful for printing GFX dumps from your web browser),
TrueMatch on, Brightness 100, Contrast 110, Gamma 120, Colour 100. You
need Gamma on 120 due to TurboPrint's gritty black dithering method,
and contrast to make things bold. Go into SETTINGS - Truematch auto
80% (leave this be), leave the colour->greyscale conversion alone but
here's the key:

Yellow = 110%
Magenta = 100%
Cyan = 100%
Black = 100%

To recap, the main changes are reducing the yellow content by
increasing the colour correction 10%, increasing the Gamma to
compensate for the TurboPrint dither method and richer official inks
and increasing contrast to make blacks deep.

Give these settings a try, I have spent a lot of time and money with
trial and error and consider them the best settings for TurboPrint and
Epson Stylus printers.

If you have other tips or suggestions, fire away!

:-)

[mendark]

Wow :-o Thank you for your information! I wished that i knew this before I got rid of my Epson 460. Printed pretty good, although the color match wansn't convincing enough (but that just me, student on an artschool 8-)).
Dunno, what got into that Espon. The printerhead couldn't find it's home position so it slammed a lotta times against the ends. Due financial reasons, i know have a Canon. And Turbo print supports it :love:
I love turboprint, i could'nt not believe anything like this was possible on the PC. And it still ain't. Ok, photoshop does the trick but not, waaaay not as good as Turboprint. Money well spent, not a moment i regreted (but that counts for my Amiga use in general! i still hate to work with PCs! ! :-P)

[Hyperspeed]

Well after a lot of trial and error and goodness knows how much ink, I
seem to have gotten the yellow down and the gamma increase certainly
alleviated (to an extent) the strong black dots that appear in
TurboPrint's dithering method.

The colour and contrast look better now than the default settings on
Windows '98/Windows Explorer/Epson 740 driver.

However, TurboPrint still is not putting the Epson Stylus 740 into
microweave mode despite what it says in the manual. The difference
between 720x720 annd 720x1440 is like the difference between 360x360
and 720x720, it really is that big an improvement.

I can tell that even though it takes double the time, it is not
activating the 720x1440 dpi mode because of the tone the Piezo
electric heads make.

On the PC I tried it and it sounded a lot different - the results
were spectacular, the dither pattern was barely noticeable and the
consistency was immaculate.

:-)

Any other Amiga users who have TurboPrint and an Epson? Maybe I'm
missing something (I certainly don't know how to get Graphics
Publisher to produce Postscript printouts).

Also let's hear from Canon, HP, Citizen and even laser users!

:-D

[Hyperspeed]

Sometimes my Epson will run out of a colour but won't indicate the
cartridge needs replacing. Since there is no way to replace an ink
cartridge without the indicator flashing (it'll default to cleaning
 instead of replacement mode) then the only way to get a new cart in
is to deftly flick open the lid whilst it's busy having a wash!

:-D :-D :-D

I used to have a Canon BJC600 using the CanonStudio PD driver. I seem
to remember it being a big improvement over the Workbench drivers but
TurboPrint was a Godsend.

Just out of curiosity, is anyone using TurboPrint now on a laser such
as the HP Color LaserJet 5000?

It would be nice to know if anyone is using an integrated
scanner/printer or a 5700 DPI printer with Amiga.

:-)

[Wol]

Hey Hyperspeed,

Tried your settings with my Epsom 670, @ 720x720
good colour balance and good speed(A4 fulsize pic)
approx 20 min, but slight banding.
Turned smooting on and got perfection, but printout
took almost 3 hours ! (A4 fullsize pic).

Wol

[Holley]

Hi WOL, you're just down the road from me and Ryu (Skittyhorpe).

Aaanyway, anyone know how TurboPrint works in regard to B&W laser memory use?  I use a HP LJ4000 at work with 32Mb, and it can run out of memory on an A4 side when printing from Windows.

[Hyperspeed]

Oh, hello Wol!

I'm glad someone's responded to my huge post on the settings. I
definately think a single click on the yellow and 2x on the gamma/1x
on the contrast is what should be default.

Even Epson's PC driver has too much yellow but has far greater overall
colour accuracy.

I do get a slight banding from my Epson Stylus Color 740 but it
reduced when I put the gamma up. If you put it down to Normal print
quality it might also alter the printhead's method of printing and may
nudge the lines over. Failing that get EscUtil off Aminet... an Epson
head-alignment and cleaning tool.

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/text/print/ESCUtil.lha

:-D

Holley: I think you might cure this with TurboSpool? If not you might
want to investigate how to create a PostScript file and see if this
can be sent in bands to the printer's buffer. TurboPrint says a 24-Bit
postscript A4 full-page at 720dpi would be 64mb or thereabout!

:-o

You could also try putting a bigger memory module in the machine.

[SilvrDrgn]

Hey, HyperSpeed!

Thanks for the settings!  I have an Epson Stylus Color 660.  I will have
to give it a try sometime with my TurboPrint settings.  I believe I have
version 7.3x (I think?).

[Holley]

Thanks Hyper, I'm doing 8 bit (B&W ;-)) at 1200dpi, hence the 32 Meg should be just right ... I suspect the Windows driver is doing something inefficient to cause the problems, think I'll have to find a way to test Turboprint at work before shelling out on my own laser (moot point as I havn't even got the next gen machine to run Turboprint on yet! My old A3000 would croak at the prospect of 1200 dpi).