On Mon, 2005-07-04 at 13:29 +0100, Bob Dove wrote:
Hi Guys,
I used a 'live cd' version of Suse 9.3, which loaded my Epsom R300 semi OK and printed a nice test sheet. This edition of Suse includes Open Office 2.0 (which I use in win as well) that prints as well in Linux as in win. I couldn't access images from my Windoze system however, Suse shows me the drives but I can't access them or write to them. Is this 'cos the are formatted NTFS? Do I need a Linux formatted drive to write to/load from? Mandrake Move however needed a special printer driver driver which Epson don't have yet.
SuSE should at the very least be able to read from NTFS formatted drives, permissions on the Windows side are ignored but it sounds like there was a permissions issue the Linux end. I would suggest loading up again opening a console su to root and navigate your way to the mount point for the Windows drive. An ls -l at this pojnt should reveal permissions for the drives. Post the output from ls -l here if you need more guidance.
Re quality InkJet Vs. minilab.
[snip]
For light 6"x4" photo work I tend to use a small and inexpensive Dye-Sub printer. These I find produce better and more consistent results than an Inkjet. However Dye-Sub technology gets expensive once you scale up to A4 size (in terms of equipment and running costs). I also prefer the fixed costs of running a Dye-Sub (paper and "ink" is in a refill pack and the same amount of ink roll is used regardless of content)
Another disadvantage of inkjet printers is that they have to dither to produce tones between each of the pigments. This (particularly I find on light colours like sky) causes a dotting effect. 6 colour printers suffer less but Dye-Sub works as a full saturation printer and doesn't dither. To my amateur eye I'd say my Dye-Sub produces output that is "almost" as good as a high street Lab print. The prints seem almost as robust as proper photo prints.
I'd say that Dye-Sub is about as close as you are going to get to lab results with Consumer Grade equipment.
But that said, no matter what I do with my little Pentax Optio S digital camera I can't get anything like the photos I get when I use my Canon SLR....I guess it's an unfair test as really even a low end SLR should be compared to a prosumer Digital body but in terms of price the Pentax and the Canon cost about the same.