Epson Stylus Pro on a (24-inch) Roll

Epson made its first splash in the large-format market in 1999 with the Stylus Pro 9000 inkjet printer, placing its battle-tested 1,440-dpi DX3 print head (the same one used in the Stylus Pro 5000) into a model that could print on a range of media as wide as 44 inches. The Stylus Pro 9000 made a dent in the market formerly owned by companies like Hewlett-Packard, ColorSpan, and Encad, but Epson needed a model with a narrower print width to fill out its line. The Stylus Pro 7000 and Stylus Pro 7500 fill that need. Both put the same DX3 print head to work in a smaller form factor, offering a maximum print width of 24 inches.

The differences between the configurations boil down to a single element — ink type. The $3,995 Stylus Pro 7000 uses the standard dye-based inks found in the Stylus Pro 9000 and Stylus Pro 5000; the $4,995 Stylus Pro 7500 uses the same pigment-based inks found in the $899 Stylus Photo 2000P. The pigment-based inks of the 7500 produce output that Epson claims will last for more than 200 years under normal lighting conditions. Otherwise the Stylus Pro 7000 and 7500 operate identically, from set-up through paper handling and performance.

Basics
The 7000/7500 weighs nearly 100 pounds — more than 120 pounds with the optional stand — but once you’ve gotten it out of the box and into position (a task that requires at least two people), getting it ready to print is simple.

As with Epson’s other printers, the 7000 and 7500 use six ink cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, light cyan, and light magenta), which are keyed so you can’t inadvertently put the wrong color in a slot. Unlike the Stylus Pro 9000, which has two spindles for handling roll paper, the 7000/7500 has a single spindle with a 2-inch core. The paper cutter comes pre-installed, and will last for approximately 2,000 prints. (Replacement is safe and quick.)

The base models come with USB and high-speed parallel connectors, and optional expansion cards can add Ethernet ($300) and FireWire ($200) interfaces. Print drivers for Mac and PC come in the box, and setting this unit up for printing is as easy as it is for Epson’s consumer models.

The print driver is the same that ships with all Epson inkjets: It’s fairly easy to use and has good options for customizing paper sizes (a necessity with large-format media). From the driver or from the LCD panel on the printer, you can monitor ink levels and clean the print heads.

Print Quality
The Stylus Pro 7000/7500 has a maximum print resolution of 1440 by 720 dpi, similar to the Stylus Pro 9000 and Stylus Pro 5000. Using the same DX3 print head as those other printers, the 7000/7500 produces photo-quality prints on a variety of media types. In many cases the output is indistinguishable from a conventionally printed photograph.

The Stylus Pro 7000’s dye-based inks have a wider color gamut than the pigment inks used in the Stylus Pro 7500 but, depending upon your needs, this is misleading. We’ve seen claims that the pigment inks produce a significantly duller image than the dye inks, but we were consistently able to fool viewers attempting to pick out the Stylus Pro 7000’s images when printing on comparable paper types. (The most common comment when comparing dye- and pigment-based prints was that the images “looked the same.”)

The biggest difference between the dye and pigment inks is not in the color reproduction, but in the black generation. The dye inks in the Stylus Pro 7000 produce much deeper and richer blacks than the inks of the Stylus Pro 7500, and low-key images will tend to “block up” in the shadows, producing a muddy-looking print on the Stylus Pro 7500 (when compared with the Stylus Pro 7000).

Metamerism
The other thing that the pigment inks bring into play is metamerism: An image that looks fine under a specific lighting condition (tungsten lamps, for instance) may show a marked color shift under other conditions (daylight viewing).

Metamerism mostly comes into play with images that have a lot of neutral tones, and it is the main reason why black-and-white images do not reproduce well on the Stylus Pro 7500 or Stylus Photo 2000P. We noticed the problem mostly with neutral prints: They would look fine under conventional tungsten lighting, but would have a greenish cast when viewed outdoors. We had some success controlling it for fluorescent lighting by playing with the Curves dialog box in Photoshop. (The Stock Solution has an excellent page on “Controlling Metamerism on the Stylus Photo 2000P.”)

The phenomenon is not as noticeable with brighter or more colorful images, and to this reviewer’s way of thinking, the archival quality that the pigment-based inks bring is more than enough pay off for the price of a little metamerism here and there. For some would-be buyers, however, the metamerism will no doubt be a showstopper. If in doubt, get your dealer to print a few sample images on the different printers so you can see the results yourself.

Epson claims that the metamerism found in the Stylus Pro 7500 and 2000P is related to the droplet size in those printers, and that metamerism has been eliminated entirely with the forthcoming successor to the Stylus Pro 5000 — the 5500. (Keep an eye on creativepro.com for our upcoming review.)

It is worth noting that the dye inks, while not offering the stability and light fastness of pigment inks, are not so unstable that they experience an immediate color shift. Depending upon the paper type, the surrounding light, and other environmental factors, prints made with the Stylus Pro 7000 can last without visible shifting for months, or even years. (For example, the Stylus Pro 7000 doesn’t display any of the problems Epson ran into — and has since remedied — with the Stylus Photo 1270.)

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