Caring for Your Printer

With greeting card season on the way, you will no doubt use lots of paper in your printer. We have tips and accessories to help keep your printer feeding reliably, especially if you use 2-sided papers.

Check out the article here

ICC profiles section updated

New and updated profiles are available here. More profiles are in production for the Epson R2400 and R1800.

Profiles for recommended greeting card printers are in the works with Epson R300 / R320 now available.

If you are new to profiles in general, we have an excellent series of tutorials here.

Canon ChromaLife Discussed

Canon's new ChromaLife ink system is now shipping in a few new printer platforms. The most notable thing about this system is the 30 year lightfastness claim. Add to that a 100 year album life claim, 10 year gas fastness claim, and improved resistance to heat and humidity, and you have a ready made fight with Epson's UltraChrome system. There is a catch - ChromaLife is dye based ink. Until now, dye inks always faded faster than pigments. The conclusion must be that Canon has found a new and better way to make inkjet dyes.

To start, this is not the same kind of setup HP offers. Canon does not tie their claims to swellable polymer media like HP. Canon does mention specific papers when making the fade and gas resistance claims, but none of the media are swellable polymer. We are left to read into the information offered that it is the ink, and not so much the paper, that is the magic of ChromaLife.

Bullet Points About ChromaLife

* 30 years lightfastness when displayed under glass away from sunlight or intense lighting

* 100 years fade resistance in enviromnentally controlled dark storage (closed photo album)

* Improved resistance to humidity and heat

At first blush, we are skeptical of their claims because of our long and ongoing experience with dye ink fade on basically any inkjet media. However, it is not impossible that Canon has made big breakthroughs in dye technology. And they have the power of Henry Wilhelm's rating and name behind this system. So it may indeed be the next big thing in inkjet printing. Upcoming independent tests of the ChromaLife setup will help answer our questions in early 2006.

For now, we still are firmly on the side of pigment inks if you require long lasting inkjet prints. The technology is proven and readily available in the form of Epson UltraChrome or 3rd party systems. But even if ChromaLife offered only half of the claimed benefit, it would be a tremendous improvement, and a huge step forward for the industry.

Read more on the ChromeLife system here

New Epson Printers

Epson announced two new 6-color dye based printers including an upgrade to the excellent R320. They will offer a nice option for printing greeting cards, business printing, and work where long lasting prints are not important.

Read more about them here

Best Printers for Greeting Cards

We have posted a revised list of inkjet printers recommended for printing cards. With so many printer choices available today, its no wonder we get asked to recommend machines daily. It is all too possible to get a printer that does one job great, but fails in other tasks. Hopefully, you will find this information helpful. We have each of the reviewed printers in-house, and use them for greeting card production.

You can read the review here. (Link points to updated listing of printers)

Print Your Own Calendars

Its time again for printing calendars. Red River is now shipping our 2006 calendar template pack for Photoshop. Its a convenient way to set up and print calendars using 8.5x11 sheets of paper. We have three options to get you started:

50lb. Premium Matte Pack - includes the template CD and 50 sheets of 50lb. Premium Matte 2-sided. Provides enough paper for three calendars. $16.99

45lb. Zeppelin SemiGloss Pack - includes the template CD and 50 sheets of 45lb. Zeppelin SemiGloss 2-sided. Also enough for three calendars. $23.99

CD Template Only - Just the CD with Photoshop calendar files for 2006. $7.99

Check out more details here