TUNE DIGITALLY

Review by H. Schiele:

I got tired of sending prints to the drugstore and getting mediocre quality, so I decided to see if I could manage it better with a printer at home. Even after I bought it, I was skeptical of what kind of results I'd get, but I was totally wowed. The prints are vivd, crisp, and gorgeous. I absolutely love it. The only qualm I have is the cropping issue another reviewer lamented about. If printing directly from the printer, you don't have many editing options. (It's designed for the less technically inclined.) Printing from a computer lets you be more specific as far as indicating the print area on your photo, but the 4x6 sizing is not conducive to digital images. You're going to lose part of your picture no matter what. Even so, it's incredible for the price, so I'm happy to sing it's praises.

Review by C. Luke:

Hi! I Researched for months before landing back on this Canon Selphy CP 780 printer. If you read enough info on the ink vs dye sublimation, you will find that most net reviews are going with dye for crispness, holding true to color, and longevity. I was nervous to try this method,as been an ink jetter for so long, but think about it.. dots per square inch, versus complete ribbon layering coverage.. its amazing to watch this thing print. My main focus was wanting CLEAR crisp quality in my photos. I did not want my children's cute summer tan photos, to have their skin look pale.. I wanted true color, and got it. From opening the box to set up, to a print in my hand was like 4 minutes.

I LOVE the way the prints look... HOWEVER>>>>>>>>>>

the Canon Selphy cp780, has 2 types of print settings. WITHOUT a border, which prints a true 4x6 print, or with a border, which modifies the print to a 3x5, and a nice white border around the pboto.

IF YOU HAVE YOUR SUBJECTS HEAD TOO CLOSE TO THE TOP OF THE PHOTO, AND THEY ARE NOT TOTALLY CENTERED (WHICH WITH KIDS, ITS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME ON ACTION SHOTS) THE 4X6 SIZE PRINT WILL CUT OFF THE HEAD, AND NOT PRINT TRUE TO WHAT YOU SEE IN THE VIEWING BOX.

I spent much time speaking with CANON about this setting, and they offer no trim settings, other than what I mentioned with the border, thus forcing me to send back my wonderful (otherwise) selphy.

It will be missed, but not for a large amount of photos that are really 3x5 not 4x6 size. It was simply cutting out too much of some pictures..

so bye bye canon.. Not sure what else I will find.. but surely will stick to dye sublimation print quality.

Review by Papillon:

I just bought this printer and I LOVE it. It's the perfect all in one printer for home/ small office use. I am a student and wanted an all in one so i could print, copy and scan documents without the stress of using the school's facilities every time. This printer is exactly what I needed. The print quality is superb. Even photos printed with this printer come out looking just as good as lab quality photos. The colours are vibrant and rich and borderless printing is excellent. Photocopying and scanning quality is really good too. However, printing speed is not the fastest but it doesn't detract from the beauty of this machine. The printer itself has a small footprint and I love the way everything folds into one compact design and eliminates dust getting trapped inside the printer. Overall, this is a great printer for the price. Note that a usb cord is not included in the package.

Review by luigi:

I bought this printer without reading a single review or even looking it up. I walked into Target and read the box and purchased it. I usually read the reviews and wait for people to explain what's wrong with something before I buy it so this was totally unlike me. I was very pleasantly surprised! I love this! I've owned a big Pixma Pro 9000 for a while now but I refused to give up my little HP all in one that I've loved for years but it crapped out and I decided to try the Canon all in one since I loved the pro9000 so much. After trying this thing out, HP lost a customer. I'd always loved their printers but the software never worked right. Not only is the Canon printer better but the software didn't jam my computer. (Yes I tried the HP software on a Dell, and HP, and an E-Machines computer, it's crap!) I did purchase a separate scanner to scan slides since I bought the printer so I gave to to my mom and am looking for just a photo printer now but I'm looking into Canon. My mom is loving this printer too, and she's not easy to please when it comes to printers. All in all, if you want an all-in-one, this one is worth a shot!!

Review by Professor Bubba:

I Just got this printer from Adorama today (via UPS) and this thing is incredible. Im a professional photographer and this printer prints lab qaulity prints super fast. I made sure I used Photoshop to print some test pictures )4x6 on Canon Photo Plus Semi Gloss and it matched exactly what was on my screen. As a matter of fact the prints look better than whats on my screen...I had to do a double take. I no longer will be using the lab to order prints for my clients (only wedding books), Im printing them all myself. The speed is also amazing. The only thing I dont like thus far is the noise of the print head when the printer starts up and before prints start printing. When the picture prints its pretty quiet though. I will update my review after about a week after i dump a few hundred more prints for my clients.

***** Update #1 ***** : Ok Now I've had this printer a few weeks and I've printed a few hundred pictures in a variety of sizes (4x6, 5x7 , 8.5x11 and 13x19) and this is a must have printer for those wanting to print their own professional lab (and better than lab quality) photos. This bad boy is very fast and the print quality is just absolutely superb (I use Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy , Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl, Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss Paper and Ilfor Printasia 13x19 paper and Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II 13x19). I've shown my photographs to a variety of clients, potential clients, freinds and family and they are blown away by the quality of the prints. When I tell them I printed them myself they are like "What?, No way" and then they asume I must have spent a whole lot of money on the printer...which is wrong ([...] after rebate from amazon/adorama).

Pros :

Fast - This printer spits out a vibrant and full of color 13x19 glossy print in under 3 minutes 30 seconds.

[...]

Quiet - I can print at all hours of the night and not worry about waking anyone up. When Im in the next room with the door open the printer prints so quiet I cant even hear it and have to come check on the print job to make sure it didnt crash since I cant hear any noise in the next room..lol

Quality - Prints professional quality prints on a variety of papers in many different sizes.

Paper - You ARE NOT limited to Canon papers as you can use a bunch of other manufacturers papers. My Favorite thus far is Ilford (cheap from amazon and is basically identical to expensive Canon paper).

Ink Usuage - Good on ink, Not really an ink guzzler. I printed dozens and dozens of 4x6's and even a bunch of 8x11's and 13x19s and the ink kept going and going, until I finaly started running low (after many prints had been printed). Also I now use The Continuous Ink System , so ink is now dirt cheap. Costs something link [...] per cartridge (estimated - all I know is I pay [...] for and 8 pack of about 880 ml's of ink which is over 80 cartridges (no joke, visit fleabay and youll see tons of them)...Save money and Dont buy Canon Ink Carts and you will save at least 50% right off the bat).

Cons :

B&W printing - Prints mediocre black and white prints. This is no secret and I knew this before I bought it. I dont care about black and white prints just color so its all good for me.

Size - This is a big mamma-jamma. You will have to dedicate a space to this thing because of its width.

CD Printing - The US version of this printer does not print to CD's at all and there are no hacks that enable the CD printing feature (Like with the Pixma Pro 9000). If you need CD printing, just print to photo quality CD labels.

Overal: This is a fantastic buy. If you need professional quality color prints done in house you will surely love this printer. Canon outdid itself with this model... The price is steadily falling too. Especially after the [...] rebate.

***** Update #2 ******

DO NOT USE OR BUY THE CONTINUOUS INK SYSTEM FROM SUPERjetUSA With THIS PRINTER:

I bought the continuous ink system from superjetUSA off ebay and it worked fine for a short while and then it leaked ink all inside my printer. All 800+ml's. It was a huge mess and it caused me to use many hours of my valuable time and waste dozens and dozens and dozens of pieces of plain paper/photo paper to clean out the leaking mess. Then SuperjetUSA refused to give me my money back and kept telling me to do this and that and email them pictures of the mess. It took me weeks to clean it up and there is a still an ink mess in my printer. ONLY USE INK CARTRIDGES (stay away from the Continuous ink system) FROM A GOOD SOURCE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I've had this printer for months and it continues to be an awesome printer. No complaints. I made almost the entire printer purchase price of the printer back within only a few weeks of having the printer..thats how good the prints are.. THE CANON PIXMA 9000 MKII is an awesome investment.

Review by Jeremy:

Have had this printer for about a week now. Upgraded from a Epson R2400. Reason for upgrading, couldn't keep the epson's printhead from clogging. Wasted more ink trying to keep the printheads clean then I actually used printing pictures. As far as print quality goes between the two is basically a toss up. Prints from the canon are more glossy then the epson probably due to the fact the canon uses dye inks while the epson uses pigment. The only thing I don't like about the canon is right out of the box the prints seem to have to much red in them. Playing around in Adobe CS4 I was able to get the prints to my liking. With the easyprint software included with the printer, no matter what setting it seemed all the pictures have a red tint to them. This is one area the epson had an advantage, the easyprint software that came with the epson produced prints spot on. This is the reason I gave the printer a four star instead of five. The people that use adobe photoshop to print all their pictures won't have a problem, but people like me that like using the easyphoto program to print out a bunch of picutres might be somewhat disappointed. A couple of more pluses of the printer are: Turns out prints faster then the epson R2400. Prints look sharp on a wide variety of paper, not just the canon paper. This was one drawback of the epson R2400, seemed only to print good on epson paper. Not the case with the canon. Also, seems better on ink compared to the epson so far. I have printed a lot of photos of all sizes and all the ink levels are still pretty close to full. Overall I would definetly recommend this printer.

Review by D. Gardner:

I've had this printer for just a week and I'm amazed at the results. It was easy to set up and is easy to use. I took a look at "Real World Color Management," by Fraser, Murphy, and Bunting, before I started using the printer. It's a helpful book, even if you just skim a few of the early chapters. It helped me to understand the printer's advanced options and to get the results I wanted. You could just use the printer with the out of the box settings, and I suppose it would produce really nice results. I'm an artist, though, and I want to be in control. That's why I bought this printer, I was frustrated with unpredictable results from labs.

A note on ink:

I have been printing on glossy paper. At .99 per cartridge for ink (Epson website price, with free overnight shipping if you order at least three cartridges at a time), so far,

- my 8.5" x 11" prints are roughly .20 - .80 for ink

- my 13" x 19" are about .50 - .50 for ink

(Printing in "Photo" mode puts your costs at the low end of the ranges. Printing in "Photo RPM" mode costs about 40% - 50% more and puts you at the high end of the price ranges. I usually cannot distinguish between "Photo" and "Photo RPM" modes, so I almost always print in "Photo" mode. Occasionally, I notice banding or tones which do not appear smooth on very close inspection, then I switch to "Photo RPM.")

Warning: I believe ink use varies considerably with paper type. less ink for glossy, more ink for semi-gloss, and still more ink for matte and art paper. I'm not sure though.

I am printing on Inkpress Glossy paper (equivalent in weight, sheen, and brightness to Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper) which I ordered from B&H Photo. It's less expensive than Epson paper and looks spectacular.

In fact, I recently gave two 8x10's to a friend as a gift. She thought they looked wonderful and was astonished to learn that they were inkjet prints. She thought they must have been "professionally" printed at a lab. I was pretty flattered (credit to the printer, too, of course...) She also happens to be an artist and professional web designer, so she's got a fine eye.

---------------

Update:

I've used the printer some more. I'm still very pleased. However, I've looked closer at the Inkpress paper I mentioned above. From a distance, it looks great, but closer up, it has many problems. Almost every sheet is covered with fine scratches, and about half the sheets have at least one major defect (some as large as 1/8" in diameter) where the gloss coating did not cover the paper. The defects are like little potholes on the surface. At first, I thought I had caused these problems through poor handling. Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy has an absolutely flawless surface, though, and I have handled the prints the same way. I don't recommend the Inkpress paper.

Review by Robert Cullers:

I can highly recommend the Epson 1400 printer for its outstanding quality of prints with sizes up to 13 inches wide. It is the least costly of the 13 inch wide format printers especially with the rebate Epson offers. The inks are Claria high definition inks which work especially well on glossy paper with an estimated lifetime of up to 100 years. The Epson ink is very costly as usual, but some suppliers (e.g., Lyson, novachromeusa) are offering bulk ink cartridges one might try if you are willing to pay for the set-up cost.

There are several problems if you do panoramic prints or black and white prints. Panoramic prints are a bit tricky to print out since Epson only offers roll paper for panoramic prints, and there is no roller in which to place the roll paper. In additon, you will have to make a custom paper size for panoramics since Epson does not include this in the standard printer software. One can cut the Epson roll paper into individual sheets or purchase individual sheets of panoramic roll paper from other suppliers such as Red River Paper. You also could purchase instead the more expensive Epson R1800 printer which does have a place for the roll paper and the software includes a panoramic print mode. Also you may have trouble with black and white prints since the Epson 1400 leaves a color tinge in the prints unless you spend some time making some color adjustments to get neural black and white prints. Again the Epson R1800 made perfect black and white prints without such adjustments.

Review by Schwartz:

Where to begin, this printer has a lot to cover and I'm not going to hit everything.

I think foremost of importance is how does the print quality look. I have 2 other printers to compare the prints with. One is a full size HP D7560 and the other is a Epson PictureMate Dash. I printed the same test picture right from a memory card on each. Comparing the three both HP's look better than the Epson. The HPs were sharper and more colorful than the Epson. Comparing the HPs to each other I'd say the D7560 wins but not by a lot. The 646 picture had more color saturation and the D7560 had less color saturation and a little bit more detail making it look more natural. Between 646 and PictureMate I am going to keep the 646 and sell the PictureMate. The pics aren't perfect with the color saturation but they are good.

I know I could probably tweak the color on the PC of what I send to the Picturemate and make them match but I'm not all about doing that. The Picturemate did print a little bit faster but both are fast enough that it doesn't really matter. The 646 can do 5x7 and the PictureMate can't. Another plus the 646 has over the Picturemate is print head is in the ink cartridge. The Picturemate has built in heads that if you don't print for a while will clog up. At least with the HP if that happens and it can't be unclogged a new cartridge will fix it whereas the Picturemate would probably be shot.

The 646 has built-in Bluetooth which worked well with my Blackberry Tour. The touch screen seems to work well. When you turn on the printer for the first time it will walk you through setup right on the screen which is nice. Interacting through the screen with the printer seems to work well and is nice. You can do all kinds of editing and card making right on the printer if that is what you want to do. That is not my cup of tea but I saw the wife playing with it and she said she liked it and would use it to make quick cards for different things.

My printer came with a quick instructions, padded carry case, power adapter, ink cartridge, some paper, and a stylus. What they did with the padded carry case is pretty cool. It is what the printer comes in. They wrap a cardboard sleeve around it and fasten the zipper together for in the store. Less waste is nice.

There were no software discs. The printer has software built into it for 32-bit Vista and XP. Oh it has MAC OS 10.4 and 10.5 software on it too but I know nobody cares about that. None of the built in software did me any good as I run 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 RC. I went to the HP website and got the 64-bit Vista drivers to install in Windows 7 and it works fine.

So overall I liked this enough to ditch the PictureMate and although its not perfect print wise I would say if you are looking for a compact 4x6 or 5x7 photo printer with Bluetooth this one should work well enough for what it is.

Review by Omar Siddique:

The short: small, fast, minimalist, producing great looking prints.

The whole package is minimalist, compact, and designed to be simple to use: The printer arrives packaged eco-friendly in a reusable tote (made from recycled materials) that's actually nice enough to reuse. There's no driver CD, and minimal setup directions. The ink cartridge is all-in-one. The printer needs only an inch or so clearance behind, and a few inches in front (for the paper guide and output). There's a tuck-away stylus to interact with the touch screen, and a fold-down carry handle.

On powerup, the printer displays a simplified version of the paper quick setup directions, and instructs the user to print a calibration page.

When attached via USB to my WindowsXP system, the printer has an unusual design in which is appears to Windows as a CD drive, from which I did the typical driver installation, after which Windows saw the unit as a printer, not a CD drive. Unfortunately, this base Windows software installation didn't seem to offer an interface to the custom modes available from the touchscreen (eg: passport photo, greeting card, etc).

I've owned other photo printers, including Canon's small dye-sub printer: Canon SELPHY CP510 Compact Photo Printer , and this HP beats all of them in speed, print quality, and color reproduction. For color, primary colors are rich and vibrant, though neutrals (such as earth-tones) and pastels are slightly washed out. Blacks are solid and jet-black. I tested some complicated, textured, outdoor scenes and was very pleased with the results (one sample was a mix of sky, desert dust-storm, and people). The same complicated print took 1m43s at "best" and 43s at "fast normal". Interestingly, the quality difference between the two prints was modest. The "best" print was a little more rich and nuanced in detail, but at 5x7, "fast" seems adequate for most things I'd print.

I tried a couple of the speciality modes, and the printer did "the right thing" in printing passport photos, correctly scaling and sizing them (no more figuring out the DPI to resolution ration to get the exact 2x2 required for passports!). Greeting cards came out well also, though the small number of available designs are limiting.

While I like the printer a lot, I did have some quibbles:

* The inbuilt initial setup is a bit simplistic, and led me to at first not taking the tape off the contacts of my print cartridge (I don't usually use inkjet printers so didn't realize). Interrupting the setup before it was finished resulted in having to go through the setup process again. There's such a thing as "too simplified".

* To use the touchscreen-based modes on the printer I had to put the images on a memory card (presumably a bluetooth-enabled phone would have worked too). I realize many people leave their old photos "on their cameras", but I take a lot of photos, and all my archiving and sorting is done on computers, so the on-card-only design makes the custom modes much less useful to me.

* It would be nice to be able to create custom greeting card designs.

* For some reason the sticky protective cover on my model's LCD wouldn't come off without a lot of prodding and scraping, leaving a mar on the touchscreen. The screen itself has a non-obvious locking mechanism in its popped-up position that has to be pressed in the opposite direction from what I expected. I could see the screen getting broken in a multi-user household

My prints were all on HP "Advanced Photo Paper". Most vendors formulate their inks to match their paper, so the combination typically yields the best results.

Aside from the minor quibbles, I'm very pleased with this photo printer. Highly recommended.