Epson Stylus Photo R2400

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Despite its 5,760 x 1,440 resolution, the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 has relatively large 3.5pl droplets and a mere 180 nozzles per color. But the big enhancement to the R2400 over the R2200 is the company's UltraChromeK3 ink set, which incorporates the traditional six photo primaries--CMYK plus light cyan and magenta--and supplements them with Light Black and Light Light Black inks, otherwise known to mere mortals as medium gray and light gray. The company has also reworked the screening algorithms for black-and-white printing and, recognizing that great black-and-white actually has some color, created an advanced black-and-white print mode in the driver that allows you to tone your images with yellow, light-magenta, and light-cyan inks.

	The Epson Stylus Photo R2400's driver delivers unprecedented control over tonality, tint, contrast, and brightness of monochrome prints. Unfortunately, it doesn't support split-toning, to separately control the tints of the shadows and the highlights.

The inks plus the innumerable paper-handling options detailed in my discussion of the R2400's design comprise the unique features of the printer; the rest is fairly mundane. It has USB 2.0 and FireWire ports for both Mac and Windows compatibility.

I have to admit a partiality for the color-management implementation in Epson's drivers over those of Canon and HP. For one, it's the most sophisticated I've seen in a desktop printer. The driver provides three color spaces to choose from: Epson Vivid, Epson Standard, and Adobe RGB, as well as three different ICM options (basic, advanced, and host-based). The advanced selection lets you define individual profiles for images, graphics, and text. But the most important reason I like Epson's implementation: there's a clearly marked Off option. Without it, you're never quite sure if your software's in charge or whether you're double-applying color management.

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