The first prints.
02:49

This photo courtesy of my new Samsung Alias 2 phone, which is pretty sweet. On the other hand, boo to Apple: Mac OS X 10.5 doesn't support Bluetooth BIP, so I couldn't dispatch this photo to $coworker's Mac and post it earlier today. Instead I read it off the MicroSD using my netbook's builtin SD reader (about which more below).

I see a long USB cable in my future.

I made a few prints on normal office paper and they're pretty awful, but I also bought some Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy (figuring it'd be good to use up Epson's inks), so I thought that and Epson's canned profiles would give me better results.

Initially I just plugged in the printer, printed "Hello world!" and was happy. But then I saw that Epson's documentation says to install the software first, so I spent a few hours screwing around with that, because the first time I installed, Epson's canned profiles showed up in Lightroom's print module as color management options. But then they didn't show up upon the subsequent reinstalls. I finally hunted them down and... somehow... Got them reinstalled.

Finally I set up soft proofing using the glossy profile, and that warned me that the blues in my picture of Russian Hill are way out of gamut, so instead I'm going to print this picture:

I stuck two copies on the same sheet; the right-hand copy had brightness +35.

This print follows the guidelines in Epson's managing color document for the R2880:

File > Page Setup to select the 1400 and the appropriate paper (8x10 borderless). Then Print, and "Photoshop Manages Colors". The profile should be "SP1400 1410 UPGP". Rendering set to "relative colorimetric", "black point compensation" checked. Then hit "print", and in the Epson dialog... "Print Settings", select highest quality. It's already got the right paper. Turn off "high speed". Then select "Color management", turn it off... And let 'er rip.

So, while waiting for that to print... I installed my new SSD. I hope this one will last longer than an afternoon (it's already survived a couple of hibernate cycles, so...)

Eeebuntu 3.0 installed painlessly. I like it, despite GNOME.

(Ah, that took about 8 minutes to print.)

So, the print came out with a lot of wet ink beaded on its surface. That's... Not good. I'll try printing again; this time lightening the whole image 45, and I'll try with quality Photo instead of Photo RPM.

(4-5 minutes later)

Ok. That's much better. Note, don't use Photo RPM.

The paper instructions say dry for 15 minutes and then put it under a sheet of normal paper for 24 hours; if the normal sheet's wavy, replace it with a new one and check it again 24 hours later. So I'll have a look at these tomorrow morning and afternoon, I think. I'll probably also buy a pack of 13x19 Epson paper.