'Blind' photo test - HP wins!

[Travis]

I did no test.
And guess who won:
it was the HP!
Bert

Is that right??? :-0 Well everyone in my town is now singing the new HP anthem before all major sporting events, wearing vividly colored HP t-shirts, and handing out packs of Premium Plus Photo Paper on every street corner. Can you beat that? ;-)

Travis

 

[fotografer]

What is going on? Carly putting hypnotic drugs in the water supply in NA?

Hahahahaha...

I did no test.
And guess who won:
it was the HP!
Bert

Is that right??? :-0 Well everyone in my town is now singing the
new HP anthem before all major sporting events, wearing vividly
colored HP t-shirts, and handing out packs of Premium Plus Photo
Paper on every street corner. Can you beat that? ;-)

Travis

--
Fotografer

 

[phils]

I snapped a quick pic of the test images. I flipped the two on top over just so I could prove that I actually used Epson and HP paper. Canon's paper is blank on the back, so I didn't bother trying to prove I used Canon PPP - anyway, I had to leave one of them turned over so you could see the picture. The tag on the top left photo has been removed, so you can see at the bottom of that photo that I labeled it "Canon S900".

The bottom row of photos still have the little tag at the bottom covering up the 'which printer' info - I just wanted to show you how I perform the test. I layed them out on a neutral background under good lighting, and said 'pick your favorite'. The test subjects can handle them as they please, and look as closely as they want to.

The Ofoto site that I uploaded this image to shrank it, so you can't see the detail. I'll try to find a better host site for the image so you can see that it actually does say 'Epson' and 'HP' on the back of that paper.

I picked the images very carefully. The top image shows off color, the bottom shows off detail. Both of them do a good job of showing the strengths and weakness of various printers. The order on both the top and bottom photos are (left to right), Canon, Epson, HP.

 

[Terry Thorn]

... as to why people are somewhat reluctant to talk up the HP printer line.

 

[Terry Thorn]

Now I tend to disagree while the grain was evident back then and
NOT viewable from 3-4 feet away and while the Epson prints were
smoother and showed less grain then the HP's that field has
narrowed considerably. While I myself do not like HP printers
(Terry can back this up)

I will! Gimme that Bible! ;-)

the new HP's really do give Epson/Canon a
run for their money. Now the only thing that Epson and Canon can
claim now is more expertice and while fotographer has pointed out
that HP's had 6 color printers in their designjet line for several
years now I felt that HP has'nt quite caught up to Epson or Canon
since both companies have a lead over HP in the consumer markets.

Finally I'd like to say that yes Epson and Canon are still the best
photo injket printers out now and HP would come in last. If you do
a blind test and the HP wins then good for HP they've obviously
struck something with spitting out colorful pictures. In all
fairness I love my P400 and would only use my Epson if I needed
different papers or sizes.

 

[WP]

... as to why people are somewhat reluctant to talk up the HP
printer line.

Didn't he say somewhere the test was conducted by blind people???

No wonder they picked HP!!

(And this is a joke).....Take it easy!
--
Have a great day
http://www.pbase.com/wp12001

 

[Donald Cooper]

I think you're missing something. He lives in North America. First, there IS NO Epson 950 in North America. So he wants us to believe he's printing from a printer and he can't read the number from the front cover. Second, the closest thing to an Epson 950 in NA will be the Epson 960. I say "will be" because the Epson 960 hasn't yet been released in NA, and it WON'T BE for a least a month and a half. And he's not saying where he managed to get this magical printer .......

Plus he's saying other things that are just not true. Do you have a Canon 9000 or 900? I'm not sure if you have one. But if you do, you would know that you NEVER see the arifacts (he calls it banding) in the grey areas. The artifacts are more pronounced in the dark areas, for obvious technical reasons.

Think that not all people are as honest as you are.

Also when phils test 950, I wonder if he test with the 2880 dpi?
Does 950 have the 'speed off' option? I guess if we are comparing
the 4800 dpi (which is slow compared with Photoret IV - the latter
more grainy because it is not using half tone), then the other two
must be printed using the highest possible quality (with manual
override - not data manipulation - but just the BEST possible
setting). Then I suspect the tests may be more fair.

 

[Donald Cooper]

Only someone so naive as to believe OJ is searching for the real killer would accept this post at face value.

If you can manage to put aside your biases for a moment, I think you'll find it's hard to reach any conclusion other than the post is a hoax. First is the printer itself. He lives in North America. He claims he's printing with an Epson 950 printer. But there never has been and never will be an Epson 950 printer in NA. OK, you say, he's just confused, unable to read the model number on the front of the printer case or the model numbers plastered all over the box. He meant to say the Epson 960, which is the NA equivalent of the 950. Hmmmmmm......... Small problem with that. The Epson 960 hasn't yet been released in NA, and won't be for another MONTH AND A HALF. Absent some explanation of where he got this printer from, you're a bit hard pressed to it to believe him.

Second is that what he's claiming he and his tester saw is flatly contrary to experience and physics. And YOU should know or be able to confirm this. He says the Canon output showed artifact lines (banding) in the grey areas. Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You have the Canon 900 or 9000. You've made prints from it. Some of those prints have grey areas I suspect. Have you ever seen the artifact lines (he calls them banding) in the grey areas? Fat chance. You won't see the artifacts in the grey areas unless you have a loupe and great ligh, and even then you may not be able to see them!

The fact is that the artifact lines are most visible in the DARK AREAS, not the LIGHT AREAS as he's claiming. The reason for this is quite simple: the lines occur where there is no ink, and the highest contrast is where the white paper shows between the dark lines of ink. In the grey areas, the contrast between the area without ink and the areas with the ink is low, so you don't see the artifact lines which define the areas between them. If you have any doubt about this, find one of your photos with high contrast -- a black leather jacket against a grey wall in sunlight would be perfect -- print it on your Canon, and then get a loupe and take a look. You'll see what I mean.

So no, he's not being questioned because he claiming the HP has better output. He's being questioned because what he's saying is far fetched. I think if you look at the evidence you have to conclude that it's virtually certain he doesn't have an Epson 950 or 960 printer. You also have to conclude that it's highly probable he doesn't have a Canon 900 or 9000 either. He may have an HP, but then again ...........

I think we see it here. Someone dared to claim the HP produced
better photo output and not only was the printer ripped to shreds
but the poster as well. I can recall similar posts about Epson
printers being better and, to prove it, the poster's mother,
father, and 5 year-old sister were the judges. Also, people coming
into this person's store would just happen to have these magnifying
glasses or loupes with them to examine the photo output from HP
versus Epson and, always, the Epson would win out bigtime. No one,
besides me, questioned THIS guy's motives or methods. There was
another poster who claimed he could see grain in an HP print from 3
to 4 feet away. Again, it wasn't really disputed as much as this
post has been already and I suspect it's early in the disCUSSion.
There's been a lot of mud slung at the HP printers and those who
post about them over time so it's no wonder that HP postings are so
low.

 

[Travis]

Didn't he say somewhere the test was conducted by blind people???
No wonder they picked HP!!
(And this is a joke).....Take it easy!

LOL! And we all know no one with a PH-d would pick any HP... okay, that was a bad one. (more food for Terry though).

Travis

 

[bert73035]

This is no discussion about the quality of printers, but about the quality of arguments, most of which don't deserve the effort of a discussion.
Its an ancient exercise in verbalism.

Bert

 

[Terry Thorn]

This is no discussion about the quality of printers, but about the
quality of arguments, most of which don't deserve the effort of a
discussion.
Its an ancient exercise in verbalism.

Bert

They're busy posturing! ;-)

 

[Terry Thorn]

Didn't he say somewhere the test was conducted by blind people???
No wonder they picked HP!!
(And this is a joke).....Take it easy!

LOL! And we all know no one with a PH-d would pick any HP...
okay, that was a bad one. (more food for Terry though).

Travis

Saaaaay... aren't you the famous "Travis" who could spot the dots on an HP print 3 to 4 feet away?!?! ;-)

 

[teufel88463]

Hi folks - just thought I'd give you the results of my very
un-scientific test to evaluate what printer prints the 'best' photo

• The test subjects were my wife, and a neighbor (both of them are

not professional photographers). Both of them were independently
given the same instructions - simply "Pick the photo that you
prefer", and both were not aware of which printers printed which
photos (it's a 'blind' test), and no magnification was used. The
printers tested were the 'best' of each of the three main
manufacturers - The Epson 950, the HP 7550 and the Canon S900. For
the test, I printed the same two 8x10 photos on each of the three
printers using the manufacturer's best glossy photo papers (Epson's
Premium Photo Glossy, Canon's PPP, and HP's new 10ml glossy film).
Since the HP couldn't do 8x10 borderless, I printed all samples at
8x10 with borders on 8.5x11" media.

All care was taken to produce the best possible quality photos (the
HP was set to 4800 dpi), but no additional enhancements were made
to the image files - the exact same source files were sent to all
three printers, and the printer drivers were set to their 'default'
configurations, with all options set to 'best'.

The two test photos were carefully chosen by me to be 'fair' to all
three printers. Photo A was a very high resolution photo of the
International Space Station in orbit, looking down upon the cloud
layer of the earth (found at the NASA website). A huge amount of
detail can be observed in this photo. Photo B was a JPEG portrait
of an Asian woman wearing an orange jacket and a very colorful
scarf (found on this website).

During the evaluation, I did not prompt the test subjects to look
for anything in particular, I simply gave instructions to pick the
photos they preferred.

The first tester (my wife), picked both the HP photo A and B. After
she made her choices, I asked what it was she preferred. She said
the colorful scarf on photo B really stood out on the HP sample,
and that it looked like it had be "washed too many times" on the
other samples. Photo A was similar by her account, with her
choosing the HP output because the blues "looked more blue".

The second tester, to my surprise, also picked both of the photos
printed on the HP printer. When asked why, he had similar reasons.
The HP photos looked 'brighter', and he specifically remarked that
the HP photo A looked smoother in the areas of light grey (where
banding was pretty obvious on the Canon sample).

So, take this for whatever it's worth. I'm a professional, so the
things I look for in photos are probably not the same as what my
wife and neighbor would look for, but I was surprised to find that
two people independently chose the HP photos over Canon and Epson.
I'm surprised, because I must admit that I personally favored the
Epson photo A.

Really, what I'm most surprised by is that both of the test
subjects had no problems choosing a 'favorite'. I presumed that an
average user wouldn't see much difference between the 3 sets of
photos - they ALL looked great. My wife did make the comment that
if given photos from any of the printers, she'd be delighted.

Take this info for whatever it's worth - I've made no attempts to
hide my personal preference for HP's printers (as Chingon and WP
certainly know), so please feel free to make whatever comments you
feel you need to make, both good and bad. I absolutely expect that
at least a few of you will accuse me of rigging the photos, or
somehow 'guiding' the choice of the two test subjects. But
hopefully, at least some of you who read this message will
understand that at least two average, everyday, NON-PROFESSIONAL
people preferred photos printed on HP's newest printers over Canon
and Epson.

By the way, I printed on a brand new S900 (so there were no nozzle
problems). One thing I can say about it is it's fast, which is
probably one of the reasons you can see print sweep artifacts more
easily. The Epson and HP seem to be about the same speed though.
Speed and ink costs were of course not part of this test, so to be
fair, those elements should be factored into anyone's purchasing
decision.

thanks-
phils

 

[fotografer]

Don,

I think you're missing something. He lives in North America. First,
there IS NO Epson 950 in North America. So he wants us to believe
he's printing from a printer and he can't read the number from the
front cover. Second, the closest thing to an Epson 950 in NA will
be the Epson 960. I say "will be" because the Epson 960 hasn't yet
been released in NA, and it WON'T BE for a least a month and a
half. And he's not saying where he managed to get this magical
printer .......

I think he did mention the Japanese version of the 950 printer (still I don't know how he managed to get one!). Am I just being gullible?

Plus he's saying other things that are just not true. Do you have a
Canon 9000 or 900? I'm not sure if you have one. But if you do, you
would know that you NEVER see the arifacts (he calls it banding) in
the grey areas. The artifacts are more pronounced in the dark
areas, for obvious technical reasons.

I don't have it myself. I understand its output is similar to s800. Since I saw in the latest magazine review the magnified outputs from s830D, I saw no difference, I am inclined to believe s900x shares the same characteristics with the s800 counterparts, or maybe more, depending on the quality of the printheads, as I heard more banding printheads from s900x than s800 series.

Yes, I have seen banding even in light areas. But I can't remember if I ever see grey ones, though. Basically I have been doing so many 'into your face' grain formation inspection that even from naked eye, I can pick out the Canon one like, 9 1/2 out of 10 times in a blind test. But I agree, banding is the most pronounced (even to an average viewer) in even, somewhat dark (or 'rich') areas like reds in flowers, or blue skies. But encounter most 'problems' with red areas. Don't know why...

Think that not all people are as honest as you are.

If I am 'honest', I will not have to confess to my Father every Sunday!

--
Fotografer

 

[Donald Cooper]

Actually it was me. It was an image from my E20, printed at 24 X 36. Feet.

Saaaaay... aren't you the famous "Travis" who could spot the dots
on an HP print 3 to 4 feet away?!?! ;-)

 

[fotografer]

Gasp! You mean HP actually print braille? Wow! That's a new feature I NEVER come across!

Didn't he say somewhere the test was conducted by blind people???

No wonder they picked HP!!

(And this is a joke).....Take it easy!
--
Have a great day
http://www.pbase.com/wp12001

--
Fotografer

 

[fotografer]

What? You mean this guy you mentioned is not a fictitious guy?? Terry! Even Lexmark printouts look slicky smooth 3 to 4 feet away! Or maybe his eyesight is 7/6?

Saaaaay... aren't you the famous "Travis" who could spot the dots
on an HP print 3 to 4 feet away?!?! ;-)

--
Fotografer

 

[Terry Thorn]

What? You mean this guy you mentioned is not a fictitious guy??
Terry! Even Lexmark printouts look slicky smooth 3 to 4 feet away!
Or maybe his eyesight is 7/6?

Terry Thorn wrote:

No, I was VERY serious when I mentioned the person who claimed to be able to see the grain in HP prints from that far away. But I don't know just how "serious" HE was. ;-) At the time, he came across as very earnest though. I think he started out at 4 feet but relented to 3 feet after we talked about it. Quite a feat, don't ya think? ;-)

 

[Donald Cooper]

Gullible it is. As in VERY gullible.

The only thing worse than lying is lying badly, and this guy is doing a great job of it. FWIW, the Japanese version of the 950 uses light yellow, which is not used in the European or NA versions. This introduces an entirely different set of issues, not the least of which is where you'd get the ink!

The issue of the line artifacts is interesting. First, I don't think you've seen the artifacts with your naked eye. To see them, you have to use a loupe or something similar. Second when you use the loupe the artifacts are always easier to see in the dark areas. This is because the lines are formed when the dither tiles run into each other in one direction, forming a line. The white paper shows betwen the lines. So the greater the contrast between the ink and the paper the more obvious the line artifacts are. Corrected I have better than 20/20 vision, and even with a loupe I can't see the line artifacts in the grey areas. I'm thinking this is both because of the lack of contrast and because the dither tiles don't have much ink in them, so they may not run together like they do in the darker areas.

BTW, you see the same artifacts on the Epson printers, the only difference being that the artifact lines parallel the direction of the printhead movement on the Epsons. I've seen a lot of Canon and Epson prints, but without a loupe I can't tell them apart. And when I do, the only clue I have is the direction of the line artifacts! NOTE: I'm not talking here about the Epson 960, which I don't have since it hasn't been released yet.

I think he did mention the Japanese version of the 950 printer
(still I don't know how he managed to get one!). Am I just being
gullible?

Yes, I have seen banding even in light areas. But I can't remember
if I ever see grey ones, though. Basically I have been doing so
many 'into your face' grain formation inspection that even from
naked eye, I can pick out the Canon one like, 9 1/2 out of 10 times
in a blind test. But I agree, banding is the most pronounced (even
to an average viewer) in even, somewhat dark (or 'rich') areas like
reds in flowers, or blue skies. But encounter most 'problems' with
red areas. Don't know why...

 

[chingon]

You obviously don't know this guy's history. He's a troll. He was chided for being an authority and not having any of the printers. He fabricated this just so he could say he's an authority

.

I think we see it here. Someone dared to claim the HP produced
better photo output and not only was the printer ripped to shreds
but the poster as well. I can recall similar posts about Epson
printers being better and, to prove it, the poster's mother,
father, and 5 year-old sister were the judges. Also, people coming
into this person's store would just happen to have these magnifying
glasses or loupes with them to examine the photo output from HP
versus Epson and, always, the Epson would win out bigtime. No one,
besides me, questioned THIS guy's motives or methods. There was
another poster who claimed he could see grain in an HP print from 3
to 4 feet away. Again, it wasn't really disputed as much as this
post has been already and I suspect it's early in the disCUSSion.
There's been a lot of mud slung at the HP printers and those who
post about them over time so it's no wonder that HP postings are so
low.