Linux Photo Printer Support?

Bryan Andersen asks: "I'm needing to replace my color printer; mine has died and isn't worth repairing. I'm heavily into digital photography and wish to be able to produce high quality prints for display without having to use Windows or send the printing out. I realize I could either go to copy centers or online photo printing services, but I'd like to be able to tune my colors, etc. I'm quite knowlegable in photographic technique from both the camera and darkroom ends. From what I've read so far I can either spend many dollars on a color Postscript printer and have almost garanteed support through its internal PS support and lose a bit in output quality or I can spend less and use Ghostscript but deciphering which printers are supported well is next to impossible. I'd find a printer that uses archive quality inks with separate ink tanks for each color if possible. I'd also prefer to get a 6 or 7 color printer. What are known working setups? How good is the print quality? Are any of the larger format printers supported? Being able to print an 11"x14" image or larger would be nice."

Comments

One word. EPSON

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Epson seems to have the best ones going right now. Especially since most Epson's are supported under gimp-print (what you want for photos under linux). It seems, right now, that they cooperate the best, but that could be changing with ESR at HP. I have always liked HP printers, but the newer ones are having a rougher time with support for Linux. Epson also has some of the best Large format printers too. Check out the linux printing website. for a list of supported printers. Most printers appearing here, but not on a distro's web site will eventually appear on a distro's HCL. If it isn't supported out of the box, you can find help getting it to work on here. Also, if you have a USB printer, check out the linux-usb website. There you can find out if you can even use the USB on linux. If it's supported under the parallel port, usually you can get it to work on usb also, but not always. Check here first. Quote from the big section of suggested printers on linuxprinting.org :

Big

Most of the medium format Styli, including the Photo 1270, (a 13x19 format CMYKcm printer), and the Stylus Colors 1520 and 3000 (both 17x22 CMYK printers) are supported well. The Epson 2000P has preliminary support only; it doesn't work well yet. The large format printers (the 5000, 7000, 7500, 9000, 9500, etc) are not supported, although the 7500 may work soon. Good luck!