Epson Stylus Photo R1900

Advances in printer technology don't come along very frequently and tend to be less than earth-shattering. Almost three years after Epson introduced the widely popular Stylus Photo R1800, the company has released the Stylus Photo R1900, which brings along with it a new version of the company's pigment-based UltraChrome Hi-Gloss ink set called UltraChrome Hi-Gloss2. The new inks include an orange cartridge, instead of the blue cartridge used with the R1800, which allows for slightly better skin tones.

The company has also revamped the way it translates colors from the images shot by your digital camera into those that the printer can reproduce. Epson is calling this new system Radiance Technology, but while Epson also claims some grain reduction and smoother color transitions with the system, at its heart it's mostly a new set of look-up tables that the company says can better maximize the number of colors available with this printer. Since we're dealing with a new ink set, it's hard to compare the difference that Radiance Technology makes, but I can say that the Stylus Photo R1900 has a very wide color gamut and did a great job of printing colors that can often give inkjets trouble, such as deep purples and some shades of blue. Plus, as you might expect, the orange ink can help with oranges and some darker shades of yellow.

I did notice that transitions from one color to the next were very smooth for an inkjet printer. This is especially noteworthy in out-of-focus areas, which can often result in stair-step bands rather than smooth transitions. However, I saw the same thing in the Pro 3800, which didn't include Radiance Technology, so it seems like Epson is lumping a number of different things under the same moniker. When they introduced the Pro3800, they said that its smoother transitions were the result of better screening algorithms. Either way, the prints are quite nice.

The printer's