"Do I need to get a "photo" printer or just a basic inkjet "

    I don't know a lot about them but I think most printers now days are pretty sharp. I've had an HP Photo smart 8250 for a few years and it's always worked fine. I don't recall what it costs but it was pretty cheap at the time. I'd check into the ink cartridge costs before deciding as they could vary a lot. Color lasers could also be an option I guess but I have not looked into them recently. Here's a TT scale cardboard gondola I built from photo printed sides. Was an easy way to get the lettering and graffiti in TT scale where not much is commercially available. ..Dave Branum  

It's the ink and paper

My understanding is that what determines output quality is mostly ink and paper.

Last time I seriously looked into this was some time ago.  I remember that for example for an epson printer you could, with the same printer, use ink and paper that would result in color fading seriously over a relatively short period of time, or ink and paper that would last quite a long time.  If I recal correctly the matte paper tended to hold the color better over time.

If you want to print backdrops and buildings it would be worth your while to find some current comparisons of paper and ink to see which combos are going to keep your backdrops looking the best for the longest.

Its not recommended you use a

Its not recommended you use a home photo printer for backdrops. You can only print them out at 8 1/2 x 11 size.

What you need to do is take it to a professinal print shop, on an industrial sized printer, they can print in very large sizes.

For example, one of my backdrops is HUGE, its 24" x 20 ft . Yes 20 ft long!.

You can actually get bigger printers....

 My wife is a photographer and she enters her work in many shows and galleries. She uses a Canon 9000 Pro. It has 8 ink cartridges and will print on 19x14 photo paper. The quality is photographic level and she uses the photos that come off it in contests.  However, this would be an expensive option for printing backgrounds.

Michael is correct.  You would save money having it done the way he did it.

Den

I use an 18" wide HP inkjet

Seams seem unrealistic.

printer

A lot of print shops have wide format printers. Take your photos their and see what they can do for you.

Thank you all

Thank you all for the advice.  I probably used the wrong term when I said "backdrop".  What I was thinking of was using a photo as a background - like between buildings or as a road/street extension, etc.  And I like the shadow box effect, so photos wouldn't have to be too tall or wide.  So any printer I get would only have to handle small jobs.

I agree that if I went with a long backdrop, it would be better to either buy something commercially or get a print shop to do it.  Oddly enough, my parents were both industrial/commercial printers who worked on the really big offset printing presses at the AFB in Mobile and at the Army's Fort Rucker and at some small commercial shops (Mom).  The last time I went into a print shop the lady at the counter noticed me sniffing the air - she apologized for the smell.  I told her that I liked it - "my parents were printers and it smells just like them when they came home at the end of the day".  I sure miss them.

But thanks for the advice, you all (I mean ya'll) have confirmed a lot of the research I have already done.

You know maybe I have some ink in my blood and I should look into this as a second career/job. Hmmmmmmm...

hiding the edges?

I've been wondering, how do people hide the cut edge of the photo paper?

Hiding the edges

Paint- I have used some cutouts of various scenes on my backdrop which were prints cut out to size and pasted onto the backdrop. I then used acryllics to paint trees, bushes, etc to hide the edges of the print.

Patrick - Espee over Donner

Hiding the edges

Hi Bill

This is my ideas - and since I have not tried any of this, at this stage they are only ideas.

My plan is to have a narrow shelf type layout built in shadow box style - probably 12-16" tall.   Any photos I use will be as background - like to extend a street from a commercial into a residential area, or between builidings,  So the top edge of the photo would be tucked under the bottom edge of the upper shelf and the side edges would be hidden behind 3-d buildings, trees, light poles, etc.  Bottom edges can be aligned with cracks in the 3d street, behind the back rail of your track, etc.   These ideas are not my own - I have gotten them from the MRH forum - mainly from Tom's Logansport & Indiana Northern http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/8934(the entire thread is full of pictures and tips) and Jason's  JL&T Railroad http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/13536?page=3#new(see photo's at the top of page 1 on Jason's thread).  In fact on pages 4 and 5 of Jason's thread, there is a discussion of this very thing.  I know there is one other thread on MRH where the OP did similar things, but I can't find it now.

A lot of the streets here in my town have trees planted near the street and the limbs extend out over the street like a canopy which forms a natural upper framework.

Anyway, these are my ideas as of now, but once I start doing it, I'm sure I will need to make modifications - you know - no plan survives first contact.

Epsons

SOME Epson printers will print up to 44" wide. There are problems with this:

• the amount of ink used
• finding photo paper in that size (don't use anything other that hi-res paper or the image quality won't be good enough)
• color-fastness -- how will the backdrop look in a few years. This is an especially serious problem if you have sunlight in your train room. Sunlight will destroy most photos in several years. If you have fluorescent lamps in the train room, you probably should use either U/V sleeves or an acrylic diffuser to remove the image killing U/V from them.

Charlie

Canon

As a long time owner and user of both a Canon wide format (W7250) and the before mentioned Canon Pro9000 I can tell you Canon products produce top shelf results. But brace yourself, you will go broke feeding them ink!!!

Paper makes all the difference in the world regardless of the machine. Kodak photo ink jet paper is expensive but realistically you are not going to need that much. Price per square inch naturally drops considerably when you buy on roll. However, once you price a roll fed wide format you will forget about buying one.

Number of ink colors is important. Most inexpensive units use 4 - cyan, magenta, yellow, black. More color accurate units use six - CMYK + red and green. Higher quality yet printers use 8 - CMYK + RG + Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta. 8 color units print stunning images mostly because they have the widest and most accurate color space.

Droplet size matters. The smaller the droplet from the print head the finer the resolution and less dot gain that can be accomplished. Droplets are measured in picoliters. Smaller is better.

For my money you can't go wrong with a Canon product. But don't expect it to be the least expensive.

Alan, how many print heads

Alan, how many print heads have you gone through on that wide format printer? I an a Canon service tech and have worked on a few of the Canon wide formats. The print heads are also very expensive. The quality cannot be beat though.

Print Head

It is on its second head now. First one lasted about 4 years. It seems lack of use is more damaging than use. The printer did not see heavy use initially. A subset of the cyan nozzles failed. Now the printer is heavily used and the second print head is hanging right in there. Otherwise the machine has not suffered any other issues (knock on wood). My only real complaint is the loading of new media and the auto sensing system. It is incredibly fussy about paper alignment yet there is little you can do to make it align because the machine auto loads. It would be much easier if I could simply manually feed and align the paper myself before the tension rollers are locked down. Still, for a 6 color machine it prints wonderfully.

And you are so right. Yikes, a new print head is very pricey. 

Most of the wide format

Most of the wide format printers are finicky about roll loading. HP is the same way.

Think of your wide format printer as a giant ink jet printer, they both work the same way. And yes, they do need to be used or the head nozzles will clog.

Epson makes a whole series of

Epson makes a whole series of printers that take 32 foot rolls as well as cut sheets.   http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&sku=C11CA16201     Ink and paper are a HUGE part of both print quality and longevity. 

Dye versus Pigment Inks

The comment about how light-fast a print is can be key, especially in a room where strong sunlight can fade a print within a few weeks. Whilst this is an ongoing debate and ink chemistry is constantly changing, generally I would use pigment inks rather than dye inks for anything that isn't going to be stored away from light. Unfortunately most inkjet printers use dye inks and getting into pigment ink printing can be very expensive.

I found this website which shows the sort of fading that can occur:- http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00FV2F

I would suggest two options:-

1) Use pigment inks, probably by going to a wide format printing company, but this may not be a cheap option.

2) Use normal dye based inkjet printing, but search the printer manufacturer's website for which of their papers promise a longer life if used with their inks. Then spray the print with a can of UV protective varnish, such as Frog Juice (honest!) which helps prevent fading. I haven't seen any studies as to how effective this would be, so no guarantees.

I'm fortunate as I have a commercial printing business and we use an Epson 7900 wide format printer, but the eleven different color ink cartridges cost $150 each, so refilling the beast requires a small mortgage!

Good luck.

Photo backdrops

I have seen the photo backdrops on Tom Johnson's layout.  He prints one 8x10 photo at a time and you would be hard pressed to see the seams.

Jared Harper

Athens, GA

Photo Printers

The best printer to use is a wide format printer.  I have an Epson 7880 printer. Using the Epson K3 inks, it has  3 shades of black and the the other 5 colors.  Mine uses a roll of paper 2' x 100' so I can print any size panorama photo.  The semi gloss Epson paper is an archival paper and will not fade in your lifetime or your kids lifetime.  In a test for my clubs new modules, samples of the paper were glued to a board with spray on 3M 77 glue and with white glue IE: Elmers and there were no problems.  Since the newer versions of the printer are more expensive, over 3 grand, my suggestion is to take it to Costco.  Every Costco I have been too has the 7880 printer.  If your not a member, $55.00 to join and the cost of them printing it for you and it will be one heck of a price less than Kinkos, Staples or any other place I can think of.  A note about inks.  You buy an ink cartridge for your printer that may have generously speaking, 10 mls of ink for $15 to $18 dollars.  The 220 ml Epson ink cartridge used in the 7880 printer is $86.00.  The K3 is the best inkjet printer ink out there, period.  If your taking panorama pictures, use Adobe Photoshop.  Someone mentioned  to me that Photoshop Elements has stitching capabilities.  Photoshop CS5 has a really good one.  Any Digital Camera can take a panorama picture, but the best to use is a DSLR.  On the internet, there are many Youtubes telling you how to do it.