Introducing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro.
The 9180 is the first HP photo printer to use the new Vivera Pigment inks and writing system.
The printer is designed from the ground up with new technology in every aspect of the printer, and externally in software.
It is a Photosmart printer so the ease of use is still maintained yet there are advanced options available in software. Any person interested in printing valuable archival prints can operate the printer. The ease of use can be as simple as using Colorsmart workflow which is around the notions of sRGB or an easy and logical workflow for more experienced photographers/printers with Adobe RGB or beyond with expert users. RIP options make for a turn key efficient A3+ proofing desktop system, yet still maintaining it's excellent print for sale power of fine art and photography. Other photographic production RIPs allow for feature rich workflow , maintaining image quality yet automating large shoots and print on demand situations.
This printer is feature rich for a low price point and the most economical printer in it's class.
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Getting to know the HP 9180
You'll probably want to hear that it is better than the competition, cheaper to buy, less expensive to run, and offers more for less than the others. This all may be true yet I'd like to introduce to the specific advantages letting you discover the printer. Once informed on many of the very unique advantages you'll be able to form an opinion based on observations about this great fine art printer.
Where it all starts. Inks, Ink formulation.
The Vivera Pigment inkset are common ground for an entire line of photo printers small to large. Consistency between printer models is assured. Research and development conserve resources working towards solutions faster to bring them to current and future products. A broader user base has an important impact on third party development in parallel, so expect better product offerings in the way of media, and software solutions. Sharing of information will help to build a community without barriers for this ink base which is exactly what is needed for the new pigment printers offered by HP.
It's an 8-ink pigment printer, containing separate cartridges each of 28 ml. These are the largest cartridges for this class of printer. Cyan, light Cyan, Magenta, light Magenta, Yellow, and three blacks; K, light K , and K matte, one of which is matte black.
They are also pumped cartridges as all the large format printers are. This also contributes to consistency. The inks are non-settling so fewer problems will be had with stratification.
The ink set by colour holds no surprises. Yet the technology behind the inks certainly does. HP takes a position on the ink formulation that favours light fastness first. This and many more deliberate choices while formulating the Vivera Pigment inkset find a well tuned balance of making the new record of light fastness possible with a stability and reliability that are at the front of the technology today.
To maintain the longest permanence HP uses almost pure carbon black pigment. Yet to counter act the unwanted often disliked redness of carbon pigment, blue is added. This gives a near neutral black attaining a Dmax darker than the competition with almost twice the light fastness of reduced carbon pigment inks.
The greyscale is smooth and linearization very good. The tonality across the black to white is neutral according to my measurements. It's Dmax (Greyscale) on Fine Art media so slightly darker than others, a good thing for a little extra contrast.
All three black inks are on board. No need to change out cartridges, purges, or cleaning cycles. This is obviously the way it should be.
All three K's are used on all media except photo media. Photo media are any RC type papers or basically glossy and satin types. All art media, fine art, canvas or surfaces with a diffuse non-shiny surface. This is because the matte K has a velvety look that would create gloss uniformity problems on the shiny stocks.
While two K's K+lK are used on shiny stock they are also combining composite colours to extend the contrast range. The overall look B&W on photo media is rich and smooth.
Not as rich as the Vivera dyes but comparable to any other pigment printer. Greyscale K only printing is disabled on photo media.
The other colours are well behaved very stable by design. They could have had a higher gamut, yet the trade off is stability and light fastness The gamut is sufficient for photo reproduction and covers the entire gamut of offset. This gives birth to the 9180 being an excellent A3+ press proofer. Quite a few rip's are already in development for proofing and some for photo production. This ink set is easy to create profiles for, and easy to make set ups for almost every media type for pigment printers.
The inks are water resistant on media, and waterproof on the Advanced HP media.
This lends itself to outdoor use and heavy handling of loose proofs. The inks also have high adherence so flaking will not be a problem on fine art media with these inks.
They are dry and stable very quickly. They do not stick or transfer to plastic sleeves.
On Light fastness
In this aspect HP sets the bar very high. They have effectively doubled all others light fastness fade testing behind glass. Formidable to say the least, not a small jump, but huge jump. What more could you want from a fine art printer?
Well what I wanted was the assurance that if I chose not to glass mounts matte or canvas it could be used in display with reasonable fade resistance. I was surprised to read the fine print from WIR that the bare bulb figure was 112 years. What this says is if the print is in a non-polluted environment you will be able to show canvas and matte without glass mounting for long periods of time. It is actually around 3 times longer than the others so this is an incredible feat for those who like the look of the media surface without interference of the glass.
Wilhelm Image Research (WIR) is still testing, as last minute changes have to be validated, yet there is strong suggestion that the numbers will be more than 250+ years!
Patented print head maintenance method
Beyond, way beyond any other inks is a new idea to ensure reliability (clog free operation) the problems that plague all pigment printers up until now.
The way it works on the 9180 is the ink has an ionic charge. At the capping station (the side where cleaning and wiping , dumping of waste ink is) the printer fires a small amount of ink through the nozzles where it is measured as a field current (electrostatic).
The amount of current produced is validated. If the current is less than expected the printer knows that the loss of ink is due to the nozzle being partially plugged. The printer then programs a cleaning of only the nozzles that are required on levels of priority. These cleanings waste next to no ink at all. Gone are the days of huge waste ink run through all colours unnecessarily. Gone are clogs too, all this automatic and in the background.
This alone will bring a lot of new users to HP as it is a modern solution to a problem that has the user in mind.
The printer should be left on all the time as it checks and caps the heads daily. Not to worry, according to HP it can run a year and a half per set of cartridges if anyone were to leave it on and not use it! Seriously what this does is gives you always ready printing and zero clogs with almost no ink loss. When the warnings of low ink appear just keep printing until the printer stops. Usually you can do this even with the printer stopping in the middle of a job, replace the empty cartridge, and keep on printing with no ill effects.
Print heads
These are an entirely new design. They are lithographic process printed heads designed to last the life of the printer. They have an extended expected life going beyond their competition. A very good thing if you think about how many printers you see at the end of their life after just a year and a half of use. They are bi-colour efficient heads. They are very simple to install, inexpensive, and user friendly.
The coverage per ml is exceptional. On average you can get 90 A3 prints per set of cartridges thanks to the head design and ink formulation.
Pigment heads need cleaning management with intelligence to preserve the life of the head. The 9180 print heads are designed to last for the life of the printer. With the constantly monitored state and self healing of the heads there will be little wear and clog free printing. If there are permanent clogs, this system also remaps the plugged cells onto other adjacent nozzles so continuous tone printing without banding is still maintained. Yet users wanting to try unusual substrates and thicker media than are officially supported risk a head strike. More often than not it goes by without harm. When it does harm the head or if it is just wear the head is replaced as easily as an ink cartridge. They are inexpensive and this is the only model in its class to have this feature.
On a side note, one underestimated advantage of user serviceable print heads is if you were to have some drying of the cartridges say if you turned off the printer for a few months, you simply remove the heads and clean them with distilled water and cotton swabs.
The heads upon initialization use little ink and subsequent cartridge changes also need very little prime. This adds to considerable savings over other systems. The printer is delivered with a full set of shelf cartridges not inferior partially filled cartridges in the shipping box as others do.
Cleaning the NEDD and warning!
If you use your 9180 or 8850 often you'll undoubtedly create a build up of ink on top of the NEDD. Copied from below:What is getting worse though is the daily cleanings. As ink builds up under the cartridges, and on the NEDD more and more ink is required to clear this. It is easy to see the theoretical ink purge is consuming much more than first thought. Furthermore, NEDD units are becoming inoperable with ink deposits. So for what in theory is a good thing , in reality is becoming costly and perhaps a menace to the longevity of this printer.
If you have signs of excessive cleanings, slower print times with stops for the wiper blades cleaning between prints, or more frequent checks at an interval more frequent than new , there is a strong chance that the NEDD has ink and or dust/hair on it.
To clean it you need to open the top hatch, and hold the Okay button down for about 4 seconds. This will put the heads in mid travel so you can access the NEDD. It is a metal covered strip with an orifice in it between the printing area and the capping station. Clean it with paper towel and Windex or water until it is showing it's metal surface. Wipe the edges of the orifice with Q-Tips and water. You can push a little air through the slot , but go easy as if there is any water left around it could go places you don't want!
Before doing so and after you clean you can print out a chart with the number of nozzles shown as remapped. This will change after you clean so to validate your cleaning do this:
Load a letter or A4 plain paper or two.
Depress the power button and the front LCD panel X (cancel) key nine times. Continue to hold the Power button in and press the Okay button 4 times, release the Power button, and it will print out the status of the writing system.
Industrial design
The build quality on this printer is what I always wanted from HP. I can't say if they made it for me but it seems that way. What you will find nice is a very strong chassis, flat top simple design with few moving parts or unnecessary extras. I have traveled a fair bit with my prototype and it stands up to a lot of abuse in airplanes and cars so you'll find this robust printer is one built to last.
One thing that many will not have to do is to stack these printers. Yet you can and that is a considerable savings of desktop space for busy studios that need multiple printers. Probably not recommended by HP but one does what one has to do.
Electronically it's solid. The LCD is placed in a position that can be seen from the top or front, and the buttons flush. It's not obtrusive, discrete and attractive.
This is exactly what simplicity a printer should have. Flat top for putting prints on (or another 9180!), small footprint, mechanical tray, no superfluous moving parts and robust plastic and aluminum casing. The tray is a delight. It's small enough when folded, yet holds everything up to A3+. You rarely pull out the tray, rather the catch tray on top. It's purely mechanical so you can remove and replace it in operation. To load the tray you remove the catch tray and adjust the media alignment tabs for the paper you just put in. The tray accepts 60 or more sheets (photo media) depending on thickness of course.
The new part is the specialty media tray. You lower this tray for any fine art media or single sheet media you like. You also will use this for rear feed including panoramic, banner, and roll feed. If you need to use roll media of whatever size, you will have to create your own PVC pipe roll holder and use a hand cutter or Rotatrim easy to do and inexpensive. Many have done this for the DesignJet series. The paper path is a straight through path so it's surface up for this tray. For the media tray it's the classic surface face down. When you lower the SMT tray there is a micro switch that retracts the head carriage for clearance of media up to and beyond 1.5mm. Loading the tray is finicky. The butt edge is not high enough for the curl of the media especially canvas. There is more than one way to do this but I front-load the media pushing the media past the heads towards the back. When the edge still exposed at the front of the printer just line up the edge to the dotted lines then press ok on the front LCD panel. It feeds the media back, measures the alignment and media size, position, and then it's ready to print. After a series of prints it is not difficult at all to do. Use the media tray for thinner media up to 250g/m2. For fine art media I would only use the SMT as the media tray is a U path.
Connectivity is USB 2.0 or the preferred built in Ethernet card. The Ethernet connection allows network printing from any number of LAN computers Mac and PC. This alone is a very desirable feature for design bureaus or studios. Combined with a Wi-Fi and or cabled LAN you can drive the printer remotely.
There is a small unobtrusive LCD panel with most of the maintenance functions available at the printer or remotely via the Web server from any of the connected computers.
Built in Auto Closed Loop Calibration (Auto CLC) and Optical alignment
HP has used optical alignment on most of their pro printers for some time.
It as all the other optical and calibration routines fully automated.
In fact an optical measure is made for each and every print. If you load a media that is the wrong size for your print jobs the printer will let you know rather than overprinting the inside of the printer. The optical sensor does a very complete and fine alignment of all the print heads fully in the background. Nothing could be easier.
This is a great system to ensure highly consistent results at any given time and or condition at print time. It is a filtered light that reads a printed chart and builds a table measured values to later compare them to expected factory values. From this a look up table is created and lodged in the resident memory to adjust the printer's calibration to a known default design value. It is not a characterisation (profile) but a calibration, which makes repeatability possible with tight tolerances. A the heads wear, replacement of cartridges, media changes, even environmental conditions affect printing, the calibration pulls it back into this known state. By maintaining consistency to a factory level not only assures print quality is optimum on the print you make today but also you'll be able to reprint at anytime in the future. While I think this is a nice feature for consistency I think it has as much potential for third party media, which will move about more than HP OEM media. So between batches third party media now is managed automatically by hardware calibration. IF you were to sell a series of prints today and the same client comes back to you in a year you have a very good chance of producing prints identical to the originals with Auto CLC.
The auto closed loop calibration eliminates inconsistency at a professional level you'll be sure to count on.
The HP Photosmart Pro 9180 is a pro level printer at offered at a price aligned to entry level.
Media Options
Pigment printers have a huge advantage over dye in that they can print on most any coated surface. Many years have led to a plethora of media adapted for pigmented inkjet printers. They even print on untreated surfaces for those willing to experiment.
With the 9180 you can use any brand of media you choose. You'll want to try the new HP media for this printer; here's why.
HP takes this further by optimising media specified by requirements R&D that produce better results with Vivera pigments than of the shelf media.
With the release of this printer four new fine art media were specified for of which Hahnemühle has an agreement to make the first in a series of matte fine art media. The Advanced media line has also be changed in favour of this printer. The HP branded media are not the same as OEM media yet similar. This allows is the finest quality on these optimised media, yet similar to your traditional favourite media third party may even be better on other brand printers than the OEM media.
For example the HP Smooth Photo Rag is a 265 g/m2 version of the Photo Rag with a smoother surface, brighter surface, yet no more optical brightener. Some other additional characteristics make for better print durability than ever before. The two other Hahnemühle fine art media are textured watercolour media. One of the things that makes the HP OEM fine art media better than other OEM media are the colour characteristics are the same across the board. This gives you a similar colour look across all three surface types. The measured black point is the same, the media white almost exactly the same and the ICC profiles (excellent by the way) show the same colour character across the line. So you simply chose the surface, there are no shocking differences in colour. A great plus for using the HP OEM media by using these new optimised fine art media.
The printer is also the first to use an improved version of the Advanced Photo media. The goal was to make the media look as close as possible to traditional photographic material yet maintain the longest permanence out there. They did this very well. The Glossy looks like a dark room photo, has a very heavy weight and avoids crescent marks. It prints without roller marks and is waterproof. The Soft-Gloss is satin or lustre surface that has the look of Kodak F surface. Both of these papers fill the need for photo reproduction destined for clients, and albums. I think the Soft-Gloss also will be a very good contender for more saturated imagery be it photographic or illustrative.
These are the beginning of many more media types to come as the common base is the inkset that will be and already is used in HP photo printers. The SnapFish Kiosk printer uses these papers and inks to give you an example of extending the media and ink lines to much larger distribution.
There are many more media listings in the driver, all the compatible HP media in fact.
I've tried many third party media and most have worked very well, as well as other pigment printers on the same media. Yet I must remind you I still have a prototype whereas the shipping version has slightly different inks. This printer will support just about any media you can throw at it outside of the swellable polymer media for dye printers.
Printing workflows and ICC colour management
In the past HP has been known as having acceptable profiles. For general use they were okay and ease of use was more important than correctness. After all these years of working with developers I see the 9180 profiles as correct as they can be and then some.
I have tested many different configurations and cannot find fault with the provided profiles. So much so that even with all the equipment at my disposition, I feel no need to create the profiles that are already as good as they can be. Yet when you do need to use a third party media profile you can easily create them, have them created for you (something I do for HP users), or download profiles from HP or third party reseller sites.
In the maintenance utility you click on add custom media profile and a folder is created where the associated media/profile will be copied to. The new media and it's profile then will be available in the driver set ups. This is a first and is a very nice way to handle custom media profiles. Easy and simple, just the way it should be. By making available the profile and media in all menus you can have colour management outside of Photoshop. To create a profile is very simple as well. The driver is well behaved and when you print with no colour management (application colour) you can easily print test charts for profile creation. I would like to see some type of sharing of profiles between users. While we can expect third party media resellers to provide profiles, users will find a profile repository a welcome positive approach to building an HP community. This is on my wish list; make it high on your list too!
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Printing colour is straightforward from easy with little knowledge of colour management up to advanced for power users alike.
The user interface for printing in the printer couldn't be simpler, yet offers every possible solution that you would need within the capabilities of the printer. There is an Adobe plug-in module that streamlines workflow yet encompasses all the print dialogue boxes in one window.
In the simplest situation you simply use a Colorsmart/sRGB workflow that assumes capture or documents to be the standard sRGB colorspace. This is the default for most any non-professional device out there including cameras, scanners, application documents, even printer color spaces.
The printer takes care of the rest including all color transformations.
If you want to print with greyscale you simply chose that option.
If you have images with other than standard profiles for example that come through workflows like scanners, C1 PhaseOne, or prepress then Colorsync will automatically take into account the embedded profile or default if missing then transform the colours to the selected media.
For users more familiar with color management the most common Adobe RGB workflow simply takes your images and or documents already in Adobe RGB, (a standard high quality color space in all Adobe graphics applications) and transforms the image for the desired media settings. To the right; simplified Greyscale options. Let Printer Manage Color is the option that gives you the most flexibility in your printing.
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If you then choose greyscale in the drop down you'll find the middle tab changes contextually to Composite or Grey inks only. This only applies to media other than Satin, Gloss, or other shiny photo media.
The reason is simple, if you use matte black on glossy there will be flat areas on the print adjacent to glossy areas creating gloss uniformity problems. To avoid this it is greyed out in the case you choose a photo media and greyscale.
Grey inks only is however the best method to print your fine art media.
Have any of you wanted to add a custom media and have that media and profile come up in the printer dialogue menus?
Well it's very simple with the 9180 too. Have a custom profile made, or download one and simply use the printer utility to add the media and profile automatically to the correct placements so that they are then available.
Proofing CMYK for offset with the RGB driver and Photoshop(CS, CS2, CS3).
You may have noticed the remarkable quality of rgb images printed reliably with pretty much a standardised ICC Color Management policy, but if you are asking, “Do I need a RIP to proof to?” here is the solution.
Since the suite of CS3 Adobe products came out, there are differences in each of the suite’s output. It was easier before, as with a good custom profile you could print from whatever application and the results were almost identical.
Recently I needed to proof some magazine pages at near contract proof quality the best I could with the 9180 and Advanced Glossy.
The only reliable way I found was to make some custom Hue/Saturation curves, and Selective Color, apply them with an Action, then print the CMYK files with the RGB driver.
You need to use the normal ICC printing practices of course , but here is the exact method;
If your image is in CMYK , you have nothing more to convert. If your document is coming from another application, you need to export as PDF, or create a PDF in whatever way you need to. In InDesign for example you need to use “No Color Conversion” and “Include all Profiles”. I saw that if you do use profiles in InDesign , the CMYK numbers are false when exported if the color policies are set to use profiles, even when the same as the image profile!
Then rasterize the PDF in Photoshop as a CMYK file with the print resolution at 300 PPI.
Make sure that the exported PDF has exactly the same numbers as the image, if the image has been saved out from Photoshop as a CMYK.
If you are only proofing the image in Photoshop, then if the image is in rgb, convert to the destination CMYK with either Relative or Perceptual with BPC.
Run the script in the files folder at the end of this document on a flattened version of the file you want to proof. You could also just apply them in Photoshop by hand. These curves are visually calibrated to actual press sheets. The dE is higher than the ISO or Fogra reference, and higher than the actual press run, but visually quite good.
I now added a second Action called MW ref Fogra 39. This is hand done to simulate the Fogra MW2 39L data set control bar. With it the dE (2000) is over all total 1.23, best 90% 1.06, worst 10% 2.48, maximum 3.45 best of 90%=1.87. There is also too much yellow in the skin tones but modifying that would change all the other reds and somewhat blues.
Command P takes you to the print window or Print with Preview in older versions. You must print with Relative and uncheck BPC. Choose the custom Profile HP9180_AGP_Proof.icc. Press the print button after you’ve placed the document as you like.
In the print driver dialogue box choose Advanced Glossy and the mode you like. Both Best and Maximum are equal in colour, and only a gain in really dark images would be had with Maximum Detail. Use Application Managed Color, as you have done the transformation in Photoshop beforehand.
This method give very reliable results that are quite close to a Kodak Approval and real offset sheet fed press results. A bit complicated but not so complicated that you cannot achieve pro quality proofs without purchasing a RIP. Please be aware that this will work only for Advanced Glossy, and well enough for Advanced Satin. The light colours will not be as bright as real offset as the paper has a lot of Optical Brightener, which takes away all possibility of accurate highlights.
Make sure you download the folder from the link below and load/install the Action in your Photoshop Actions Folder. You could add a folder in the Photoshop application called MediaWedge curves so the Actions will find them. Add the profile to you Colorsync Profiles Folder or Color\ in Windows.
click here to download the .zip folder
Pro plug-in
The plug-in is a very useful one stop print window if you use the same media most of the time. With the release of CS3 , you no longer need the plug-in but many continue to use it anyway.
Here are the instructions on how to do so if you so desire: CS3 Windows Pro plug-in
For Apple here is a JPG of the files hierarchy; CS3 Pro plug-in Mac
Better, more neutral B&W printing on the 9180
Since I no longer have the Z printer, I'm obliged to print on the 9180. I'm comparing the Z3100 to the 9180 B&W prints. Printing on matte is pretty simple, there is little illuminant metamerism, and the grey balance stays neutral and or rather balanced in most any lighting condition.
But I find the need for printing on Satin or glossy for the Dmax.
The built in CLUTs for the 9180 are too green. When you print with forced use grey inks only, the bronzing and gloss uniformity render the print useless other than in a controlled light. I have tried coating the grey ink only prints with success but that is something too laborious for everyday printing. So for printing on other than matte you should print your images as a colour image, preferably in Adobe rgb as source, with Let Photoshop Determine Colors, apply the 9180 profile canned HP PSPro B9100-Advanced Photo Glossy.icc or custom, later select application managed colour in the driver, use Perceptual Rendering Intent, and select the preferred print quality mode. You print it as if it were a colour image. You don't need to select greyscale in the driver.
Here's the curve I made so you can experiment. I used my custom profile for AGP but it should work on Satin and Glossy canned profiles too.
NOTE: To make the action load the curve (s) you must change the path of the folder to your folder in which you placed the curves. The action in the zip will have my home folder listed as the location, thus it will load a curve without adjustments as it cannot find the folder or curve at the recorded path.
You can either re-record this step, or just make a new action with the same steps as the one described in the enclosed folder.
For those interested, I made a profile for tungsten lighting /viewing conditions essentially for B&W but also should be fine for colour. If you are interested, email me.
Photoshop curve for B&W printing
Image Quality Expectations
It's going to be a hard to write about what must be seen.
The B&W image quality on fine art media is as good or better in some ways than all the competitors. They are all different, all good. It's the character that will make you like one over the other.
What I like about the B&W on the 9180 is the all new driver screening that looks like a film grain.
The new screens are a feature that sets the HP printers apart. Thinking different led to using ink jets for what they are best at doing. This is to use a sparse drop placement rather than a line for line approach. In simple language the drops are laid down in a grain like pattern without micro lines, so the overall impression of continuity in the image have a very photographic look. No other printers have used this screening and I think you'll be happy to embrace this high-end solution for photographic reproduction destined for expositions, prints for sale, and display.
You won't find any lines or micro bands on this printer. It is a true grain when looked at with a loupe. Now you should know that it does not have the smallest droplet size, or highest resolution. Yet the detail reproduction is the best I have seen and on scans of the same image clearly show why this is so. While other printers can have a finer drop the new screen algorithms produce better drop placement with enough sparse drops in the shadows and enough fine drops all the way into the highlights. Even where you image has high contrast the driver does repro the detail if it is in the image without the artifacts and loss of highlight tone. This new screening produces ultra smooth gradients with tone up to the end of the scale. Not only is this good for images, yet also for press proofing where long tonal scale is necessary for simulations.
The B&W is rich, not reddish even though the base pigments are almost pure carbon. You do see a hint of blue at very oblique angle in daylight. The tonal range is very smooth on all the surfaces I've tried. My favourite by far is the HP Smooth Fine Art. On photo media the B&W is composite only (wish this would change in a driver update) which although is neutral in controlled lighting for which the print lighting conditions are targeted for, they are quite illuminant metameric. I have created special B&W profiles for different lighting, so it is possible to target the print for the light but don't expect B&W prints on photo media to be colour constant. Colour repro mask illuminant metamerism so it is in line with other printers in this regard but no where near as constant as a traditional darkroom colour print.
There is bronzing on composite black and white prints on glossy media. It appears as a pinkish sheen when held at certain angles. It could be reduced by spraying or perhaps reduced if K and lK only printing were permitted on photo media.
One thing to be aware of is all pigment printers have conditions that will make them both illuminant metameric, and exhibit some degree of bronzing. Such are the problems of pigment printing on photo media.
Gloss uniformity differential is present on all glossy papers. It is almost eliminated on Soft-Gloss (Satin) in fact I've not noticed any.
Colour reproduction is quite nice and fits in to where a pigment printer should. Since the 9180 fully covers press output, it makes this printer a valid proofer.
On Satin and Glossy the gamut is extended in the blue greens, which makes it a great landscape printer.
For portraits and beauty images it's a very sharp printer perhaps it produces a tad too much detail that reveal any flaws in the image that often are missed onscreen.
The 9180 prints better at Maximum Detail than Best setting. So for prints for sale albeit slower use this setting. For roughs there is a setting that blasts out prints in seconds. So fast it scared me into not using it!
It is a reasonably fast printer and it's intended user base will appreciate the quality at which the associated speeds are set to.
Added information after 2 years of operation
So much has changed since I first published this review. It was a review written about my prototype which has been replaced with a shipping model. To date I have had no problems with the shipping model mechanically.
Mine has had Ethernet connection drop outs after long periods of non-use where the utility sees the printer, but the print spooler tries endlessly to open a connection without success. Other than that not one problem!
I was going to list problems encountered by users on various forums. Thinking about it, makes me wonder to it's validity. HP fixed most problems both firmware, and mechanical. This doesn't say that in the manufacture of the printers and or in shipping things cannot still happen, but the majority of any problems discovered were acted successfully upon. You must know that the large majority of users do not post to forums without due cause of problems or questions. The posts we see are in fact the minority of users. It is from these posters that one can get a very good idea of what types of problems can and do exist, the fixes, work around's, and or other resources needed to make the printer attain it's maximum capacity.
Tech support has various levels of support, the first level rather to answer use questions. All other problems are directed higher to cover the competence necessary for the specific problem. If you call tech support do so during business hours , otherwise you are transferred to India where you may have use questions answered yet possibly not technical questions.
To their credit, HP replaced users printers rather than repairing any problems. They are quick to do so, listen well to the problems encountered, and act accordingly in good faith. Ideally perfect out of the box printers would be better, but HP should still be applauded for their response to issues.
Lat thing, the Pro Print plug-in installer
doesn't have a version checker for ulterior versions of Photoshop (CS3) yet there are work around's. Here is one for Windows. For Apple, you need to simply copy both HPHiddenExport and Photosmart Pro print, go to the plug in folder and put them in their respective folders.
After returning from holidays, a 5 week period with all the printers turned off, the 9180 was ready to print with zero errors, no clogs, banding, simply a joy to see this reliable printing considering how hard pigment inks are on their print heads.
What is getting worse though is the daily cleanings. As ink builds up under the cartridges, and on the NEDD more and more ink is required to clear this. It is easy to see the theoretical ink purge is consuming much more than first thought. Furthermore, NEDD units are becoming inoperable with ink deposits. So for what in theory is a good thing , in reality is becoming costly and perhaps a menace to the longevity of this printer.
EFI Designer Edition
An addition to the HP 9180 is a service bureau rip capable of making the 9180 a capable A3+ page layout proofer, and beyond to a very inexpensive press proofing device for decent simulations. In theory EFI Designer Edition (both HP and OEM) should be capable of contract proof quality prints within the range of the Vivera inkset, yet a verification system would have to be fully tested before making these claims.
The interface remains the same as it was for many version upgrades. It is functional and graphic. A learning curve is due for anyone new to rips. This should be something eased by the complete documentation both html and PDF. Most countries offer some training centers, which reduce the apprenticeship to a few hours. I find there are a few redundant panels, some less than perfect naming, and some quite flagrant overlaps in the preferences. EFI remain hesitant to take direction in a single leadership view on GUI, hence the overlaps taking away from an otherwise quite nice UI.
EDE is made for most capable inkjet printers, so it is a common UI for a huge range of printers. One would think the HP version would have documentation and user interface specifics to match unique HP printer options. Not the case, and the documentation is missing vital answers on usability with HP printers. Where this is most present is the calibration routines for the various HP supported printers. The 9180 has calibration routines programmed into the UI but it is not well done as no clear instructions are to be found. If you simply use intuition , you add a new calibration in preferences/print/calibration. So far so good. When it sends the file to be ripped, it should remove all doubt about paper type , color management etc. It doesn't. So you have to learn to navigate around the snafus, set the paper type to what it should be, remove job tickets and color bars, reset formats. It also needs minimum A4 media, letter would not work on V 5.1.4.
Printing to EDE in the past from applications such as Photoshop would rarely work. This is no longer true, it seems that EDE 5 and or the OEM HP version work most of the time.
Click on the 3 pane image for the complete GUI preference panels.
The nesting function is a very efficient way to group images to proof as photos, or to group page layouts for magazine and book spreads. You set the preferences in the UI then place whatever images you need in the nest. You can change any of the settings as you like, paper type, size, color management after the nest is made. You will need to redo the preview and check placement but it works better than any driver type of nesting outside of Qimage.
One of the nicer surprises is the UI toolbar is customisable on the Mac. I've been a fan of arranging my icons as I need to, so this fits right in. You can also save out all your preferences which is important for changing media types for production and for safe keeping.
The Automatic Updater has been fixed and works as expected. The updater also saves a copy to a folder of the updater in case you need to reinstall your application or system.
Conclusion
Pros
Polyvalent A3+ printer ready for fine art, photo repro, and proofing
Multiple black inks, made from essentially pure carbon
New highly optimised media to give the ultimate results
Clog free self-healing print heads
Automatic optical alignment
The highest level of light fastness in the industry
The most economical printer in its class (A3+ B size)
The best screening algorithms seen to date 16 bit in Maximum Detail quality mode
Highest capacity cartridges in its class (A3+ B size)
The only printer in its class with user friendly plug and play print heads
The only printer in its class to have Auto Closed Loop Calibration
Built in Ethernet card
Panoramic printing up to 44” on PC and more on Mac
Borderless on all supports
Straight through media path
Small minimum tray size <3x5 inches
Maximum thickness to 1.5 mm or more not limited to photo media
No cartridge changes between matte and photo media
Possibility of office document printing as matte black requires no switch/purge
Up to 60 sheets of photo media in tray for production printing
Minimal power consumption on idle
Embedded web server for remote maintenance
Extensive media sizes in the drivers and fully customisable in media set up
Cons
No roll feeder option
Tech support spotty, sometimes good others rather poor . reports are showing no improvement here
Documentation insufficient in terms of owner maintenance
Reliability issues with the SMT, transport wheels, transport system in general
The edge of the Specialty Media Tray could be higher
Grey inks only printing option for Greyscale on photo media is unacceptable
Catch tray should have some lubricant applied in the grooves
Illuminant metameric on photo media especially B&W
A bit noisy when performing daily maintenance, no long idle time power down scheduling
No equivalent 17" model
Power button much too bright
A few things missing such as preset lists in the Pro Print plug-in, also isn't for CS3
Small print sizes often load sideways
Cannot load a small sheet on top of a large sheet
Some double loading of sheets
Often needs calibrations going off for no reason, or inconsistent colours on prints
Ink consumption on daily maintenance increasing over time to the point of unacceptable
Direct connections to HP's web sites for support, automatic software never worked
Direct connection to order supplies (many countries) for your printer never worked
Many features such as the above just don't work, many software innacuracies, horrific HP web site impossible to navigate, finding help on the HP site quite difficult, lack of promptness in necessary updates
For other info on printing with HP printers see both my site here.