For the price it's nice, but not for pro use
Written: Mar 03 '04
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Pros: Nice prints, immediate gratification, relatively inexpensive
Cons: No accurate usable profiles, LCD viewer a gimmick, no matte finish, only one size print
The Bottom Line: Not for pro use or to sell prints, ok for home use on snapshots photos
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| hawklady99's Full Review: Hi-Touch Imaging HiTi 640PS Thermal Photo Printer |
I have used the HiTi640PS for about 6 months now. I have previously owned the Olympus P400 dye-sublimation printer and now also own two Epson inkjet photo printers (1280 and 2200) I'm a pseudo-professional photographer and I wanted a printer to make some quick 4x6 prints instantly at home and possibly when I do event photography to produce a quick print for sale at the venue.
The HiTi 640PS is a dye-sublimation printer as opposed to an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers spray small droplets of multiple colors of ink on paper and rely on the ink droplets to spread on the paper into the adjacent color droplets to produce smooth tones and blends. Dye-sublimation printers superheat their dye ribbons and the dye heats to a gaseous state and is then applied to the paper. The dye-subs lay the color down in three separate passes of the paper, yellow, then magenta then blue. When the colored gas hits the paper it is automatically blend in with the other colors. If you can imagine different colors of melted wax being mixed on heated paper. After the three colors are laid down the printer puts on the clear gloss coating. Prints come out of the printer completely dry and ready to handle.
The HiTi is a very user friendly printer for beginners. It's user interface (called PhotoDesiree) is, if a bit bulky in it's number of steps for preparing a photo, very easy to follow and use. It touts a hand held LCD viewer so that you can print photos directly from your Compact Flash or Smartmedia card (the printer only supports these types of media at the present time (no SD cards or memory sticks). The PhotoDesiree software comes with many downloadable templates for frames that can be automatically printed over your photo for instant holiday cards etc. it would have been nice if you could have produced your own custom templates, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that (I'm still trying though).
The LCD viewer is very dark and pretty useless as far as my needs are concerned. Although I would personally never print directly from a compact flash card as I shoot in Camera RAW from my Canon 10D instead of jpg mode and the printer does not support camera RAW format. My large files need to be sharpened and checked/cropped etc prior to printing for me to be satisfied with them anyway.
The 640PS is a relatively inexpensive dye-sublimation printer. It produces a nice quality print and like many other dye-subs it puts a protective UV coating on each print as the last step. This protective coating makes the print water repellent and easy to wipe finger prints off.
A few of the drawbacks I see from this printer are as follows:
#1. the lack of accurate printer profiles for soft proofing your files before printing in programs like photoshop or photodeluxe etc. Without these profiles I found I was getting undersaturated prints and inaccurate color rendition. This led to a lot of trial and error in getting a good print. HiTI now has some software called Adjustor where you have to calibrate your printer yourself. It's all done based on a test print and your eyeballing of the colors... not very accurate, but better than nothing I guess.
#2 the fact that it does not print matte finish prints yet (only gloss)
#3 The LCD viewer is a gimmick for those new to digital photography who, although their prints look nice, would never know how much better they could look if they actually knew about profiling and color gamut etc.
I must say that HiTi's customer service is EXCELLENT. They have always gotten back to me within 24 hours even on weekends with a courteous response to my inquires. And get this, always with a response from a live person who made it clear that he or she had actually read the content of my email.
Bottom line is I use this printer to print my snapshot stuff for family members following, say, a holiday event and they really like them. But I would not use this printer to sell prints to customers. I have an account at Printroom.com that I will continue to use for all photos that I sell. They provided extremely accurate color matching profiles so I always know what color and saturation and quality I'm going to get. They print on Kodak paper and for about 39 cents a piece for a 4x6 plus shipping of course. HiTi 4x6 prints run about 40 cents a piece.
HiTi has just come out with a printer that prints 5x7 and other sizes for about $400. I will wait on reviews for that printer before I think about getting a new one. HiTi seems to be introducing a new printer for every single small improvement they have, instead of waiting to get a few improvements together and then coming up with a new model so I'd wait a few generations before I'd jump into a dye-sub from HiTi. There's a lot of competition around the bend so let the consumer reap the benefits. Wait them out a bit, make them offer you something more for your hard earned dollar, and don't be "wowed" into buying because of a lack of knowledge or experience with this type of immediate gratification technology.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): $300
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
hawklady99
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Location: NY
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 8 members
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