When Canon introduced their imagePROGRAF W8400 pigment ink large-format printer last year, they were looking bring to market a printer that targets a wide spectrum of large format output environments, including corporate, commercial, print for pay and photo retail operations as well as photography and the fine art markets.

This device is capable of printing on media up to 44-inches wide and designed with features that will appeal to those users who all require outstanding quality and high speeds in the large format arena.

One of the early adopters of the 8400 was Digi-COPY, a fast growing chain of high tech digital copy centers located in Wisconsin. Currently, they have three locations in Eau Claire, Wausau, and Stevens Point; each with a Canon imagePROGRAF W8400.

DigiCOPY is owned by Craig Shuler, a former Kinko’s employee, who started his chain about five years ago.

“We offer high quality printing services with a fast turn-around time,” says Shuler

When asked why they chose the W8400, Shuler said that they were familiar with the Canon brand. “We already had in house previous Canon units. When the W8400 came out last year we got a demo and we liked what we saw. It’s a natural upgrade from what we already had. Canon has added improvements to increase speed, increase color intensity, heighten resolution and provide a truly user-friendly large format printing solution for our business,” says Shuler.

He also likes the plethora of options in the media they can now print on. “The W8400 gives us ability to print on a wide range of media. It’s a big plus for us. We’ve been able to find an appropriate media for anything our customers have asked for so far. We can output to a host of different substrates. We can print on vinyl, sticky backs, window clings, and thicker gloss materials. We are using it on many jobs for trade shows and other types of indoor signage. The new UV inks also make a difference as well.”

The W8400 offers Canon’s proprietary print head technology that enables high-speed printing at 2400 x 1200 dpi with precise four picoliter ink droplets for high image resolution, clarity and detail. “Canon’s unique print head enables the W8400 to achieve print speeds up to 307 square feet per hour at 1200x1200 dpi resolution. Even for the most critical eyes, the printer’s highest quality mode (2400x1200 dpi, 10-bit color mode) prints at an amazing 26 sfph (22sfph with W6400),” reports Shuler.

He continues, “Canon’s new high-intensity yellow ink makes possible a wider color range and increased color intensity, while a new image processor enhances image quality for the production of brighter photos and vivid, eye-catching POP posters and materials.”

The imagePROGRAF W8400D includes the tools needed to easily create, process and print high quality professional large format output. PosterArtist, one of the many software programs that comes with the printer, provides users an intuitive template based poster creation software for any level of skill user. “Poster software makes it very easy to set up files. We love the 24 x 36 autocut full bleed feature too,” he adds.

“It does a great job in long runs of outputting 30-40 posters. The print quality is consistent throughout the run and it so much faster…we can print it over-night, so we can now go after bigger jobs from clients,” he reports.

Shuler says they are starting to see more business from the fine art community. “We can charge $50 or more for a 24 x 36-inch poster. We can print from their original, or we can design one ourselves. The W8400s software package also comes with Digital Photo Print Pro (DPPP), a software application for photo editing and printing with image manipulating tools for exceptional large-format output, DPPP allows us to utilize editing tools, such as red eye elimination, skin tone improvement, more removal, and automatic borderless cropping. DPPP offers easy image correction and layout tools for all levels of users. ” says Shuler.

“Outstanding quality, fast print speeds and the bundled software programs are what make the imagePROGRAF W8400D a breakthrough solution for our business,” he concludes.

Cygnus Business Media

A corporate user of the unit was our own Cygnus Business Media who tested the W8400 with their trade show graphics. Comments Kathy Magrane, marketing manager at Cygnus Business Media, “this printer is a valuable tool for any in house marketing or corporate communications department.” It gives you high quality performance and output of graphics for things such as trade show displays, event signage and other applications for medium to large format output.”

She said the unit was a real cost savings. “You can realize cost efficiency while still getting the same quality product because of the price point of the unit. In a three month period that we tested the product we outputted 50 graphics and realized a saving about 50% on each one output for final presentation! All, while getting the same high quality and control over the quality in house as opposed to sending it out. Having it in house gave us the ability to manipulate and refine the final output in a much more cost effect manor. Generally, the output was good on the first shot after a few test prints. Once we got familiar with the software, it really streamlined things. I liked the Photoshop plug-ins the software package offered. I found them easy to use because we worked from mostly PDF files. We just opened up the PDF and it was locked down and good. The output was true to the color,” she adds.

 

Canon’s imagePROGRAF W8400D at a Glance Dye Ink: The dye inks produce brilliant color reproduction. 1-inch Print Head: 7,680 nozzles enables fast print speeds. Media thickness: Up to 0.8mm (31.4 mil/pts) Remaining Media Length Detection: Keeps track of how much paper is remaining on the roll, preventing print jobs from being ruined. Non-firing Detection and Compensation Function: When clogged or non-firing nozzles are detected; print head cleaning cycle is automatically detected. Borderless Printing: 4 sided edge to edge printing. Exceptional Color Gamut: Canon’s dye ink produce a wide color gamut. PosterArtist: Software application with poster designing and printing capability.