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Manual/Quick Start Guide (7)
The Selphy CP730 comes with a simple, 19-page English manual and a separate manual that includes instructions in French and Spanish. These print guides provide the very basics for setting up and getting started printing. For more detailed instructions and better descriptions of various tools and functions, the On-screen User’s Guide installed from the CD is the more helpful resource. This is a more complete guide and provides everything the user should need to use the printer. The instructions are clear, well organized, and include helpful graphics. Putting together the paper cassette may require the more detailed instructions in the on-screen user’s guide. Although a simple device, getting it together and hooked up requires a gentle touch so the plastic tabs don’t break. It certainly pays to install the software on a computer to at least have the manual as a reference.
Out of the Box (7.5)
Canon packs a basic set of components in the box with the Canon Selphy CP730. It comes with a power cable and adapter, a trial ink cassette, a cassette for 4x6-inch paper, and a pack of 4x6-inch trial postcard paper. There is also a cleaner stick in the box and a Canon Solution Disk CD-ROM with software for viewing, editing, and printing pictures. The following programs come on the disk: ZoomBrowser EX for Windows, Easy-PhotoPrint for Windows, ImageBrowser for Macintosh, PhotoStitch for Windows and Macintosh, EOS Utility for both, and CP printer drivers for both operating systems. There is enough included with the printer for users to start making prints a few minutes after taking it out of the box.
Setup (7.75)
The Selphy CP730 is easy to setup. The only part to assemble is the paper cassette, which comes in two pieces. The top simply clicks into the bottom tray at the hinge point, but putting it together and making it work is a little awkward. After loading paper, which slides in underneath two tabs, the cassette attaches to the printer slot behind the door on the front of the unit. There are no tricks here; the cassette just slides in and locks in place with no finagling.
The Installation CD provides options to install the printer drivers. The disc contains the drivers for two models, the CP720 and CP730. Installing the CP730 drivers took about two minutes; the software asks you to connect the printer to your computer and turn the printer on.
The main menu window also provides options for Easy and Custom installation of the User’s Guide and Software. The Easy option automatically installs five programs: Zoom Browser EX, EOS Utility, Easy PhotoPrint, PhotoStitch, and the Photo User Guide; all these take up 285 MB of space on your hard drive. Installing these programs takes about two minutes as well, after which the user is prompted to restart their system.
Total time from box to print is less than ten minutes, just what you need from a simple compact photo printer.
Drivers& Administration (6.5)
The CP730 is a simple compact printer with limited functionality, and therefore, there are not many tools within the driver. Three main tabs comprise the whole utility: Print Settings, Image Adjustment, and Utilities. The Print Settings tools include a selection for Output paper size, which includes Postcard (4x6 inch), CP_L size, Card size, and Wide (4x8 inch). The other three options in this tab are orientation, number of copies, and border.
The Image Adjustment tab includes color adjustment and brightness and contrast tools. All of these appear as slider bars with seven possible settings. The Utilities tab only displays a checkbox where the user can indicate whether or not they wish to have notification messages displayed or not. As we said—a simple driver for a simple printer.
Software (7.5)
The Selphy CD-ROM installs five programs to the user’s computer by default: Zoom Browser EX, EOS Utility, Easy-PhotoPrint, PhotoStitch, and the Photo User Guide. These are the same programs that ship with Canon digital cameras.
The software programs are organized well, with simple and advanced options. The simple instructions lead the user through the various processes easily with the default settings. However, the advanced options are certainly not daunting.
ZoomBrowser EX is a file browsing program, with the general design of task menu and file selection panes on the left and viewing window on the right. Users can create slide shows and view image properties, such as EXIF data and histograms. The View pane has three modes: Zoom, Scroll, and Preview. The Zoom mode can take several minutes to bring up files, even on a fast system, as this mode previews everything in a particular folder. We found it to be a helpful mode in theory, but in practice, its performance was sluggish. Users will be more satisfied with the Scroll or Preview modes.
Tasks include Acquire & Camera Settings, View & Classify, Edit, Export, Print, and Internet. Acquire has options to retrieve images from general cameras, from EOS cameras, or from memory cards. The View options are to set up a slide show, rename files or classify them into a folder, and search for files. In Edit images, users can make edits to photos or stitch panoramas together using the PhotoStitch program. Export options include exporting stills, shooting properties, as screen saver, as wallpaper, or backup to a CD.
Print options include the options featured on the Selphy itself as well as others. These include printing one photo per page, index printing, opening Easy-PhotoPrint, or print using other software.
Internet provides a handy utility for e-mailing images. The user can choose to send full-sized images or reduce the file size and/or quality.
The Easy-PhotoPrint software is appropriately named. It’s set up as a 3-step process, making it easy for first-time users to navigate and simply print pictures. Its simple graphic layout allows users to browse and select their photo in tab 1, choose paper size and type in tab 2, and choose the print layout in tab 3. A counter below each image indicates the number of prints, so users have to select this and remember to set it to zero before going back to print another image from the same folder. There are also Correct/Enhance options in the Image Selection and Layout/Print tabs: Correct has Auto and Manual settings for Red-eye correction, Face Brightener, and Face Sharpener; Enhance includes auto and manual tools for Digital Face Smoothing and a manual tool for Blemish Remover. The tools are very coarse (options 1, 2, and 3), but produce noticeable results.
Paper Selection offers the various paper size selections—L size, postcard (4x6 inch), card size, eight stickers, and wide (4x8 inch). Layout/Print gives the various selections for borderless and bordered prints, including multiple on a page and index. Rotate and trimming tools appear here, as well as the same correction tools.
The EOS utility helps users download images from their cameras and allows them to set preferences for this action.
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