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Out of the box (8.00)
The R2400 comes with the basic equipment for getting started, including the nine ink cartridges (see Ink section), the User’s Guide, quick start guide, installation CD-ROM, Firewire cable, matte sheet support tray, single sheet guide tray, and roll paper holders.
Manual/Quick Start Guide (7.50)
The quick start guide is a standard folding sheet with easy-to-follow, graphics-oriented instructions. The User’s Guide is a 118-page, English-language manual with steps to guide the user through the whole printing process, including instructions on loading the various media types into the various paper feed locations, printing on roll paper, maintaining the printer, and troubleshooting.
Setup (5.50)
Basic physical setup and installation of ink cartridges is a simple process. Steps include unpacking, plugging in the printer, installing ink cartridges, and loading paper. The ink cartridges are the only "parts" to assemble, and this process includes simply lifting the assembly arm on the print head where it sits in the home position on the lower right. The cartridges click into place to acknowledge their proper installation.
Software installation is also simple, although it takes about 12 minutes. The whole installation process was completed in about 24 minutes.
Drivers and Administration (7.50)
The Epson drivers included with the R2400 provide a lot of options for color management and other settings. Paper type selection is limited to Epson papers. Only a single standard Epson profile comes with the installation package. Users have to visit the Epson website to download paper-specific ICC profiles that "provide more accurate color print quality than with standard profiles shipped with the printer." Users can also download ICC paper profiles for the R2400 from some paper manufacturers, such as Ilford, Hahnemuhle, and Innova.
The driver window is comprised of three tabs: Main, Page Layout, and Maintenance. The Main tab displays the most commonly used selections, including print quality, paper type, and additional options. A handy ink level graphic shows up in this window as well, which is very helpful to have alongside the other printer information without having to click on an additional button, as is the case with many other manufacturers’ drivers, such as Canon.
The Advanced tab shows some of the same quality and layout options, but it also includes color management selections. These include four options: Color Controls, PhotoEnhance, Advanced B&W Photo, and ICM. Selecting each of these brings up different options.
Color Controls includes a drop-down box that lets users set the Gamma (1.5, 1.8, and 2.2). Users can also set the Color Mode to Epson Standard, Epson Vivid, or Adobe RGB. Tweaking the photo is possible with image editing slide-bars, including brightness, contrast, saturation, cyan, magenta, and yellow.
PhotoEnhance is Epson’s automatic controls for all the settings shown in the Color Controls option.
Advanced B&W Photo allows users to create black and white effects with their color image file without altering or creating a new file. See the Dedicated B&W Settings / Effects section on the Print Settings / Options page for details on these settings.
Selecting ICM management in the Advanced tab allows users to select 5 options. Three different ICM modes can be selected via the first drop-down box, including Driver ICM (Basic), Driver ICM (Advanced), and Host ICM. The first option allows users to make selections in four additional boxes. Input Profile shows sRGB and ColorMatch RGB by default. Checking the Show All Profiles checkbox below the drop-down boxes shows all the printer profiles and other color mode profiles, such as Adobe RGB. Intent allows users to set the rendering intent, dependent upon the printer profile in use. Printer Profile shows all the profiles loaded into the printer’s properties. As noted above, the R2400 comes only with the Epson Standard profile. Once users have downloaded other paper profiles, these can be copied into the proper folder through the printer properties window and these will show up in this box. Printer Profile Description is the last box, and, presumably, had we other Epson printers that utilized the same drivers installed on our computer, then their names would show up here.
Driver ICM (Advanced) allows users to make all the above selections for individual file types, broken down into photo, document, and graphics. Host ICM provides two of the options, Intent and Printer Profile.
Three additional checkboxes are shown in the lower left. High Speed is checked by default, and this speeds up the printing process, no matter what quality setting is enabled. This is an unfortunate choice by Epson, since it’s easy to leave this box checked and thereby reduce the quality of the prints. Users have to remember to uncheck it each time. The other two checkboxes are Edge Smoothing and Print Preview.
Also in the Advanced tab, users can also save whatever settings they’ve created and name them for later use. In this way, the High Speed box can be unchecked for the custom setting, and, by printing with these settings, the unfortunate mistake of leaving it checked is avoided.
Software (5.00)
The Epson R2400 ships with very little software. The installation CD-ROM includes the printer drivers, Epson EasyPrint plug-in module, and Epson RAW print plug-in module. The last two are for Windows installations only. Editing and printing software programs are only available as accessories. (See the Accessories section on the Tour / Components page.)
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