Photography of Liang-Wu Cai: Fargo PrimerivaPro Elite Printer

Fargo PrimeraPro Elite Dye- Sublimation Printer

Prelude

I had my heart set for a dye-sublimation printer when I first saw a print made by a Tektronix dye-sublimation printer. Fargo provides us a low-price entry to the "dye- sub" arena. I contacted Fargo for a printed sample. The sample I got back was as beautiful as the one I got from a $15K Tektronix Phaser 480 printer.

The need for a color printer arose from my research, which is about computer simulation of acoustic waves if anyone cares to know. Since I am a Unix user, I naturally wanted the printer to be working with my unix machines. Also, as an avid PostScript programmer, I wanted a PostScript printer. I contacted Fargo to explore its usability. Although the sales representative, who frequents the rec.photo.digital USENET news group, is very courteous and helpful, every interaction with him turned me down a little bit:

Can it be used on a Unix machine? A: No. You can buy a third party's, but not available for Elite yet.
Q: It is possible to be shared it by PC and Mac? Or better yet, be networked? He didn't answer the question, but I took it as no.
Q: Does it have PostScript capability? No. It has an optional PostScript package ($400!), but it is only for Mac. It is a software, not a cartridge to plug into the printer.
Q: I have an old 486 PC running Win95. Is it usable? A: Yes, but need at least 16M memory....
Q: OK. I guess I would have to by a new PC. I would want it to run WinNT. Can the printer used under Win NT? A: No.
....

Despite the series of disappointments, I still ended up buying one, ($1695 from B&H, I also bought about $2000 worth of supplies) plus a $4000 PC as its peripheral.

Bumpy Start

The printer, called the cute little thing in my lab, appeared to be pretty easy to set up. The so-called ribbons are actually rolls of thin plastic film just like the sticky plastic wrap for leftover foods. To load the ribbon, the roll is placed in a cheap-looking cartridge. The loaded ribbon cartridge is then simply dropped into the printer, never mentioning of the precision alignment etc., and the manual says the rolling mechanism will "automatically engage". I always picture such a 4-pass printer as a high precision machine, never expected such simple procedures.

Simple indeed, but I failed miserably at the beginning. The first night, I lacked of experience....

My new computer and the new printer arrived on the same day, which means a heck of installations. I couldn't wait for the excitement of printing from this cute little thing. So, I first installed the Adobe PhotoShop, the printer driver, load up one of my favorite photos to the printer. The first page printed out OK except that image size implied by my scanning resolution is used: I got a print of the same size as a slide. Second try, I got the size right, but somehow the image appeared faint. I knew it worked, but at $3.50 a pop, it was too expensive to try more. So I tried the wax thermal printing, and my misery began...

In the first page of wax thermal printing, I got all colors off. I canceled the print job mid-way. From second page on, I never got it to work properly. I got a signal of media error for no obvious reason. Occasionally I also got data communication errors. I dug out the Fargo's web page (so fortunate that this was in my lab where I had many networked computers laying around) and found out that the problem for the data communication error was due to unconfigured printer port. Configuring the printer port was successful after following a lengthy and yet quite accurate description in Fargo's web page. Printed again, I still had no luck.

Then I tried to let the printer do a self-test (this requires the more expensive dye-sub materials). Whatever I tried, it just wouldn't print. Once it printed one color pane and got the media error again. Once it printed two panes. Later, it simply quitted printing: just gulped the paper in, then immediately spit it out, then choked while trying to chew it back again. I spent all night trying to figure out the problem in vain. Every time it choked, the expensive ribbon got rolled, the expensive paper got wasted, my heart sank: although the money is not from my pocket, but this was outrageous! I stayed up till 6am with no luck.

I got up around noon the "next day" and back to the side of the cute little thing. Looked at the whole mess I left the night before, I felt like an idiot: spending so much money got a thing that didn't work. In desperation, I tried to call the tech support at Fargo. The scrooges there didn't offer a 1-800 line for tech supports. I had to pay for the call, and in its lengthy menu, I was told to "have your credit card number ready" and then I was transferred to a line which ringed for 5 minutes without any response. Later I read the manual which says, their tech support mainly operates off a 1-900 number: caaallll meeeee.... oops, must be 18...

Well, I was on my own. This time, I rolled all the ribbon backward to the very beginning, as I were just started. Tried to clean the printer rollers as if they were dirty. Loaded the ribbon, used the junked papers wasted the night before. Viola! It printed! It did a self-test fine! Excited, I load the image again and print from PhotoShop. No problem. I am on my way....

Closer Look

Now that I am not that frustrated, I can take a closer and calmer look at the printer, for those who are interested.

The Look: In deed, it is a cute little thing. Very compact and appeared to be relatively well crafted. The structure is very simple --- all reminds me of a dot-matrix printer. It is just a plan printer: -- no on-board memory, no printer language, no setting switches. All it has are: power switch, on-line switch, input and output trays, power (12V DC) inlet, and two data ports: on for PC one for Mac.
Hardware Operation: The operation is very simple, since it is not much of a computer as many modern printers have become. Most operation controls reside in the software. The only significant operation on the printer is the loading of ribbon and papers. Both appear to be quite straightforward, but from my experience in the first night, I have to keep my fingers crossed.
Software: The software is a driver, not a stand-alone software. The installation is pretty standard for Win95. There are two other accompanying drivers. One is the a color matching program, and one is a print spooler for Win95 and backgrounders for Mac. Once the driver is installed, it will be automatically called by the print command in applications such as PhotoShop. Most of printer setups are made here, such as image orientation, darkness, resolution, and some minor things. The PostScript option is offered as software, not an add-on cartridge to the printer. This fact, and the hefty asking price, ends my plan of purchasing this option because of its too limited use. (As an add-on cartridge it would be platform independent.)
Printing Process: Printing is 4-pass. For dye-sublimation printing, each color (in YMC order) is one pass, plus the overlay layer. For wax thermal printing, it is the YMCK 4 colors. The process is pretty fast. The specifications given by Fargo state 4.5 minutes per page. If the image occupies a smaller area, the speed would be quite noticeably faster. The largest printing area is 8.5"x11.7".

Good Dye-Sublimation Print Quality:

Print quality on the 3-color dye-sublimation with overlay is good. I had a slide scanned at 1012dpi resulting in an image about 1350x900 pixels. In Adobe PhotoShop, without changing the overall image pixel size, I adjusted the printing resolution. At 150 dpi (that is: one pixel in the image is expended into 4 printer pixels, but the scaling is done by PhotoShop in printing stage), the printed image (about 6"x9") is very close to what I could get from a good photo lab.

But, a full-resolution scan (2700dpi scanning of slide cropped to 300dpi 8"x12" print) does not produce any significantly better images: the sharpness is severely limited by the lack of precision of the printer. The paper transport mechanism of the printer is very primitive. It uses rubber rollers to roll the paper back and forth 4 times for each print. For this reason, I have never been able to obtain a print that has all 4 passes precisely aligned. It appears that the paper’s orientation is slightly changed after each pass. In most cases, the misalignment is about 1 to 2 pixels in each direction, and the worst is at the top left corner (if printing in portrait orientation). It also appears that the larger the printed area, the larger the amount of misalignment. In some cases, the misalignment could be as large as 1 or 2 mm, which renders the printed results as expensive junks. (Compared to Tektronix's printer: there is absolutely no such alignment problem.)

There are some other problems I have encountered:

For large area of same colors, there is very slight banding of colors that is quite noticeable.
After I changed to the regular 50-print ribbon, the ribbon always wrinkles in the yellow pane when printing full page images. Printing over the wrinkled ribbon creates streaks missing the yellow color, making the prints useless.
The gray shades are not neutral and leaning toward magenta. The printer driver does not provide any tool for color balance adjustment. (I got the magenta tint using PhotoShop’s default setting.)
I once printed a color strip in which the color continuously changes from blue to green to yellow and to red. I found that the printer handles the green color quite poorly: between yellow and green, there is only a few intermediate colors and the color graduation is very abrupt; similar problem, although slightly better, occurred between green and deep green (greenish blue).
If there are any texts or thin lines in the image, one definitely needs to switch on "enhanced text" mode. Without this mode, texts appear broken, and thin lines may disappear.
Compared to the print made form Tektronix's Phaser, the paper sold by Fargo is much thinner.
Fargo claims that this printer is "24-bit color" "continuous-tone printing" "at 300dpi resolution". However, a closer look at the print reveals that there are still pattern of half-tone screens observable. This would suggest otherwise: dithering is used, thus it is NOT true continuous-tone. The fact is: it uses 2x2 dots for dithering. Because of dithering, the 300x300 resolution is meaningless without the information of dithering. I like the printing quality, but I don't like these misleading, if not false, claims.

I am trying to contact Fargo's Tech Support via e-mail regarding some of these problems. The automated e-mail reply message said that I have to contact them by the long-distance phone call. (Besides the phone charge, one has to pay $25 per incident, and I don't know what "incident" means.) I am still waiting to see whether any human will read my e-mail.

Here are a few things to watch out:

A finger print on the paper before printing will definitely ruin the print. Better ware gloves.
Watch for lint getting into the paper, the ribbon, and the printer chamber. Rigorous cleanness should be maintained.
The printer requires RBG color images, although it prints in CMYK color mode. Color separation and conversion are done by the printer driver. Remember, this is a cheap printer that is aimed at not the same league as that of PhotoShop.
Load the paper correctly. Unlike many printers, the printing side (shiny side) is loaded facing down. (My first print sample was too faint because of this error.)

Dismal Wax-Thermal Printing:

In fact, I so far haven't been able to print a single image. My first night's failure was due to attempting to print in wax thermal mode. The second morning, printing a dye-sub self-testing played magic, and I managed to print a number of testing samples to finish the materials supplied with the printer (10 sheets). The following day, I tried the wax thermal printing again, and the printer choked as before. After resetting the printer, by mistake I sent an image to print in the dye-sub mode but using the wax thermal printing materials. Like a miracle, it printed. In the process, the printer signaled media error intermittently but still managed to finish the printing. It seemed to me that the problem is probably a bug in the wax-thermal mode of the printer driver. From the partly failed prints, it is obvious that the quality of wax thermal printing sucks! It is dithered half-tone printing, and the half-tone screen is pretty coarse (approximately at 50 lpi frequency) and the screen is not 45 degree, and thus not quite pleasant.) Anyway, it is not working.

Afterwards, although frustrated, my inquiry mind and my responsibility to my boss continued to force me to get it to work. With lots of messing around, I found the following:

The driver software is out-dated upon receiving my printer.
The ribbon calibration procedure in the driver, the updated one, does not work at all. This was later confirmed by the tech support from Fargo.
The paper size specification (for the "Premium Quality" I bought) printed in the owner's manual is wrong. This causes the printer to misfeed the ribbon and eventually leads to the media error.

Eventually, I was able to get it to print a couple pages without error. But again, the quality really sucks! For cheaper prints, the quality of a color xerox copy is far superior!

Lots to Be Desired:

First of all, their tech support really pissed me off.

Second, there is room for improvement in the dye-sub printing quality, and the wax thermal printing is a dismal.

The printer does not seemed to be built for heavy-duty use. The paper tray can take a maximum of 25 sheets of dye-sub receiver papers.

The manual is not clear and contains numerous errors. The printer is probably too bare-bone. Even if the wax thermal printing is working, switching between the printing modes is quite a hassle and tends to be (human) error-prone.

The price. The printer itself is quite reasonable, although I see its price can come down further. The supplies are outrageously expensive. When I discussed the purchase with my advisor, he said: this is just like Polaroid, it gave you the camera almost for free, then sold you the films for real profit.

Software and the approach. It is quite disappointing the way the software was developed. I think this has to do with its marketing. It is currently pretty much geared toward personal use. But I think $1000 is a magic price point. On the other hand, the current price fits many small working groups such as research labs, small business. For those people, they ought to develop the driver for Unix and WinNT, and be network-ready. In my correspondence with its sales representative, it appears they don't quite care about this market. Their Unix driver is developed by third party, and PostScript is as software, and there seemed to be no flexibility in terms of their pricing for a mixed-platform environment. The latest news from Fargo: WinNT drivers for other Fargo printers are sold at $399. Maybe they are indeed care more about the money made from supplies and softwares. I think it is scroogely stupid.

Somehow, I feel been cheated by the "24-bit color continuous-tone 300 dpi" claim. I also ordered some 1-color (B&W) FotoShield dye-sub ribbons. They are back ordered at B&H. But from the printer driver menu, there isn't such a printing mode! I am suspecting that such a ribbon does not exist at all in this world. I could care less since this is not my money, and all I want is color dye-sub printing, but still, there is a little hard feeling....

Conclusion:

A cute little thing does a little wonder, but, probably, what you pay is what you get. My mind's eye sees a bold-faced word CHEAP written all over the place. A nice product, but the people behind it gives me quite a hard feeling. Good engineering, bad marketing and support, I suppose. I wished a competitor would appear in the market soon. (No, I am not 100% happy with the product especially because I was in a situation where money is not a concern.)

My recommendation for any one who is interested in buying a dye- sublimation printer: hold your breath! .... Just a few days after I had this printer running, I saw a local MotoPhoto (a chain 1-hour photo lab) was installing a photo "copy station" using Polaroid's dye-sublimation printer. I chatted with the store's technician a little bit, was told that the Polaroid's printer is a new product (I couldn’t find any information on Polaroid's web site) actually made by Sony. No pricing information yet, nor the cost per print. The store sells the print at $9 per page, including self-service scanning and image manipulations. The printed image was excellent. The sample displayed there is a photo surrounded a small 12-month calendar, the texts on the calendar are as sharp as those I see regularly from a 600dpi-laser printer. I'll keep an eye on more information about this printer.

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Last updated: March 14, 1998.