Epson Artisan 50 Ink Jet Photo Printer

"In just over a year it went dead. Would not turn on. Made so it is not repairable. In otherwords it couldn't be fixed. Past warranty so no replacement. This was a replacement for an HP that did the same thing a year earlier. Printer companies need to go back to the old way of making repairable products that hold up over time. The printer when it worked did a decent job on printable disks and the occasional photo. We didn't use this printer a lot but made sure we did print once a month to keep ink system flowing and maintained. Overall a huge dissapointment. No one could pull the electronics from the machine to diagnose and repair problem as it's put together in way that prevents that with plastic tabs interlocked etc. Since we had nothing to lose we did attempt to zero in on exact failure but as predicted plastic tabs broke and therefore we do not recommend this printer. I've got a Photo 2000 and now worry that expensive Epson will eventually fail in the same manner. Deserves no more than one star when it can't last 1 year let alone 5."

"Here's info I couldn't find before buying this printer, and it's very important. I use an Epson Pro 3880 for my fine-art photo printing, but I also need an everyday printer for businesss documents, web printing, and good quality photos and greeting cards. I especially wanted to use the better papers for the photo and art apps (when I didn't feel it necessary to fire up the big gun) and I was delighted to learn the Artisan 50 would take heavyweight papers without a problem and print very good quality, too. Not as good as the Pro 3880, of course, but still quite good. For my tests, I tried Moab cotton rag 300 gsm and Hahnemuhle Natural Art Duo at 256 gsm for the better matte papers, plus Moab Colorado Fiber Gloss 245 and Innova Fibaprint White Gloss f-type300 gsm for the semi-gloss papers (the latter two are better than anything Epson makes). The Artisan 50 took the heavier papers just fine and, although the color and contrasts were different than the 3880, I was able to make PhotoShop adjustments to get good prints on all of them in color, although the Innova White Gloss F-type didn't perform as well in color. The Moab Colorado Fiber Gloss 245 was best for color in semi-gloss (better than the Epson papers and you can use the "Epson ultra premium semi-gloss setting). Next, I tried black and white on the two semi-gloss papers -- the Moab Colorado Fiber Gloss 245 and the Innova Fibaprint White Gloss F-type 300 -- and the Artisan 50 printed both of these very well. But it required some adjusting to get a neutral or warm tone print. When I checked the black and white/grayscale box under "advanced tab" it printed a cool tone print with a very slight purplish cast. The print quality was surprisingly good and it was similar to what you'd get with cold tone developers and selenium toning in the darkroom. As is, this is good when you want a cold tone print. But I wanted to see if I could make a neutral or slightly warm print, so I switched off the "black and white" and switched on "color controls" and also "Epson Standard" in color mode (all under advanced tab).Next, in PhotoShop, I made a duplicate layer and overlaid a yellow filter, as follows: Image= Adjustments= Photo Filter= Yellow at 10% with preserve luminosity, and this knocked out the purple. I then made a new layer with Image= Adjustments= Photo Filter= Sepia 10% with preserve luminosity, and this warmed it up a bit. These two filters -- 10% yellow and 10% sepia -- flattened the contrast a little, so I boosted the contrast in "levels" and with these adjustments I got very beautiful neutral tone black and white prints on both papers. And had I wanted more warmth I could have easily increased the sepia or overlaid another warm filter or color in a small amount. All of my tests were done with either "photo" or "best photo" settings, and the best photo provides a barely noticeable improvement, so if you don't need it, you can save ink by using "photo" which still prints up very nicely. By the way, for business plain paper printing, I tried both "draft" and "text" settings, and the draft mode prints quite faint and I found that unacceptable. This is an amazing printer for[...], and it doesn't even matter if it lasts very long because, since a set of inks is $60, the printer is just $39. Easy enough to buy a new one. I also like that you can get the series 77 ink cartridges that hold 50% more ink. I didn't see these at B&H yet, but they do have them on the Epson website, so if you do more than just occasional printing, this is the way to go. I'm very pleased with this printer. It's easy to use, takes the thicker papers, handles the everyday printing with good speed, and does afine job on color printing, and will even produce good quality black and white prints with a little PhotoShop work. Finally, it has settings for Envelope and CD printing, plus a "quiet mode" for plain paper printing, which is great when you need to print a 30 page document and don't want the noise. All in all, an amazing printer for the price!"

"The Artisan 50 is the new version of the Epson R280. I shoot a lot of photos and my wife does scrapbooking which really gives the printer a workout. I owned two Epson R280s, which are the 'old model' of the Artisan 50, but use the same ink cartridges.The Artisan 50 produces exceptional photographs and is very fast. Epson's paper/dye technology is very durable, waterproof, and smudge-proof. The only downside is that ink is expensive, as with any inkjet printer, so the money you used to spend on film developing now goes to Epson for their ink. While I am just a rank amateur photographer, all my semi-pro photographer buddies use only Epson photo printers, since the quality is as good as it gets.The Artisan 50 is the new version of the Epson R280. I had one Epson R280 which worked beautifully, then totally died after about a year. I repair electronics as a hobby, and it was not fixable. I bought a new-in-box R280 [...] that lasted exactly three days (no warranty, ugh), and also was not fixable. B&H had a very good price on this printer, as well as a trusted reputation, which is vital when buying anything online. The extended warranty was only $12, which is a bargain and very good idea, based on my experience with these printers.[...]"

"This is a followup review after a period of use. I use the printer primarily for printing CDs & DVDs, I have printed about 240 disks to date and find the included software easy to use. I made a nice looking photographic background with some nice gradation-multicolored, text for titles in Microsoft publisher, then imported and added the rest of the text using the included software. The diameter settings for telling the printer the hub diameter and outside diameter work perfectly, though I find I get less overspray if I use an outside diameter 1 mm smaller than the disc. I got 234 disks printed by the time I replaced the first 3 regular size cartridges (there are 6 cartridges). I figure this is a good average number for ink/disc printing performance.



I am very pleased with this printer and it's performance. I takes about 2.5 minutes to print a disc. I have only wasted 1 disk when colors ran out midway thru the printing."

"We bought this printer primarily to print labels on CDs. I have used Microsoft Publisher, Photoshop and our own pictures to produce the background image which includes some nice titles and effects that exceed the capability of the included software. I then import the image and add additional text. This has worked GREAT! The image prints exactly on the disk as it is displayed on the screen. Print time is about 2&1/2 min. per disk. I don't know if that's fast or slow but is workable for us.



The printer has a small footprint and both the paper input and output trays fold up neatly which not only takes up less space but keeps dust out of the machine.



I read a review that described the artisan 50 printer as "noisy". I don't find it any louder than any other inkjet we've had so I wonder if that wasn't and individual quirk. However, we have had one problem.



The paper output tray must be switched from the paper slot to the CD slot in order to print on CDs. This is a very simple task but once the printer kept giving error messages saying the CD tray was improperly installed (it wasn't). Finally I ran a test print on paper & then switched the tray. For whatever reason this seemed to cure the problem.



To summarize, I found the software very easy to use, the CD print quality is excellent with no hassles aligning the image on the disk. I think it's hard to go wrong with all the good points and low cost of this machine."

"Purchase the Artisan 50 as a replacement for Rx580, 90% of use is to print Photos edited using Adobe Cs4. The inkpads were saturated after three years of intensive use. I had been satisfied with the ink set on Kodak ultra paper so searched for a photo printer only, using the same ink set as the Rx580. I seldom use the Rx580 scanner as I have an Epson V500 to scan my negatives (Kodak ProEkta).

Artisan is quieter than the Rx580 and a bit faster and I like the real time ink level indicator. I noticed a magenta bias in the prints, especially the skin tones, somewhat like prints from old Fuji negatives – this was not apparent using the identical paper and ink set from my old Photo Shop files. A correction in CS4, color, hue, red (+15-24), solved the problem. Using the RAW editor, hue, red +35 or so, seems to do the trick also. This magenta shift (?) is not noticeable in my scanned images from either Kodak ProEkta or Portrait Pro using 16bit channels.

I am satisfied with the Artisan 50 printer, excellent price/performance. The setup was simple, I downloaded the files from the Epson website as the setup disk files were out of date for my Mac 10.5+. The only issue is the paper print settings, which is not as user friendly/flexible as the old Rx580 – not a big issue but a minor annoyance."

"i specifically bought this printer because it was only 100 dollars and i needed to print dvd's for my video business. I have used it three times so far and the color and the picture are even better than i thought.I have not printed on any paper. the set up was easy and didn't take long at all.i would definitely suggest this printer to a friend. Ink is a little pricey but thats for every printer."

"I mainly use this product to print on DVD/CD's. I already have an existing printer that I am happy with for day to day activities, but really wanted to start printing some nice DVD's to distribute to friends and family.



The images printed on the DVD's are a lot better than I had expected. Very vibrant in color and didn't really notice any lines. The software is very easy to use. Nicely priced from B&H for less than a $100.



The only negative I see is that it's almost as large (foot print) as my 3-in-1 printer without the ability to scan, no lcd screen and no card reader built in. But this printer was much less than my 3-in-1 and I wasn't wanting those extra features anyhow! Just need to print on DVD's"

"i got this printer not to long ago.the main reason was that i needed it for photos.i just wanted a printer that i could afford but at the same time with awesome quality.this printer was the one!the artisan prints way better images than your local 1hr photo lab.people usually complain that inkjet printers are not as good quality. well! let me say this...in order to get a great photo, you need to now how to take a great photo, and edit it the best you can in photoshop or some other program.i promise you! that if you got a great photo with vivid colors and with good camera resolution, this printer will do magic prints.also i would recommend buying this paperPhotoImage PRO Matte Inkjet Paper you can get this by going to[@]"

"I bought this to replace the R1800 I was using to print images and logos on CDs and DVDs. Mainly because of its smaller footprint. The print quality is better than the R1800. I won't be printing much beyond CDs, DVDs and some documents on it (I have a 3880 for art work). However, this is very nice for what its purpose.



Set up very easily on my Mac Book Pro"