Im thinking more and more of doing this. The more i research printing myself the more expense I seem to find. thanks to all for the input to.

I don't recall what the big difference was between the R2880 and the R1900 but there was something that I remember telling myself to get the R2880. (Re-Reading this - boy that sounds dumb ;) There is something like 3 tone b/w or dedicated Blacks though.

Anyway I know of allot of friends who went the R2880 route since it was worth it.

I rarely do my own prints any more just mainly because of the reprinting and reprinting till I got the calibration right. And then as one ink got used up, re-calibrate again. I looked into a endless ink system (tubes feeding into the printer from large ink wells) and the total cost of everything was not worth it to me.

I have a local camera shop for printing that is cheap, fast and always comes out right. I'll let them loose money on test prints.

broxibear. you get the star for the day. That was what i needed. looking at those numbers which I know are just going to be some point to look at. im slightly confused. You can order 11.7x16.5 ultra premium luster paper precut for $2.06 a sheet and rolls even less. You can also get a entire 8 replacement inks for the r1900 for $100. Thats much less a print then getting 11x14 printed somewhere at $6-10 a print. So if you have color calibrted your monitor and printer at home and stay on top of that why do people say that sending out makes so much more sense? If you print wouldn't this be smarter. Or do people go through so many test prints and ink that it does not pan out. If you watch your color profiles and paper profiles how do you need to go through that much. Am I missing something?

http://www.epson-europe.com/internetLive/dctm/content/EU/en_GB/products/yield_information/EU-Product-Yield-R1900-EN.inter.jsp

Ya I know there are so many huge variables this one is going to be difficult. I am looking to start doing some of my own printing and was wondering about print output. When you hear a review or comment on a epson printer you always hear about how fast they go through prints but never any numbers. I know black and white, saturation, amount of covered area in print. These and many would change how many prints but I figure that if enough people post in then we can all start to see a round about number. Not really looking at other printers except a few more in the epson line maybe the R2880 but more curious about the r1900 to keep things on track. Thanks in advance.

P.S. Lets stick to a standard 8x10 or 11x14 to keep things simple.