Headquartered in Lake Success, NY, Canon U.S.A., Inc. is a provider of equipment and information systems for business and consumer imaging. The company has developed a product line including color and B&W copiers and printers, digital cameras and lenses; scanners; fax machines; camcorders; semiconductors; projectors; and other products.
Canon introduced the imagePROGRAF W6400 back in late spring of last year. The printer is targeted towards office, photo, and graphic art professionals.
Hands On
The imagePROGRAF, with its ability to print up to 24" wide, is fairly easy to install. Users can interchange between regular or matte black ink. The regular black is optimized for glossy surface printing while the matte black is best suited for fine art and mattte media where it can offer rich blacks.
The imagePROGRAF printer comes bundled with a suite of software programs that assist in creating, processing and printing high-quality, professional, large format output.
PosterArtist is poster creation software designed with the Microsoft Office skill-level user in mind. Broken down in four steps, the program prompts the user to select a poster template,
format, customize their poster, and print it. The program’s predesigned templates offer users who lack a design team an effective palette. PosterArtist has the ability to import images in JPEG, TIFF, and bitmap file format. It also automatically adjusts object layout and size to different page sizes. Additionally, it has the capability to save posters as JPEG images for emailing and proofing.
Digital Photo Print Pro (DPPP) is a photo editing and management program included with tools to eliminate red eye, improve skin tones, and remove moiré in digital photos.
Specifications
The imagePROGRAF includes a Print Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop so users can create, process, and print large format images directly from Photoshop. The plug-in allows for 16-bit image processing and direct 10-bit printing.
An HDI Driver for AutoCAD 2000 also comes with the printer. The driver enables better line drawing rendition as well as faster processing speeds. Skipping the GDI conversion process, the HDI driver directly converts line drawing data from AutoCAD into the printer’s native data format.
PhotoPRINT Select, an Adobe PhotoScript 3 Software RIP, allows for automatic enlargement printing from a Canon color imageRUNNER. The program includes a Pantone color library and up to six configurable print queues for drag and drop printing. The user has access to Pantone spot colors, and can add custom spot colors by measuring the color with a color’s spectrophotometer, or entering the LAB value.
Canon’s Print Head BC-1350 allows for four-picoliter droplet printing with pigment-based ink. The printer enables high speed printing in standard mode at 1200x1200 dpi resolution. It is capable of printing up to 2400x1200 dpi in high quality mode. The technology behind the print head is Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE).
The imagePROGRAF W6400 utilizes a single chip design (SOC—System on Chip) to speed up the printing and process and allow the amount of data that is to be processed to be increased.
Able to print 103 square feet per hour, the device is compatible with Windows 98/2000/XP/2003 Server and Mac OS/OS X. The machine comes with a built in Ethernet cord and a USB 2.0 High Speed Interface. If looking to print larger media, we suggest using W6400’s sister model W8400, which is capable of printing on media up to 44" wide. The Canon imagePROGRAF W6400’s physical dimensions (with stand) are 47.3" in width x 29.6" in depth x 43.2 in height. The imagePROGRAF comes with a one year limited warranty.
