In-line photo printing on roll paper

[MtnBrady]

Hello, sure hope all reader's day is good!

I am starting to dig some to learn of how to print multiple pictures in line (or a row) maybe even up to 36 inches in length on roll paper.

Is their anyone who could steer me in the right direction on...

#1 the type of printer to use and
#2 what photo software is out there that will make this possible?

I would also like to do some long-length panoramas. I would greatly appreciate any info I could learn of on these subjects.

Thanks much! -MtnBrady

 

[MtnBrady]

I am actually new to this forum and would love to hear any and all info even if only partially what I'm needing to know...thanks

 

[KmH]

How wide do you need the roll of paper? Roll paper is way longer than 36 inches.

To use roll paper you need to be looking at prosumer grade inkjet printers.
How much of your money can we spend on a printer?

How will the prints be used?
Do you want to make prints that stay color fast a long time, or is life of the print not a concern?
Pigment based inks last longer than dye based inks. Even more durable is solvent based inks which means looking at Epson printers.

Do you want a printer that uses piezoelectric heads (Epson), or a printer that uses thermal heads (Canon)?

$765 - 9 pigment colors, 13" wide carriage, max printable area 13" x 44". Replacement ink cartridges are about $30 each or about $270 to replace all 9.
Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Wireless Wide-Format Color Inkjet Printer

As far as software most of image editing applications you would use to prepare the photos for printing should work for laying out each print.

You might find these books helpful:
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing
Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers

 

[MtnBrady]

The width of the paper can be between 9-13in.

I'm thinking to spend somewhere around $800.

the prints lasting long is important.

I don't understand the difference on the heads.

I have searched and tryed several photo shop/crop programs and have got frustrated trying to lay them out the way I'm trying to.

You may be familiar with the alphabet art you can find these days. Cabelas actually carries the type product we are trying to make ourselves, (my wife and I)

By the way, thanks much for the reply and help you have given.

 

[KmH]

The width of the paper can be between 9-13in.

I'm thinking to spend somewhere around $800.

the prints lasting long is important.

I don't understand the difference on the heads.

I have searched and tryed several photo shop/crop programs and have got frustrated trying to lay them out the way I'm trying to.

You may be familiar with the alphabet art you can find these days. Cabelas actually carries the type product we are trying to make ourselves, (my wife and I)

By the way, thanks much for the reply and help you have given.

I suspect the issue with laying out the images is more about your lack of image editing expertise than it is about the applications you have tried to use. Photoshop is an excellent tool for doing what you want to do. But, you have to have some understanding of how to use Photoshop, layers, image aspect ratios, pixel resolution and print resolution limitations.
I won't be writing you a group of tutorials here, but cropping reduces pixel resolution (discards pixels) and reduced pixel resolution decreases print resolution (image size when printed).

Piezoelectric heads deliver somewhat better resolution (360 DPI for Epson heads), are not user serviceable, and tend to clog if the printer is not used often.
Thermal heads (only 300 DPI for Canon heads) include a lot of extra nozzles so when a nozzle clogs the machine just uses a spare until there are no more spare nozzles. Thermal heads are user replaceable.

To aid your research is why I included links to the 2 books.

 

[MtnBrady]

Yes, that would be about 80% correct. I'm pretty savy about figuring out software and I did get them layed out somewhat, but I was looking for some tricks to make the accomplishment easier. I was also seeing that it wouldn't automatically adjust and make each photo even and level. I was using Adobe Photoshop.

I appreciate your advisement on the books, I must check into that.

I found it was easy to print each photo individually, then paste them manually to a mat and create what I have in mind to do, however my real goal is to print out anywhere from 10in. to 36in.(maybe even in the 40s) layouts on a continuous sheet of paper and even being able to create borders/various background colors, etc.

As far as my camera, I'm satisfied with the outcome of my photos.

You seem to be most knowledgable, sure would appreciate any "trick advise" you can give me!