Can DURABrite printers be used for photo printing?

[mikling]

Watch out for those carts on the new XP1500W.

 

[Mdavis]

Just got back to this thread today. Appreciate the rest of the advise. I sold the 7610 and saving my money for the the 1430 or15000, esp since I have lots of left over Epson paper from my 1400. Have a new post about the difference in the ink between the two printers. Thanks again for all your posts.
Regards,
Millard

 

[glasseye]

Thanks for this thread. Green prints in daylight have been a problem for me for weeks. Using information from Ink Stained Fingers, my monochrome prints from my OEM Epson inks in my L-805 now look good in daylight and incandescent light. I might add, that I add 10 points of magenta to the colour balance just before printing. I have no way to make a custom profile for this inkset/paper combination. Thanks again!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

thanks for the feedback, your approach is a good and feasible way to get your prints matching your expectations, just keep in mind that your settings may need a correction if you switch to another ink or another paper, all behave somewhat differently in this respect. And it is even questionable if a profile would give you the correct compensation, some of the effects depend on the viewing angle and the angle the light is hitting the paper, the profile instrument just uses a standard setup and cannot cover those deviations.

 

[Angelo G]

Not sure this is the right place to put it but here it is. I used this forum as a guide for my Epson WF-3720 and I bought refillable ink carts for the WF-3720 from Inkowl and bought P-600 C VM Y PK inks from Inkowl as well. Even without profiles, I am very satisfied with the quality of the prints. There is in my opinion horrible gloss differential but I plan to fix that by converting a canon printer just for Gloss Optimizer.

However I have a problem with the Photo Black ink. Checking the ink cartridges after less than 20 4x6 prints, the black cartridge has used around 7ml of ink as supposed to the Cyan, Vivid Magenta and Yellow inks which lost around 3 ml. All the prints I have printed were on Epson premium photo paper glossy while choosing Epson premium presentation matte paper in the driver in order to use the CMY and K channels when printing photos. My question is why is it using SO MUCH INK? Could it be a defect of the cartridge? Could it be because these workforce printers are not designed for these inks and the black channel is taking too much of the ink?

P.S The black for the first 15 minutes is wet to the touch so I believe this has something to do with too much ink laid on the paper.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Please consider the nozzle configuration of this printer - 800 for black and 3x256 for the colors. This is typical for an office type printer with a preference on printing with the black ink - more nozzles result in a higher effective print speed for text. But this implies as well that every cleaning cycle sucks more ink through the black nozzles than through all color nozzles combined which might explain your observerations about the ink usage. And there can be another effect - that the firmware is driving the black nozzles with a bigger droplet size than the color channels - this as well to improve speed for text printing - less print passes - but could explain the ink pooling, you may try another quality setting or another paper selection - do you just have the choice of one matte paper - or several - matte - archival matte ? Photo printers are typically equipped with the same number of nozzles for the black and the other inks.
If you would switch to a glossy paper setting you'll find that blacks look tinted - just give a try as a test. It can be as well an issue with the paper you are using - photo papers differ in the amount of ink they can take, it may look better with another type.
Yes, pigment inks on glossy papers typically show several effects - bronzing - a color suddenly changes when you hold the paper against reflecting light - black switching to a glossy gray - or cyan to violett or or or. And you typcially see gloss differentials between between colors - e.g. cyan vs. magenta/red or you see differences between printed and unprinted areas or areas with more or less ink density. This all can be improved with a separate overprint with a gloss optimizer but is not a 100% fix in all cases.

You'll get different results of all these effects when changing the ink and/or the paper - e.g. the Inkowl inks look different to the original Epson inks, please be aware that Epson or Canon inks and papers are such that you get best results in their resp. combinations, Epson original inks will look different on 3rd party papers, and 3rd party inks most likely won't give you the same look as Epson inks - on Epson papers. It is your judgement how important these effects are for you - some people don't consider them as critical, some people don't really care and don't see such effects and other people jut try to get the best and are very critical. You may try as well some other paper surface , I have found that the effects mentioned above are much less visible on semimatte - silk - satin type papers, and go away with a GO overprint. Give it a try.

 

[Angelo G]

Please consider the nozzle configuration of this printer - 800 for black and 3x256 for the colors. This is typical for an office type printer with a preference on printing with the black ink - more nozzles result in a higher effective print speed for text. But this implies as well that every cleaning cycle sucks more ink through the black nozzles than through all color nozzles combined which might explain your observerations about the ink usage.

Although that was true and I have seen that before, never was it to this extent where 7ml of ink was cleaned out of the machine during one cleaning cycle + 20 4x6s.

 

[Angelo G]

Please consider the nozzle configuration of this printer - 800 for black and 3x256 for the colors. This is typical for an office type printer with a preference on printing with the black ink - more nozzles result in a higher effective print speed for text. But this implies as well that every cleaning cycle sucks more ink through the black nozzles than through all color nozzles combined which might explain your observerations about the ink usage. And there can be another effect - that the firmware is driving the black nozzles with a bigger droplet size than the color channels - this as well to improve speed for text printing - less print passes - but could explain the ink pooling, you may try another quality setting or another paper selection - do you just have the choice of one matte paper - or several - matte - archival matte ? Photo printers are typically equipped with the same number of nozzles for the black and the other inks.
If you would switch to a glossy paper setting you'll find that blacks look tinted - just give a try as a test. It can be as well an issue with the paper you are using - photo papers differ in the amount of ink they can take, it may look better with another type.
Yes, pigment inks on glossy papers typically show several effects - bronzing - a color suddenly changes when you hold the paper against reflecting light - black switching to a glossy gray - or cyan to violett or or or. And you typcially see gloss differentials between between colors - e.g. cyan vs. magenta/red or you see differences between printed and unprinted areas or areas with more or less ink density. This all can be improved with a separate overprint with a gloss optimizer but is not a 100% fix in all cases.

You'll get different results of all these effects when changing the ink and/or the paper - e.g. the Inkowl inks look different to the original Epson inks, please be aware that Epson or Canon inks and papers are such that you get best results in their resp. combinations, Epson original inks will look different on 3rd party papers, and 3rd party inks most likely won't give you the same look as Epson inks - on Epson papers. It is your judgement how important these effects are for you - some people don't consider them as critical, some people don't really care and don't see such effects and other people jut try to get the best and are very critical. You may try as well some other paper surface , I have found that the effects mentioned above are much less visible on semimatte - silk - satin type papers, and go away with a GO overprint. Give it a try.

Thank you for the tips, unfortunately there is only one matte setting on my printer but it seems that the Photo Black is consuming less than when I first tried it. Because of this, I will continue to use the existing Matte setting in the driver to use full CMYK

Another question, is there anything you can recommend (such as software) in order to flush all the existing ink out of the black channel when switching from Photo black (P600) back to durabrite black (for document printing)? Thank you for your input!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

If I do not have any more matte paper options in the driver, does that mean I have run out of options to use CMYK?

You may try another type of glossy paper - there are two types on the market - the budget type - cc - cast coated - with a paper like back side , and the RC/PE type - resin coated sandwiched between a thin PE foil, the back side is not coated and you cannot print on it, these papers are typically premium papers but both types overlap pricewise.
You may try the quality settings for normal paper which use as well the black ink.
Just do a cleaning cycle or two, or use the WICReset utility which might give you a choice of several cleaning levels (depending on the printer type). There is not much ink the ink channels in the printhead. And do a test print of a black spot on a glossy paper - you'll see the difference. You can print on normal paper with the photo black, you just don't get a black as dark as with the matte black ink.

 

[INKJET ARTIST]

Just found this article
So here is one suggestion from me
If you are going to use WF2010W with dye inks go to install some Epson L 365 or some other L xxx printer it does not matter L 310 would be fine as well. Then in Printer & Faxes >> WF2010W>>Properties >> Advance>>driver Choose driver for L365 or L310 > OK
Why you should do that?
Because L310 uses Dye ink and you do have Dye ink in your ink system. And driver for Pigment ink do use ink set completely different than suitable driver for Dye ink set. So you have to make migration to that kind of driver as well
Ok?