Epson ET-8550 printing black and white

[Lucidor56]

Hi

I am about to buy a photo printer for A3+ and am looking closely at the Epson ET-8550, not least for the relatively low running cost. The printer receives good reviews, but slightly mixed reviews regarding the results with black and white.

Does anyone here on the forum have experience with this? Gives the ET-8550 the deep black you usually aim for when printing balck and white photos?

The SC700 and SC900 respectively apparently provide that according to the users I know.

Regards
Robert from Sweden

 

[Smile]

The SC700 and SC900 are Pro printers look at how many inks they have, compared to CMYK + Gray for ET-8550. On the other hand it was disappointing with color gamut of SC900, or rather my client was. Because inks are 40/50Eur a cartridge and gamut is same as any other 4ink dye - CMYK printer from EPSON.

So you made choice in right direction but with just K + Gray inks black and white photos usually require more Gray inks, but it's personal choice obviously. With ICC profiles made from traditional color targets + Gray'ish targets it is possible to optimize BW output, then you can tweak sepia etc. yourself as required.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The SC-P700/900 run with pigment inks, the ET-8550 with dye inks, their look on paper may be different. All these printers support B/W printing with the ABW - 'Adwanced Black/White function in the driver which let you easily do color tuning between sepia and cool steel blue.
Be aware that the paper plays an important role for B/W printing, it's mainly the paper defining the look of the print. Glossy papers typically give you a deeper black than matte papers. You only have one inkset but tens of different papers to use. And the user must decide at the end what he likes most.

 

[pharmacist]

I have both the SC-P900 and the ET-8550. The ABW-mode with the P900 does give a better tonal gradient (using light colours for better gradient) compared to the standard ABW-mode of the ET-8550. The ET-8550 with standard setting will give slight greenish cast (original Epson ink) and I use a special B&W optimized profile to neutralise the colour cast (while printing in colour mode). The black level of the ET-8550 is satisfactory even on matte papers (because of the matte pigment black used), but the P900 does better job in deeper black, especially on glossy/satin papers (thanks to the Black Enhance Overcoat technology to increase blackness). Nevertheless the ET-8550 does a pretty good job and prints very fast.