Epson WF-7525 set of 3 levels of gray

[pharmacist]

I am planning to use a set of refillable cyan/magenta/yellow T1291 cartridges in my Epson WF-7525 to print neutral b&w prints using OCP pigment photo black/light black/light licht black....but I presume the will be a bit too dark. Does somebody know how to mix the inks to a lighter shade ?

 

[The Hat]

I am planning to use a set of refillable cyan/magenta/yellow T1291 cartridges in my Epson WF-7525 to print neutral b&w prints using OCP pigment photo black/light black/light licht black....but I presume the will be a bit too dark. Does somebody know how to mix the inks to a lighter shade ?

You could try and use only the light light black in all three positions to start with..

 

[RogerB]

Have you looked at Paul Roark's site. He has a good paper on diluting carbon-based inks here http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Ink-mixing.pdf

 

[mikling]

I experimented with this many years ago. The mixing is not the issue. When grey inks are used directly, the output will appear too warm. The inks will need to be tinted to neutralize. This tinting can vary by paper and is not easy to do, it is lots and lots of work. I gave up when I started to see R2400s going for little money and the Advanced Black and White option on the 2400 and newerr driver took care of any tonal issues. My conclusion was printing with pure grey inks was not worth the hassle and just acquiring a used R2400 or newer would be a far more versatile and convenient option.

The only time when pure black/diluted black might be considered is for Carbon printing when the ultimate in archival properties might be desired. This is only good for Matte type output and the output always tended to the side of warm....the nature of a carbon print. The best carbon ink is actually the 1082 made by Image Specialists, Paul Roark does not divulge the real base but it is the 1082. This is the same Epson Matte Black Pigment ink that is recommended for MK in all IS Epson inksets that have MK. If you want to do carbon printing, then the 2400 will not do it because it uses the other grey inks as well as colors...and the colors will shift first.

If you want to mix the OCP, then you (should, perhaps) will need to acquire the same base that OCP uses to make their inks or else weird things might happen. I did not say "will" because I have not tried it with their ink. When I tried mixing, I used the same base that was used to make the other pigment inks from IS.

 

[pharmacist]

The practical problem is that the WF-7525 does not use the black cartridge in the photo printing mode, but relies completely on the CMY-printing mode. So I presume I cannot use 100 % PK in one of the positions. I have read that I should use 70 % black for magenta, 40 % for cyan and 15 % for yellow. But when I use the LLB as the base to mix the other "colours", what should I do ? I think it is best to use the LLB ink as the base, so the chances of ill effects with the other inks will be minimal. So when 100 % LLB is yellow, what should I do to make "cyan" and "magenta" ?

 

[mikling]

If you choose to use the Matte Paper settings, you will attain CMYK printing. This is a trick that should be used on this family of printers...I can tell you many vendors don't know of this. If you want high gloss and economy of operation, convert to dye, use matte paper settings, get an ICC and get true CMYK printing. You can initially use the mixing formula by Paul Roark and then use QTR to linearise..or once you have determined what the non linearity and where it is happening, you can choose to change the dilution to linearise through the dilution. Again, keep in mind that each media setting will vary the output characteristics. So try it with different media settings and then see what proves best and tweak like crazy. That will keep you busy.

The output of these printers can be satisfying BUT only the highest resolution settings need to be used and they become painfully slow in output. These printers are meant for "good enough" printing in the office and are so sloooow when printing out images of quality high enough to satisfy a photographer especially B&W. The irony is that any person possessing a color managed piece of software would not be purchasing this category of printer. I digress now....

Now onto the math, which I know you can handle. You now have linear equations to solve. High school stuff. The missing data is this. What dilution is the yellow? Once you make an assumption that the yellow is maybe 15% relative to the PK of 100% then the dilutions for the other colors will easily fall into place.
You can maybe do this as well. Fill the black cartridge with yellow (LLK) . Print out a solid black with photoshop setting it to pure black and use a matte paper setting. Now do the same with PK. and compare the two with the instruments you have. You should now be able to figure out the relative dilution of the LLK once you set the PK to 100%. The M and C is now child's play. Looks to be perfect to keep you occupied.

 

[mikling]

In the above the 15% dilution or setting LLK to 15% is simply a guess. If one uses clear base( 0%) then you would use PK(100%) and then dilute down. I thought I would clarify that point.

 

[pharmacist]

Hi Mike,

I have just discovered there is a matte photo paper setting....even with borderless setting capable. I will use this setting to force true CMYK printing, which is easier to calculate the relative density. However I have another problem: where is the function to disable colour management.....? I cannot find it in the driver settings at all.

 

[mikling]

Well, with your wealth of experience there, I don't think I can help you, as if you can't find it, then I would not be much better off. I have not used these printers directly but the other similar ones I have had always had the ability to control that function like all others previous. Maybe this is a new thing? I would not be surprised because the user profile of this category of printer is not the one using Lightroom etc.

 

[pharmacist]

Thanks for thinking with me. I just have discovered the Mac driver has the ability of disabling color management. The Windows driver does not.