Epson Workforce inks, use EcoTank inks instead?

[stratman]

I just spoke to Precision Color in USA.

Precision Colors, one of the printer refill businesses we recommend on the forum, is in Canada.

There is a Precision Color (note no "s" on the end of Color) is in the USA but they are not about printer refilling that I can see in my quick perusal.

 

[Peter W]

Now that is an excellent bit of information, I mean about fooling the printer. Is it the case that ALL photo paper selections will disable the black ink?

How exactly does the printer work with other kinds of paper? Here are what it presents me with, apart from photo paper:
Plain Paper/Bright White Paper
Letterhead
Recycled
High Quality White Paper
Premium Presentation Paper Matte
Card Stock

What do these mean in practice, assuming all were printed at "High" quality on identical paper, e.g. a glossy or a lustre photo paper? Would there be any difference? Picolitres of ink? Resolution?

I suppose if I were wanting to do an A3+ photo on 240gsm paper (too heavy for the tray, has to be rear feed), I'd have to select Card Stock?

Then if this works out and I fill up with Epson 106, and find/create the right ICC profile, I could reasonably expect some nice photos which might last a few years (100 years not needed, but at least not severely faded after 6 months on a wall)?

I hope so. After my now-deceased Brother MFC-J4510DW, which could (barely) do A3, but made photos look like washed mud, I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Your comments are encouraging.

 

[Peter W]

@stratman,

I stand corrected, indeed it was (of course) Precision Colors I spoke to. On their contact page is a US phone number, which I called, and below it a Canadian phone number. I failed to read the address, but I'm delighted they are among our Commonwealth partners.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The WF-7720, or the WF-7110 I was using some time ago, are by design not photo printers but printers for office jobs primarily, they come with more nozzles for black to speed up printing, they use larger droplets to speed up printing and they use Durabrite pigment inks for a good black level on copy paper and decent color saturation. We are discussing tweaks to improve the output for photo printing, you cannot change the min droplet size nor the number of nozzles but you can go and use off-standard inks - dye instead of Durabrite pigment inks, or you could use photo pigment inks normally used in Photo printers like the P600, and that's actions we are discussing here. All these workforce 4 color printers do one thing - they do not print with the Durabrite black onto photo/glossy/semiglossy type papers as per your paper selection in the driver, the Durabrite black is matte and does not adhere to a glossy surface, you can wipe it off, and the driver is mixing CM to create a muddy black instead, and this comes with a color cast and a dull looking black on glossy papers. The CMY Durabrite inks print on glossy papers but give you an effect of bronzing, color changes against reflecting light so you are not really happy with such prints at the end. And the tweaks are to replace these inks with dye inks which perform better on glossy papers, and to use the matte paper setting to activate the black ink channel .
Some paper settings may actually create the same output at the end, but there are other parameters linked to the paper selection, that could be a gamma value, that could be a different ink limit for different papers. The driver parameters are such that you get good printouts as long as you don't deviate from the regular settings but as soon as you go off-standard you need to optimize the output - e.g. getting specific color profiles for your ink/paper/driver settings. You may switch as well to other pigment inks - those photo inks typically come with two types of black inks - one for matte papers and a black for glossy papers. I did quite some tests years ago with an old R800 with pigment inks - there are wide variations in the outcome depending on the ink/paper combination - some inks exhibit strong bronzing effects - or another ink does not show any (almost) on just one type of paper - you cannot anticipate what you will get.

 

[apetitphoto]

I have a WF-7210 loaded with Precision Colors durabrite replacement ink and it does, imho, well enough with custom profiles on matte paper; in fact, I prefer PC inks over OEM. (Could be the profile, could be the inks.) As has been noted, the workforce printers don’t do well in photo printing on glossy paper.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, you need to find the combination of ink, paper, driver settings which you like most with this type of printer. It's the Durabrite like inks which don't do so well on glossy papers - bronzing etc but not the printer as such, using dye inks would be an alternative for a test.