Introducing grey ink cartridge in printers: I have a dream......

[pharmacist]

Most desktop printers for common use are very capble of printing more than decent photo's which easily rivals the quality from a proffesional photolab. However: getting high quality B/W prints one must have either a good calibrated ink/paper combination or even better a printer using dedicated black/grey ink cartridges to ensure neutral B/W printouts.

However: those printers tends to be only large format like the Epson R2400, Pro 3800, HP B9180 and the Canon Pro 9500. But these are all pigment ink printers and A3+ and larger. All these printers need the lighter photo magenta and photo cyan inks to have a smooth colour gradient. High quality dye ink printers like the Canon IP4x00 series don't need these lighter versions of magenta of cyan, due to the usage of 2 different sizes of ink droplets being produced by those printers: 1 pl and 5 pl, small enough to avoid grainy printouts. One can compare a printout made with a -for example- IP4500 and a 6-colour IP6700D. Most people won't even detect a difference, when both printers are properly profiled for the respective ink/paper combination.

However B/W printing is still not very optimal and compared to true B/W printers like the R2400 there is still a noticable colour cast to be seen. Canon has now introduced the MP980 printer -sucessor to the 6/7 ink based MP970- which omitted the photo cyan and the photo magenta cartridge, compared to its predecessor MP970, in favour of a new CLI-521 grey cartridge.

So this printer has the following cartridges: PGI-520 pigment text black, CLI-521 cyan, magenta, yellow, (photo)black and grey dye ink cartridges. One pl ink droplets make the usage of LM and LC obsolete and both black and grey ink ensures neutral B/W printouts. And the grey ink improves the gamut of the other colour catridges as well, by laying a tiny amount on the other colours.

This optimal comprimise between the minimum amount of necessary ink cartridges to be installed to obtain maximum gamut is accordingly only 6 with dye ink printers (of which one is pigment text black). Note that the i9900/i9950 does not have pigment black, whether the IX4000/5000 only works with cyan/magenta/yellow to create photo's without dye black.......

One must wait until Canon will introduce a A3+ printer using the same printhead as in the MP980 printer, but with a tubing system like the HP9180 and fed by larger stationary inktanks (at least 30 ml per ink cartridge). I think to myself: just stay on dreaming.......

 

[billkunert]

HP came out with grey ink cartridges in some of the printers that used 56-57-58 carts several years ago for black/white photo printing. There was a noticable difference in photo quality as compared with using black + color carts. I believe the grey cart had more than one shade in it. I believe the cartridge number was 59.

 

[mikling]

Yes, HP has had a number of photoprinters that produce neutral B&W. They used three tones of grey in one cartridge. Unfortunately those cartridges were always low capacity which hindered its appeal. Add to that the issue that they used dye inks. Most who produce B&W at a serious level want consistent and dependable archival properties in their output.

 

[pharmacist]

I would not even think about these tiny all-in-one cartridges containing less liquid than juice in one grape.