Looking at the P700

[Ink stained Fingers]

O.k. - fine, I was just printing with the B/W option of the driver with the P700 and Canon inks, there is no ABW mode with the little WF2010W, and the standard and high driver quality settings deliver about the same effect , it's a different printer, a different driver, a different printhead printing on different papers, and still the effect is there - lighter gray areas get a golden sheen under a particular viewing angle - 'Bronzing' is a more general expression for me - covering various of those color effects e.g. colors tilting from blue to magenta or black to bronce or aluminum mainly on more saturated colors - some pretty strong and others at the edge of visibility. It's up to the user to accept that - some may not even see it and other users may not care.

 

[stratman]

Seems Keith had a multi-color "bronzing" effect that worsens with increased ink density occuring as one increases the quality setting. Either the P700 uses more than Black to produce B&W prints, or, the P700 Black ink somehow dissociates into different color reflective spectra for it's bronzing effect. Maybe it's only an effect of the specific Epson Premium Luster paper.

ISF, on the other hand ("fingers" - hand pun intended) had a single color shift when using only the P700 Black ink in his WF2010W printer.

Maybe ISF can try his experiment using Epson Premium Luster paper?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Maybe ISF can try his experiment using Epson Premium Luster paper?

I can't and I won't - I don't have this Epson Luster paper - and can't buy individual sheets, Luster paper is not the type I typically use, I have checked my sample boxes from various suppliers - those papers are already used up from prior experiments......
I redid the printing with a PF 270 Satin by Fotospeed - PF in their terminology means 'Pigment Friendly'
https://www.fotospeed.com/PF-Satin-270-Photo-Quality-Paper/groupproduct/1184/

- the effect as observed by Keith is pretty prominent on this paper - no bronzing with the standard quality setting and good visible bronzing in the lighter gray areas with the high quality setting - all with a WF2010W - matte paper - B/W mode. The differences between the standard and high quality settings are less visible on some other papers - it all depends on an intricate combination of parameters - driver settings - ink type - paper type and the user's attention to it.

 

[pharmacist]

Epson K3 printer, especially starting from the P800 uses the LLK cartridge as a kind of gloss optimizer to improve gloss and increasing the blackness of the photo black.

 

[stratman]

the effect as observed by Keith is pretty prominent on this paper

You are getting multicolor bronzing on a B&W image?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Epson K3 printer, especially starting from the P800 uses the LLK cartridge as a kind of gloss optimizer to improve gloss and increasing the blackness of the photo black.

Yes, Epson is advertising and using this approach the bottom end of the luminance scale but not at the light end, my WF2010W does not use a LLK ink but dithers all gray levels just with the black ink. I see a distinct yellow/golden touch in the lighter gray ranges but no other colors - no rainbow effect or else, and this mainly on prints with the high quality setting, very similar or much less or not at all with the normal quality setting. I have a budget glossy paper - PE/RC - which shows the effect quite similarily with both settings.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I took a picture of a printout showing the effect - here on the PF270 Satin, this is a crop of a larger image with B/W test images

The left image is printed with the standard quality setting, the middle one with high quality, both show a yellow cast in the lighter areas e.g. in the top left corner or the coast line (ignore the stains) , the effect is somewhat stronger with high quality but still visible on normal quality, the variances are not so great on this paper. The effect varies with other papers , I see that on a budget glossy paper - no bronzing printed with normal quality.
And when you look to the dark sky around the church on the right image - with quality high - there is no bronzing in the blacks - on this paper - with the Epson P700Pk ink - printed on a WF2010W - overall quite a non-standard combination - other combinations and settings may yield a different result which you cannot forecast.

 

[stratman]

a printout showing the effect

Thank you for persevering on this topic.

What effect on bronzing would happen if you were to create a proper ICC profile for the ink-paper combination? I'm not asking for you to do this but to give your opinion on ability to decrease bronzing effect with your own created ICC profiles.

 

[palombian]

Thank you for persevering on this topic.

What effect on bronzing would happen if you were to create a proper ICC profile for the ink-paper combination? I'm not asking for you to do this but to give your opinion on ability to decrease bronzing effect with your own created ICC profiles.

Being obsessed about this (you could see me with my head at strange angles on photo expositions) I was persuaded only Epson mastered pigment printing, alas nobody is perfect.

The amount of ink applied is probably a factor, but I doubt this can be changed much by profiling, it is mainly handled by the paper settings in the printer driver.
The combination of paper and ink is the major factor.
From my own experience I can tell that I see no difference in glossiness/bronzing between the PRO-9500II and the PRO-10 on glossy HP Advanced Photo Paper sold everywhere (not a very fancy paper but it is what it is).
The only difference (in this case) is that CO protects against fingerprints.
On the contrary, the Aldi/Netbit and Sihl papers are much enhanced with CO (but I have some old Sihl stock in plastic bags that worked well without).

Since Epson doesn't have CO on the PRO printers, I suppose that either they think their inks are better and/or you should use their paper.
With Canon you can print on any paper, and even switch the CO off when needed (buried in the PRO-10 driver settings - doubt it can be done on PRO-1000 and PRO-300).

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

What effect on bronzing would happen if you were to create a proper ICC profile for the ink-paper combination? I'm not asking for you to do this but to give your opinion on ability to decrease bronzing effect with your own created ICC profiles.

Please let us be clear what and how I'm comparing the effects, I'm using a WF2010W which just uses one black ink, and I'm running it in B/W mode for matte papers to avoid any byprint of other colors. And I'm using the P700 Pk ink, the same ink as in Keith's tests, but be aware that the P700 uses as well a Lk and a LLk which I don't have available, the WF2010W dithers all gray levels from light to black with the same ink - with a different density - the P700 does not do that, even with the same B/W setting in the driver , the driver will dither dark grays with the black ink, medium grays with the Lk ink and light grays with the LLk ink, with some transition ranges in between, the P700 uses 3 inks to cover the complete lightness range from black to paperwhite. This most likely explains that Keith's B/W prints don't show bronzing in the lighter areas - it's with different inks than Pk black. But there is still the interesting effect that the same ink - P700 Pk - shows bronzing at the darker end - see the black spot above - and I see bronzing in the lighter range , and all these effects more or less prominent with different quality settings. If you want to go further you would need to know the effective ranges where the three black/gray inks are used but that's firmware/printer internals not accessible to the user.

I could create a profile for use with the black ink on my WF2010W but this is only a kind of linearization file and just may shift the lightness range slightly at which the effect becomes visible.

I can switch to the normal mode - glossy paper settings - creating a ICC profile and print a B/W image, grays are printed like all color tones as a mix of CMY inks, gray is a color as all others and not unique, the WF2010W will not use the black ink in this case. This would let me review bronzing of the CMY inks and their combinations - that's very interesting as well but not subject of this test. And I won't address effects of a gloss/chroma optimizer, whether it could be a remedy for the bronzing - it actually does - but since not all CO's are alike this adds another level of complexity.
I was originally comparing B/W prints with different inks - Epson P700 Pk vs. Canon PFI105Pk - on the same printer - my WF2010W - , and they look quite similar in terms of bronzing with a small benefit for the Canon ink which is on the market since quite some time. The above test compares the same ink - Epson P700 Pk - on different printers - P700 vs. WF2010W, and when I put all this together I think that Epson could have done better - with a new ink for a new printer - vs. an ink already in use since years, and Canon having a benefit with the availability of a CO.