Pigment vs Dye: Look en shiver

[Lucas28]

We all know that pigment ink is much light faster than dye ink. But no one talks about the print quality of pigment ink prints.

Now I printed the same photo on two printers: An Epson R245 dye printer and an Epson B40W Durabrite Ultra printer with pigment ink. Both printers were loaded with OEM cartridges. I used Epson Glossy Photo paper.

Both prints were scanned under the same circumstances.

The dye print:

The pigment print:

The prints are quite different. The colors on the dye print are much brighter. Now we can wonder why most people choose for pigment ink. Of course there's the light fastness, but as long as you don't show your photo's on a wall the dye ink photos are preferable.

 

[cls]

not really an even battle.. since the b40w is a "office" style printer with just 4 basic inks

If you would calibrate both printers with a colormunki there could be an additional surplus with the printing quality.

Try compare an Epson 2100/2200 or R2400/R2880/R3000 print with your R245 result

 

[Lucas28]

cls:
After I dumped my 6 color printer I'm not enthusiastic about printers with more cartridges than the usual 4. Some of the printers you mention have 9 cartridges!. It means more cartridges to fill, more nozzles to get clogged, etc. Manufacturers are satisfied, because more cartridges to sell.
So back to my Office printer. Of course I've tried to improve the prints, a bit more saturation, a bit more contrast, but it didn't get much better. I have used OCP-K3 ink in the printer which showed much more gloss, but colors weren't better.

The advantage of the Durabrite Ultra printers is that photos are printed well from the start, no adjustments needed. Fine calibration may show some improvement, but I dont expect much difference.

Btw theres more difference between the two prints than the scans show. The scanner somehow enhances the photos. Not only the colors of the dye print are better, the shades are also deeper.

Using printers with more inks will improve the photo quality, but it also means extra problems. And a low cost 6 or 4 color dye printer still shows better photos.

 

[The Hat]

The words youre looking for are nearly as good but not quite as good, so you dont get the cigar.

Dye based printers will do a better job with glossy photo paper than pigment printers can do, but once you stop using the high gloss papers then the pigment printers gives a far better quality reproduction overall.

4 colour printers whether therere dye or pigment will do a reasonable job outputting a colour photo but six, eight and ten colour printers do a far more noticeable job at it, and guess what, they dont use any more ink than the average 4 colour printer either..

 

[manitoidman]

Apples and oranges...pigment based inks will never give the same quality as dye based.
As far as photo quality, a 6 color dye based ink printer is always going to be the best choice.

 

[The Hat]

Apples and oranges...pigment based inks will never give the same quality as dye based.
As far as photo quality, a 6 color dye based ink printer is always going to be the best choice.

Says who ?...

 

[manitoidman]

Apples and oranges...pigment based inks will never give the same quality as dye based.
As far as photo quality, a 6 color dye based ink printer is always going to be the best choice.

Says who ?...

ummm.. I do! Been an printer research and design professional for 10 years. Have been a print tech for 20 years.
I am not disputing anything you said, just for the cost a 6 color dye based printer is going to give the best results to you average layman.

 

[martin0reg]

I don't mind about 4 or 6 or even 8 colors, personally I think 4 colors could produce very good results.

The epson b40w seems to be not the best printer for printing photos...
http://www.druckerchannel.de/artikel.php?ID=2577&seite=11&t=fotodruck_qualitaet_und_tempo
...but is it due to the pigment or to the printer itself?

Pigment is not as brilliant as dye on glossy paper ... but if you compare both on matte paper...?

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

In my experience Epson DuraBrite printers are awful for anything other than very fast office printing where color reproduction is not an issue. They are terrible at reproducing bright blues, so even for non-photo printing, if you have bright blue colors in your logo it may be inadequate. Part of it is 4-colors and being pigment, but part of it is simply a failing of the printer design. The HP 8X00 series printers are 4-color pigment and their colors are much brighter than Epson DuraBrite. I use 6-color pigments in my Stylus Photo 1400 and the color reproduction is excellent.

 

[turbguy]

As far as I remember, silver based photo papers and films use only 3 colors...and they work great!

Wayne