Problem with black when printing text

[Metallo]

Hi guys,

First, happy new year to you all!

I have a Canon i865 that I refill regularly and without any problem, so far...

Well, I noticed that when printing a text, the black tends to spread over the background color.

For example, take an Excel cell, green background, I type "AB" in black, then I print, the black ink of the "AB" letters spread and gets out of the actual borders of the letters, going over the green.

Also, the same is valid for the opposite, black background, green "AB" letters, this time, the black tends to cover the green letters, making them almost unreadable.

It is like too much black ink comes out when the background is different from white.
In fact, if I print pure text on white paper, it is perfect.

Thoughts?

Thanks
Alex

 

[Metallo]

Hi guys,

I made a pattern that will make it easier to understand my problem...

I print on ordinary plain paper, standard settings, please, click below to see what I get:

http://img457.imageshack.us/my.php?image=printqualitytest0lb.jpg

As you can see, the issue is on Green, Yellow, Blue, Pink, Red and Orange, but strangely not on Tan, Light Turquoise, Lavender or White.

Last but not least, I printed the same pattern with the same printer settings but using Premium Coated Paper, the outcome was perfect on all colors.
This means that paper has a big influence, but usually you print text on plain paper, therefore I need to understand why this happens and how I can fix it.
Hope this extra info helps you to help me

Cheers!
Alex

 

[Grandad35]

Alex,

I suspect that you are laying down the ink faster than the plain paper can absorb it. When this happens, you get "bleeding" of one color into another. Adding a darker color around the black text increases the total volume of ink that must be absorbed, and increases bleeding. Many photo papers are "nanoporous" and are designed to absorb lots of ink very quickly, reducing the problem. See this thread for more examples:
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=24

Some black inks are more prone to this problem than others, and this may be involved in your situation. You might also try setting the "Intensity" of the black in your printer driver to -20% to see if this helps. There may also be other settings in your printer driver which slow down printing and which may have an effect.

 

[Nifty]

Alex,

This is EXACTLY what was happening to me with my black pigment ink from alotofthings.com (as referenced in the link from Grandad). I was able to negate the problem slightly by adjusting the intensity of the black, but this was tricky as doing so effected the color of my prints. I ended up going with another supplier for my pigment black inks. I'm still not sure if it was an issue with their ink (from Formulabs) or their Arrow cartridges (which they later had issues with regarding who's ink was in them). I'll need to go back and see, but if I remember correctly the same thing continued to happen even when I used their bulk ink to refill the cartridges... but this was before I knew I should be purging the carts completely.

I may have missed it, but who are you using for your refill inks and what cartridges are you using?

 

[Metallo]

Hi guys,

Thanks very much for your feedback.

I made additional tests, according to your suggestions.
The paper I used for these tests is the same plain paper as per my previous one.

I printed the same pattern using Color Balance Black -20%
I got much better results, obviously the drawback is that the black is no longer black but a sort of dark grey.

Here is the sample

http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=plain203mj.jpg

Then, I did a second test, also using Color Balance Black -20% but setting the Media Type as Photo Paper Pro
The quality is much higher, the colors are more intense.
Below the sample speaks for itself.

http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=photopro202fp.jpg

So my decision is to use Color Balance Black -20% and Plain Paper as a default printing profile.
Why plain paper? Because normally I do not need high quality printing on plain paper and I prefer to prioritize faster printing.
If I need to increase the quality of my prints, then I use a coated paper which automatically gives excellent results, even setting the black color balance to 0%.

I use the cartridges from ColorBAT, excellent product that I'm very happy with.
As far as the ink is concerned, I buy that in Italy, there's a big shop chain, actually they are the leading shop chain in Europe for inks, but it is difficult to say where they get their inks from.
However, I have already bought another quality from another Italian shop which is known to have top quality inks, therefore, once I go down in stock with the ink I'm presently using, I will be able to try the new one and say if this is depending on the ink or not.

So far, I will carry on as I said, however, I'd like to read your opinion on why the Photo Paper Pro setting delivers a better quality of colors, I mean, this is mono directional printing, is it because the ink has longer time to dry?
And... does it consume more ink using Photo Paper Pro setting?

Thank you guys.

Regards
Alex

 

[Nifty]

Alex,

I think there is a lot more information throughout that other thread, but yes, any of the higher quality / photo paper settings will help with your problem. These setting slow down the rate at which the ink is laid down and allows more dry time. Also, I've heard that printing in this way actually saves ink. I was thinking about doing this when I was having the problem, but couldn't stand the extra strain on the printer (twice as many passes) and how much extra time every single print took. In the end it was much better and easier to just get a different ink.

Good luck and keep us posted, especially if you try a different ink.

 

[Grandad35]

Alex,

This may seem like splitting hairs, but the ink actually takes many minutes (even up to several days in the case of a dark photo print) to completely dry. This link (http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/prod_html/galerie/htm/gtp/how_suits2.htm) gives an idea of what is involved in making several types of photo paper that can absord a lot of ink in a short time without bleeding.

An 8x10 photo print averages about 0.6 CCs of ink, or an average of a 12 micron layer of ink. This much ink is about 5% of the weight of a 250 gsm phoho paper, so it is easy to see why it takes so long to "dry".

The reason for this digression is to point out that if the fibers in your plain paper are too course or have a coating that prevents a rapid absorption of ink into the spaces between the fibers, it may be more prone to bleeding than other "plain papers". A laser printer/copier uses a completely different mechanism to print, so standard "copy paper" may not work well on inkjets.

 

[Nifty]

While this is true (that different papers absolutely have different absorption rates) I found that with my specific problem it was definitely an ink issue: While keeping the paper the same I swapped from OEM cartridges to Arrow Jet cartridges and then to another cartridge filled with a third ink. The only time I experienced the bleeding was with the Arrow Jet cartridge / ink.

I'm currently using the cheapest copy paper I can find for my everyday printing and the black comes out crisp, even when it is on top of / against other colors.

 

[panos]

Alex, I use my inkjet mainly for plain paper printing.

I have found out that different brands of paper yield different results. See http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=248

My observations are quite different to nifty's: I have found photo paper settings to produce very bad results on normal paper and also I have found that ink (for normal paper) is not as important as the paper brand.

Next time you are at your paper supplier, ask for a few samples of every kind of normal paper they have and try them out.

Also keep in mind that paper for inkjets should be stored in a dry environment. Moisture can contribute to the ink bleeding effect which produces a very bad result.

 

[Nifty]

Very valid points, and I definitely do agree that the type of paper makes a big difference, but again, *my* problem, which looked exactly the same as listed above was with the ink. While there was definitely noticeable differences with the paper I used, the degree of difference wasn't nearly as high as it was when I was switching inks vs. switching papers. I never had to shop for any special multipurpose or copy paper for any of my printers before and wasn't about to start.

Definitely, try switching papers as it is possible you may have a very bad ream of paper. Of course, you may find, as I did, that this may not solve the problem and that you may need to try a different ink. Once I switched inks I could then use different papers to give me more fine tuned results.