Sample Image Prints On Glossy/matte Photo Paper With Pigmented Ink

[jtoolman]

Using all 6 channels loaded with go will not be able put more glop on a print.
Except when using RIP like QuadTone RIP.
can lay down as little or enough from the 6 channels to completely soak the print. Which of course is way too much.
The way to control the equal depositing of glop per channel depends of the CURVE you use. Each channel can be individually adjusted so an identical cumulative amount of glop per color channel is laid down.
So I can apply a LOT more glop per single pass than from single pass. You are fooling the printer unto thinking it is printing a black document on plain paper, matte setting so it is forced to switch to the matte black cart loaded with glop.
It works but you might need more than one pass.
By the way OCP glop for Epson is glossier than IS but of course can not be used on a Canon printer.

Joe

 

[The Hat]

By the way OCP glop for Epson is glossier than IS but of course can not be used on a Canon printer.

Joe

Why did you have to go and spoil the bloody thread with that last word of caution ?
I was just getting ready to order….

 

[Smile]

AFAIK gloss optimizer is available only for Piezo heads, so no Canon or HP.

 

[jtoolman]

Sure. EPSON Gloss Optimizer is only for Peizohead Epson Printers. Chroma Optimizer ( same as GLOP but different in viscosity ) is for Canon printers.
I think one or two large format Canon printers use a similar product.
Rodham and Hat use it I believe.

Joe

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't think you can compare colors just by printing those patches, you need to run an ICC profile and compare the actual color spaces to see whether one is wider than another with other inks. The Sihl paper is actually pretty good and gives a good color space and black level better than some other glossy papers even ore expensive.
When it comes to pigment inks with their gloss and bronzing, it's getting difficult because there is no actual measure to compare ink behaviour in that respect - you need to run comparitive tests on your own.
Epson had/has verious generations of their Ultracrhome inks, Ultrachrome to start with beginning of the millenium in the Pro 4000 and 7600 etc printers, with some bronzing and gloss differentials problems, the successor was the Ultrachrome K3 ink, improving that situation, then expanding the color space with Vivid Magenta and HDR, and parallel to that an Ultrachrome Hi Gloss/2 for the R800/1800/1900/2000 Printers for a good reason, those printers were targeted mainly to glossy prints, together with the gloss optimizer GO.
Wehn you now go to the 3rd party market lots of dealers promise you Ultrachrome compatibility, mixing possible, no flushing etc. That all is true to my experience, but every ink set has a different color space, and worse - every ink set looks quite different in terms of gloss and bronzing, so different that some ink sets are just useless, they print but that's usable on matte papers only.
I recently ordered 5 different ink sets claimed to be compatible and usable in the R1900, I ordered CMYK and tested them in an old R265, and I'm diluting the light colors. One ink set is just matte, on any paper, usable only on matte papers, not at all on glossy, semiglossy etc. One has strong bronzing, unusable on glossy papers as well. I talked to the supplier and he admitted that he is shipping one type of pigment ink for all, regardless whether you ordered ink for the R1900, or 2800, or 2100 etc, or even as a Durabrite replacement. A third ink was so so, but pretty expensive, and inks from Marrutt/Lyson and a Fotorite R1900 come close and look quite well - to my personal opinion. Everybody else can have a different judgement, and to make it more complicated, gloss and bronzing may look different on other paper brands. I'm printing - if I want to, in a 2nd pass the GO, I'm using another CISS and can easily switch. The GO takes some of the bronzing away, is darkening the blacks and enhancing the gloss of the bare unprinted areas on the already glossy paper. It is somewhat equalizing the gloss, but not creating a uniform gloss which you would see with dye ink prints.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

@Ink stained Fingers: I think your observations of how many pigment inks Epson alone has had over time, and your experiments pretty well substantiate my claims. Holy cow, no ICC profiles or other objective standards needed to substantiate my observations. In the same time period you encompass, Canon has had only three ink families.

Or, just print with dye?

Look, I'm not in the business, I haven't owned a pigment printer except for one brief foray into Epson Land about 13 years ago. I understand the human mental phenomena of thinking, "Once tarnished, always tarnished." Maybe some pigment systems are at, at least for some ink/harware/paper combinations, where they can match the best and latest dye inks in gamut, Dmax, and surface uniformity, on all paper surfaces. Mr. Wilhelm, who has looked at tens of thousands of prints in his long life, heartily endorses the Canon PRO-1, especially in B&W. I doubt if he could be bought by Canon, he has too much at stake. So, maybe Nirvana has been reached.

Of course, the PRO-1 needs, IIRC, twelve ink tanks, and costs twice as much as the PRO-100, uses more expensive inks, and is slow, to perhaps attain the same level of perfection that dye inks can.

Other than long "out of the box" print life, there is absolutely no reason to use pigment inks. All else is negatives.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

oh, Epson has yet another ink formula - Ultrchrome XD - for the Surecolor printer family, and they have taken away the light colors. Sure you can expand the gamut somewhat when you install more colors, blue, orange, red, green etc, what is actually done on lots of large format printers. Epson is giving their different ink formulas different names, but you wouldn't know whether HP did some unpublished changes to their inks as well over the years when introducing new models. The WIR tests show clearly that pigment inks of Canon, Epson, HP as well achieve different permanence results - o.k. I'm not printing for an museum archive so it doesn't matter for me whether the prints last 60 or 175 years , all my pigment ink prints last long enough for the period they are looked to, with 3rd party inks on 3rd party paper, and they all last muuch longer than dye prints with 3rd party inks and papers, that's the whole reason I'm using pigment inks. But nothing is free, since I don't use established OEM material I have to find out for myself the best suiting combinations, and I have seen lots of scrap material barely better than directly putting it into the waste paper collection and dumping the inks - no - actually I'm mixing those excess inks - M and C and use them as a black substitute and print them away in an L300, printing from the internet etc where the black level does not matter, so those scrap inks find at least some use ......

 

[Smile]

Other than long "out of the box" print life, there is absolutely no reason to use pigment inks. All else is negatives.

I agree with you on this one.
It amazes me that proper print protection is tried to be substituted with different printing tech (pigment prints) to begin with. Use proper UV-cut glass, No OBA, No Acid paper, mount in a frame properly or store in an album. Then there is no problems with dye prints.

For glossy prints glass with antireflective coating is very expensive !

Even longer longevity means testing and resin coated papers etc. OEM inks are best most of the time but it needs to be worth using, if you print for museum or client that can pay extra for quality use nothing else than OEM ink.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, OEM dye inks and papers can perform comparably to pigment ink prints, but WIR numbers show that the effect of UV cut glass is overestimated since that as well part of the higher frequency visible light - the blue part - contributes to the degradation. Framing - well - that doesn't always work, people may ask me to print a particular shot of a tournament, and they put it on the wall with needles or magnets, and there are lots of neon tubes in that room - decoloration becomes visible after a week or so with 3rd party dye inks, and after some more weeks with OEM inks, but only after many more months with pigment inks, and then those printouts get replaced anyway. So there are lots of situations where a little bit of bronzing or gloss differential just does not matter. I have not seen any 3rd party ink supplier providing UV stability numbers for their dye inks in comparison to the OEM inks - nobody apparently dares to pay for such tests. Some suppliers actually claim UV resistance - from Aliexpress to Ebay etc with no further evidence. But the good thing is - there is enough material on the market - OEM and 3rd party inks - dye and pigment - and suiting papers for everybody's need - good, bad , cheap, expensive whatever .

 

[Smile]

I was mentioning antireflective coating glass because it's like glasses with AR coating, you don't see the glass instead you see the print. If print is glossy itself, then double reflection is avoided. If print is matt then you see the matt paper more clearly.

Such glass has UV coating too, so that's why I mentioned it.