So, what Canon 3rd party ink is good? Totally confused...

[Inky]

Maybe we're just not picky photo snobs like a lot of you out there!

Heh, yeah well it's a very subjective thing. Like wine or something I guess, something I know little about.

I do however have the eyes to pick out color shifts. As a professional artist I'm picky about color. I don't expect perfection, and even the OEM inks have issues, but something close to OEM would be nice..

For snapshots and other shots where content matters more than color, a shift isn't so bad. But for natural lighting and full spectrum colors, a color shift really sucks! Also for my own art, I don't want colors blown in printing.

My experience with the alotofthings prefilled Arrow carts was a real bummer, really muddy magenta cast killing all the colors. Here's an example: my wife took photos of her and ger sister in Japan, on a sunny day, eating some really colorful food, indoors. You've got vivid colors, a blue sjy outside, subtle shadows inside, etc. The color of the room was somewhat light greenish tint. Their skin were a healthy flushed pink. Printed with the Arrow carts, thier skin was claylike, and the walls brownish. None of the foods had the right color balance, all looked muddied. Also, dark colors going into black shadows wre stepped badly, which is just ugly.

The OEM inks do a much better job on color, but are absurdly expensive. Ink costs more than the printer in no time! The pricing model is designed to sell printers to people who never use them, and really stick costs to regular users in consumables. It sucks.

So, still trying to find OEM quality inks for a reasonable price...

I just ordered ink from HobbiColors, so I'll review them soon. I'm interested in thier cartridge design and it's nylon screw which seems a great idea.

More soon...

 

[fotofreek]

Inky - Neil Slade, in a very early version of his web site said that MIS was Image specialist ink. Not confirmed. I've done side-by-side 4x6 prints with OEM and MIS and couldn't see a substantial difference. Truth be known, I couldn't see any difference! Both tended toward the "warm" side in skin tones.

Your example on color rendition is interesting. I've played with my digital camera and with indoor photos. I can set a custom white balance by aiming at a white card and pressing the menu button. This gives me much better color balance for available light indoor pics than by simply shooting and letting the camera set the white balance. The most accurate indoor colors are with flash, but you then have the attendant problem of light up close being at a high level and light falling off considerably as the distance increases. You then get the color temperature of the ambient light source as the distance increases.

It is my experience that my digital cameras produce the best images outside on clear, sunny days. The worst are available light pics indoors with colored walls and artificial light. My wife shot pictures at a bridal shower recently, mostly with on-camera flash. The walls of the room were a dark orangey-magenta. The skin tones, with the light reflecting from the walls, were totally wierd! Photoshoping the pics helped, but it was impossible to get really good skin tones.

When you have an indoor shot you really want to capture, try both flash and available light. In addition, if your camera can be set to a custom white balance, try that as well. You will then see which image is superior in the specific circumstance. Of course, it could have been the ink, as you suspected.

 

[Inky]

fotofreek - (not to brag but) I'm a professional artist, digital art director actually, and have been using Photoshop since v.1 and other paint programs since before the Macintosh or GUI were invented.

So, point being, I don't go to print anything until I have the color where I want it!

You're right, getting a proper white balance in camera is important. I'm really happy with the Fuji F810 for a small camera. It's not the msallest, but has a nice metal chassis, very good picture quality and lens, and has prosumer features such as exceptional manual controls, and auto mode. It rarely takes bad WP or bad photos at all really.

Did you know that a lot of WP error can be corrected in photo editing software though? I've salvaged shots in Photoshop.

 

[fotofreek]

I certainly respect your professional experience. I've only noted the observations I've made and the experiments I've done to find the best solution for me. While a lot of white balance errors can be corrected in photoshop I have been terribly frustrated, with some images, with attempting to get proper color balance between flesh tones and known colors in other areas. I may be mistaken, but I sense that the color shifts are not always linear and finding a "white point" in the picture to correct to doesn't always give correct color values throughout the photo. This may have to do, in part, with mixed ambient light sources that exist in most indoor environments that have different color temp outputs. Also the issue of color reflecting off of various surfaces comes to play. My best result in these circumstances is to take a moment, pull a custom WB on the subject area, and cover these shots with additional flash pics as a backup. Obviously, this is not possible in all circumstances. I think we agree that we are better off to solve this sort of image problem prior to taking the picture rather than correcting it later in PS.

 

[Grandad35]

Inky,

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but hopefully this thread will be added to the FAQ for future reference. If some of this is old hat to you, I apologize in advance, but I just wanted to be thorough in case else has the same questions.

I look for 4 important characteristics in an ink/cartridge:
1. It must consistently deliver ink to the print head, regardless of the rate of ink usage or how long the printer has been idle. This is often the problem when a color goes missing at the end of a print because the cart is starving the ink pickup. On refilled carts, this is usually because the filter and/or sponge are clogged with ink residue after several refills, and there are numerous threads dealing with this problem (e.g. http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=207). This problem has also been reported on prefilled carts (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3277#p3277), apparently because there is a blockage between the ink and sponge chambers.
2. The ink must reliably "fire" in the print head. Some inks do not seem to print reliably until the print head has a chance to "warm up" for a few seconds. This problem is characterized by a missing color at the top of a print, with all colors printing properly after about an inch has been printed.
3. Color - covered below.
4. Longevity of prints. There are very few test results available comparing the longevity of Canon and 3rd party inks, but the few that I have seen indicate that there can be a very big difference between inks. You are on your own on this one until someone develops a simple test for individuals to test their own ink/paper combinations. Until there is data to the contrary, I can only suggest that well known, established ink suppliers are more likely to have a better product in this regard than an unknown or new ink supplier (although this is far from a given).

Unless you are using an ink/cart that satisfies the first two characteristics, you should switch suppliers. If the ink doesn't print reliably, the color doesn't matter.

Color is a very big, very subjective subject.
1. As was stated in previous posts, many people don't really care about getting accurate color. Even those who care about color vary between "calibrated eyes" and colorblind, so there is no universal standard for "it's close enough".
2. Your monitor must be calibrated before you do any color adjustments. Adobe Gamma might be OK if you are not critical about your colors, but someone as critical as you definitely needs to use a proper monitor calibration system - plan on $100-200 system to periodically calibrate your monitor. Any errors in your monitor's calibration will directly show themselves in your printed output.
3. Cameras don't automatically capture the "real" color. As was stated in a previous post, the "white balance" must be set properly to get the camera to produce an image close to the right color. The image below shows a small section of a photo shot in "RAW" mode and post processed with 5 different lighting conditions. The "Flash" (5500 deg K) lighting gave the closest match to the bride's true skin tone. In this case, the camera thought that 4800 deg K was correct, but this produced a cooler (bluer) image than the actual colors. The fluorescent and tungsten versions were even cooler, and the shade version was warmer. The important thing to remember from all this is that it can be very difficult to get accurate colors from a camera. The use of a gray or white card is a good way of attacking this problem, as long as the lighting remains constant.

4. Scanners need to be profiled (calibrated) before you can use any output from a scanner to compare absolute colors with other scanners (which must also be profiled). In general, the only valid comparison that you can make with a scanner is if the same image is printed on the same printer on the same paper using two different ink sets, and the two prints scanned at the same time.
5. I have profiles for Formulabs and AIJ bulk ink and New InkGrabber (G&G) prefilled carts, plus Canon's standard profile for Photo Paper Pro and Canon ink. The following image shows the soft proofs for the same test image and all 4 profiles. I leave it to you to determine which of these gives the best colors (look at the gray gradients at the bottom of each image for color casts). I suggest that you use the eyedropper tool in PS to look at the colors.

6. The following image was generated by assigning each of the 4 profiles to the same test image, then converting each image to sRGB. This wont show what colors each ink set will print, but it does show the color values that are sent to the printer by each profile. Again, look at the gray gradients with the eyedropper. The R/G/B values for the Canon inks are all very close to each other. This is to be expected, since Canon built the internal RIP in the printer to closely match their own inks. The more the R/G/B values differ from each other, the further the colors of an inkset differ from Canon's.

7. Even if the colors don't match Canon's colors closely, it is not really a problem as long as a custom printer profile can correct the colors. A custom profile only costs about $40 - about the same as the savings on five 3rd party carts. If you are fussy about your colors and only use a few carts/year , stick with OEM ink and paper. If you use a lot of carts, buy a custom profile.
8. FYI - most of the custom profile suppliers have a statement in their terms and conditions to the effect that their profiles cannot be used on any printer other than the printer used to generate the targets. This blocks anyone from sharing such profiles.
9. I have calibrated my monitors and have custom profiles for each of the papers that I use, and I am very happy with the results. I don't have to worry about what will print - what shows on the monitor comes out of the printer (within the limits of the respective color gamuts, of course).

 

[Inky]

foto - most of the color information is there even if the wrong WP was selected. Assuming the WP wasn't totally off, it's often possible to switch to 16bt mode, and adjust color. You're totally right though, better to fix it in camera. Sadly, I always forget to carry a white card, so I sometimes have to fix it later

Grandad - yes, good stuff. Btw, I notice that you're comparing a Canon supplied profile and your own generated profiles... I'd suggest you also profile the Canon OEM inks for yourself, to keep methodology consistent. Otherwise, you don't know how similar your profiles and Canon's actually are. I notice all the cyan you profiled are yellower than Canon's, in a very consistent manner, and yellower than cyan really should be for any ink. That seems odd, may indicate a consistent tendency in your profiling which is different from the Cannon supplied one. Might be apples and oranges... Your new inkgrabber profile seems pretty close to OEM. Formulabs seems to show yellow shift which the ICC is correcting for, but I'm not certain that's a bad thing necessarily. It can probably produce some nice greens...?

Thanks for all the help. I just ordered Hobbicolor inks in bulk (the 5 color refil kit) and will be sure to repay all the help with a through review once I've tested them.

Any Hobicolor experience people have to help me get a leg up on the testing (profiles, print settings, magical incantations, etc) is still appreciated!

 

[hpnetserver]

"I don't know who my favorite manufacturer is yet, but I'm guessing that it will either be Image Specialists or Formulabs. Either way I'll probably go direct to the source, find a distributor that sells for them, or do a group buy."

Very interesting! You have actually stated why some ink vendors don't tell you whose ink they are selling. If they tell you then you will go direct to the source... When I filled up my tank I always go to the cheapest gas station. The gas they sell is just from one of the refineries that also supply gas to Exxon, Shell, Chevron, etc. I have never had any problems filling up with cheap gas.

MIS and Weink have the most expensive ink except OEM yet they are not totally problem free. I tried IMS first but it did not work right. Then I too found Hobbicolors on ebay. Very happy so far with their ink. I can not justify paying twice as much for weink or MIS ink. My bottom lines are good color match, cause no clogs and competitive prices. Why pay more, actually much more, for the ink that works very well and economical?

 

[Nifty]

First off, I'm not as picky about my ink as it sounds.

That being said, you made an interesting comparison, but I don't know that I completely agree. If I understand your analogy correctly then all of the ink distributors would be getting their ink from the same manufacturer, or at least from companies than manufacture ink in the same way. Personally, I always buy my gas from the cheapest station, but do so because I believe that most stations are supplying a product that is almost identical to the others and that one station's gas will have almost the same exact effect on my car as the others. I don't believe this is always true with ink and printers. I've noticed first hand, and through posts on this forum, that some ink just isn't as good as others... whether that be in color matching or quality.

Another reason some people go with the same manufacturer of ink is because they have calibrated their system for a specific ink. If the distributor goes with a different supplier, and you don't know it, it could throw off your system.

 

[wmission]

I have used G&G ink from inkgrabber for my canon MP390 and it seems OK.
I'd like to know about other ink also, thank you!

 

[hpnetserver]

Inky, I have been using Hobbicolors refill kits on my Canon ip8500 for more than 6 months and I am on the 2nd kit now. I ran into their ebay sales by accident and decided to give it a try because of their virgin carts that use screws to seal. What a brilliant idea. They work flawlessly. For some time I would top up all cartridges before any of them ran out of ink. But eventually I am completely comfortable to let the printer to warn me to replace. By then I will just pop in another cartridge already refilled. I have lost count how many cycles like that have gone through. BTW, I seldom need to run clean cycles on my ip8500 ever since I began to use Hobbicolors refill kit. Well, before that I used only a set of OEM carts. I don't know if I should give Canon for the credit for the greatest improvement or to Hobbicolors for the excellent quality of their refill kit. I simply almost never run cleaning cycles any more. That alone is worth everything. Cleaning cycles will shorten the life of the printer by filling up the waste ink tank. When it's full You will know the pain to trying to empty it (or replacing the sponge in there) and reset it. As soon as I realized that there seemed no more cleaning cycles I knew the product really worked. Also just about every time I checked the nozzle test it always came out fine. I have stopped doing nozzle check like I used to do on my older Canon printers, something like a few times a day. I got so tired of it. I feel completely relieved that I am completely comfortable to do it maybe once a few weeks now on my ip8500.

On the colors I will say their ink are so damn close to OEM that you basically will forget about the fact you are using 3rd party. The best thing about the refill kit is they are really cheap. You will pay probably twice the money for a similar kit from MIS or WEINK. The only concern you may have about Hobbicolors is that it is probably a small shop that may not be around for too long. It either will become as big as MIS or WEINK (LOL) and their prices go through the roof as well or they may just disappear after a while. My gut feeling is they got great ink products and there is no reason they will go under. Give them a try and get the best price and quality while they last. Look into ebay for Hobbicolors. You will find their sales quickly. I kept on checking every time I look at ebay. They have been there like that for more than 6 months. I believe they have been there much longer than that.