The quest for the perfect inkset - a scientific ink test

[ThrillaMozilla]

Using a printer is indeed impossible.

Not impossible. Just way too time-consuming and expensive.

I am quite convinced that the colorimetric measurements are ok. I tried to put down the maximum amount of ink that the paper would accept and measured in a spots that were not obviously affected by swabbing artifacts. In real life it's easier than it sounds.

I don't see how you can make that claim. I don't see ANY spot that isn't severely affected by swabbing artifacts. How large were the spots that you measured?

 

[nertog]

I don't see how you can make that claim. I don't see ANY spot that isn't severely affected by swabbing artifacts. How large were the spots that you measured?

Well, the rectangles are 15 x 40mm and the I1 averages over a 5mm (eyeballed) spot. I was also concerned over this, but I did many different readings and chroma values didn't change that much. I'm not saying this is a perfect way of doing it, but I feel it's sufficient to check the chroma of an ink You can check the Excel file with the LAB data and you'll see there certainly are variations, but it does give you an idea of the hue angle and chroma of the inks and that's exactly what I was aiming for. I discovered for example that "vivid magenta" in these aftermarket inks is not more vivid than normal magenta (the chroma is even slightly less), but it is a more purple of magenta. The normal, non vivid version is more reddish. This info could be useful to finetune an inkset for your own needs.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

I'm not so sure that's right. Chroma is intensity of color, right? If you look at the pigment images in particular, I don't see a uniform 5-mm spot anywhere. Cyan is particularly nonuniform. I even measured one of those images with ImageJ. There's just a huge variation in the intensity. Your measurements might be fairly consistent, but that doesn't mean they're right. Am I missing something here?

Moreover, you don't know for sure that there's any relation between the smears and a printer output. A printer might be deposit a little more cyan form one brand of ink than another, for example. So I'm still dubious.