Weak reds with pigment converted 1400

[costadinos]

After filling with pigment ink and profiling an Epson 1400, I noticed that reds are now very weak, wherever in a print there is saturated red it turns into a brownish/orange solid area.

I used IS black and magenta, Light Cyan and Light Magenta from the IRK4-nano for the R2400 inkset and Yellow and Cyan from the OCP inkset I use with my R2000.

The print screen in Photoshop illustrates the problem perfectly, all those greyed areas (when "gamut warning" is enabled) print as dark brown instead of red.



And here's the gamut compared to what I get with the R2000 (the solid green line is the 1400):




Any ideas what's causing this? Red is made from magenta and yellow, so the problem should be one of those two colors, right?
Those of you using pigment ink in a 1400, what type of ink do you use with it K3/K2 equivalent or something else?

 

[Grandad35]

....snip.... Red is made from magenta and yellow... snip

You might want to look at the spreadsheet in this thread. The plots in the spreadsheet show the wavelengths that are absorbed by eight Canon (BCI-6) dye ink colors, including magenta, yellow and red. On the Canon inks, combining yellow and magenta would give a very different result than the red ink. Also, if it was that easy to get a "redder red", wouldn't Epson just overprint yellow and magenta instead of adding a separate ink?

 

[The Hat]

Mixing colour ink from different suppliers will always give you erratic results.

Red is not just a simple mix of yellow/magenta, it can be a mix of all the colours you have on board your printer
through the print driver or Photoshop as the case may be.

But looking at your screen shots it seems to me you have just as much a problem with your two cyan colours as you do
with your two magenta colours and thats without even bring the yellow into the question.

Youll have a lot more trail and errors to go before you get your colours sorted out,
may I suggest you use thumbnails for your testing say 7 x7 cm size to keep you paper waste down to a manageable level..

 

[costadinos]

....snip.... Red is made from magenta and yellow... snip

You might want to look at the spreadsheet in this thread. The plots in the spreadsheet show the wavelengths that are absorbed by eight Canon (BCI-6) dye ink colors, including magenta, yellow and red. On the Canon inks, combining yellow and magenta would give a very different result than the red ink. Also, if it was that easy to get a "redder red", wouldn't Epson just overprint yellow and magenta instead of adding a separate ink?

Thanks for the info Grandad, interesting stuff. Red isn't made entirely of magenta and yellow afterall...
But even so, those six colors should be able to create saturated reds, Epson did use those six colors in their 7600/9600 pigment printers. Red is used in the R2000 printer, but then light magenta and cyan aren't.

But looking at your screen shots it seems to me you have just as much a problem with your two cyan colours as you do
with your two magenta colours and thats without even bring the yellow into the question.

Youll have a lot more trail and errors to go before you get your colours sorted out,
may I suggest you use thumbnails for your testing say 7 x7 cm size to keep you paper waste down to a manageable level..

Cyans/ blues do fall out of gamut in the Photoshop screen, but the prints are not that bad. Reds on the other hand are a mess.
What do you mean by trial and errors, which settings could I change so reds print correctly? I already created a profile with that ink combination, I could tweak the profile for small color or B&W hue changes, but not for colors that fall outside the reproducible space.

Cone offers a six color pigment inkset for use in the 1400, but as far as I can tell these are simply the selected colors from the K3 inkset (or maybe I'm wrong, I don't know).
So the question is, which of the OCP or IS inks (which are a lot cheaper) should I use in the 1400, since they don't have a pigment inkset specifically for that printer?

 

[mikling]

The magenta from the R1800/1900 series is actually a mid density magenta. The magenta used on the R2100/R2400/2880 series are all different as well but are all stronger in density and tone.
Cyan ifrom the 1800/1900 series is also mid density. The Light cyan is something else.

The Light color series on the Epson Claria series are interesting. I spent a lot of time trying to get the best combination and compatible mixes that I could and finally getting something that I considered works well enough but still requires a profile. I called it the KLARIAH series which is pigment to replace OEM Claria series. Try as I did to get it to print neutrally with pigment I was not successful but it was able to print fairly for the cases when a user owns a dye Claria printer and wants to obtain the occasional batch of archival photos. Custom profiles are a must and using this on matte paper is tricky as the amount of ink laid down on certain matte papers on the dark colors may create pooling or drying issues.

The overlap of transition from standard colors to light colors can create a large reversion problem on this family of printers if the light and standard colors are not precisely matched. Further to that I note that the duality of the Magenta and Cyan appears to be used for Gamut extension by Epson and not necessarily for smoothness of tone. it is not as linear as most profiling algorithms would assume.

With the drop in prices for pigment ink printers and especially used ones, it is better to use a real pigment ink machine with grey inks than mess around with these issues. Get a good used R2880 and use a Gloss optimizer spray using the 1400 if a gloss print with no differential is needed.

These are my observations and by no means definitive.

 

[costadinos]

The magenta from the R1800/1900 series is actually a mid density magenta. The magenta used on the R2100/R2400/2880 series are all different as well but are all stronger in density and tone.
Cyan ifrom the 1800/1900 series is also mid density. The Light cyan is something else.

Thanks a lot mikling, that's exactly what I wanted to know!

So, just to clarify, which magenta/cyan do you use for your "Klariah"? Those from the 2400 or the 2880 inksets (or are these the same?).
Also, is the black different, or the same with that of the 1900 series?

I don't really care about the gloss differential anymore, I only use pearl/luster paper, so the 1400 is a very good option (if only I get the colors right of course). And I do use them heavily and replace them often, so the cheaper the printer to begin with the better.
As for the neutral B&W, some tweaking with ProfileEditor or the Spyder software is all that takes to correct it (at least with the inks/papers I've used so far).

 

[mikling]

If you print a lot of dark heavy colors, I am not sure that this will work out perfectly. ICCs are not a magic bullet. The reversion most often occurs in the very dark areas. These are the colors that the 1400 uses all the inks to print except black and this is the weak area. When grey inks are used the darker greys are used to advantage in these dark areas in combination with other colors, like the cyan and magenta. Ink loading is drastically reduced in this case. This is perhaps why I would say just about ALL current pigment photo printers use the grey ink even when printing color. The only way to try is to test and determine if the result meets your needs. If it does, then all is well. The expectation of the level of result varies by user and their needs and type of images printed most often. It also depends on knowing what to look for as well. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes.

 

[costadinos]

It has worked for me until now, but then again, I have only used inks designed for a specific printer with that printer.
The only issue I had after profiling third party inks was a color cast in B&W printing (for the R2000 for instance, OCP black ink gave a slight cyan cast, IS black gave a greenish cast). I'm not sure why this happens even after profiling, but I've managed to around that by either applying a color adjustment layer in PS before printing (for instance, say +5 towards magenta for the shadows and midtones for the IS worked like a charm), or do the same in the Spyder software after measuring the target and create a separate profile for when printing monochrome.
Other than that, the colors have been the same between OEM and third party, even for critical reproductions. I can only once in a while notice some differences in very saturated areas, but that's due to the different gamuts, selecting other rendering intents while printing solves that as well if precise color matching is a must.

Anyway, I've bought two small bottles of the vivid versions from your store to give it a try, we'll see how that goes...