Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[Ink stained Fingers]

Sorry , I'm already done with the patch printing with the Vermont inks, and my standard sauce is just back in the ink reservoirs of the L300, but I keep that in mind for the next weeks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I can add some info to my postings #109 and #116 about fading of profile targets - as long as the profile target prints are kept in the dark they don't fade - now after a month I scanned my targets again - and the profiles they generate are the same as the previous ones - it does not make a difference whether you scan your targets 1 hour or 1 day or 1 month after printing, there are no hidden changes happening to the colors , not for dye inks - Surelab - or for ´pigment inks.
I remember some article by X-Rite recommending to scan such targets only after 1 day after printing to let the colors dry and stabilize, I don't see this as a need for inkjet printouts.

(O.k. - but some other Inkthrift CL patches are sitting in the sun.....that ink on par with Epsons Claria....as claimed - I'm not making or taking any bets)

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm on the 5th day with the Falter/Vermont-Cone/Inkthrift CL inks, they perform very well in comparison to the Epson E6 inks - I don't see any change yet in the histograms with Cyan and Black, magenta and yellow are my regular inks for the patch prints, and Magenta is already shifting the brightness in the histogram as an indication that the sun, weather, probably some small amount of ozone at springtime are doing their work on the inks...
Inkjetmall/Falter are offering the Inkthrift CL ink for the Epson dye photo printers - 1500W and all the predecessors, and they are offering as well dye inks 'Solution CL' in cartridges for the Epson and Fujifilm Drylab/Surelab photo printers. They named the inks differently - for some reason keeping the CL probably as a reference to the Epson Claria inks ? - anyway - I ordered both the Inkthrift CL black and Cyan , and 200ml cartridges for the Epson D700 black and cyan to compare with. So far both inks Inkthrift CL and Solution CL perform alike - they may be identical or just slightly different in their solvent but using the same dyes - the test goes on.

 

[martin0reg]

I don't understand, why they sell their best (and most expensive) dye ink set only for epson 6 channel printers - not for K3 printers like R2880, 3000, 3880, ... For the K3 models there is only the less stable "inkthrift pro", why?
We now have at least three very good alternative dye inks for epson home printers.. fuji DL epson D6, and perhaps inkthrift CL..
II really would like to have this dye alternative for my epson 3880, ready to use, like inkthrift pro but stable as CL.
Besides I'm wondering why there is no comparable alternative for canon bubble jet. These pixma's are as "photographic" as the epson claria models, so there would be similar demands for stable 3rd party ink I think..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you have a good question - raise it to Jon Cone. I guess that the large format printing people either go with the standard pigment inks for the final prints or use a cheaper dye ink for test prints - layout - color balance etc, and then longevity does not count, the ink rather should be cheap. Look to their comments on
http://www.vermontphotoinkjet.com/products/ink•thirft-professional-dye-ink
copied from there ' The 11 color InkThrift PRO dye ink is 1/10 the cost of Epson pigment ink. In this type of economy, it is wise to be frugal with materials if the application supports using a dye based solution.'

I'm only testing black and cyan, for the same reason of economy, their fading impacts an image most - loss of blacks - loss of contrast - loss of cyan giving an image a reddish, a suntan tone after a while.

If you really want to use their CL inks in an 3880, go and dilute the base colors and profile that ink set, the 3880 does not use other colors like red, orange, green, blue making that more difficult. O.k., a matte black would be missing, just fill that cartridge with a cleaner or solvent as long as you don't print on matte papers

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Now after 8 exposure days I can report some interim findings about the Inkthrift CL inks - they perform very well. I'm comparing the black and cyan Inkthrift CL and Solution CL inks in bottles and Surelab/Drylab compatible cartridges - they seem to perform alike, they may produce these inks with slight differences in the solvent to fit the target printers, but I don't see a difference, both ink types print in a L300 so far. Their fading is equivalent - no fading yet of the blacks, and some equal fading of the cyan inks.
The Inkthrift CL cyan shows a slightly smaller shift for the lightness change in the histogram than the Epson Ultrachrome D6 cyan, it's on the same sheet of paper, those patches got the same amount of light. I'm going to redo this test with another set of color patches to verify this. Overall - so far - the Inkthrift inks perform very well, very similar to the D6 inks, the black and cyan which I'm testing. It does not really matter whether that's due to very good dyes and/or in combination of their dye encapsulation process as Vermont ink claims it.
http://www.vermontphotoinkjet.com/our-dye-technology

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I continued with the fading test of the Inkthrift CL ink samples, and can confirm that they perform very well, the cyan has a slightly smaller luminance spread between the exposed and unexposed parts of the cyan patch compared to the Epson D6 ink patch, I tested this on 2 different sheets for 8 and 12 days resp. The black performs as well as the Epson D6 black. Since that I'm not measuring anything to get a numerical result I'm stopping this test here at this time. I can conclude that the Inkthrift CL inks appear to have quite a similar fade performance as the Epson D6 inks tested last year, they can be considered as a very good alternative. And I'm repeating myself to state that all these dye inks fade nevertheless, visibly faster than pigment inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm currently having a problem on may L800 with the light colors M and C they are clogged now and then - I'm probably playing with the inks too much, and this is not the reason for this post - I asked myself whether I can do without the light ink channels at all and ran a profile without the LM and LC inks printing, these channels are currently filled with a cleaner. So what happens in this case



The green line is the gamut with 4 colors - without the light colors printing , the red line is the gamut with the light colors printing. The overall gamut does not show any other irregularities but just a slightly smaller size. It's on the same type of paper, with the same driver settings.
Long time ago I filled the light channels with standard ink, that works as well, the gamut was slightly bigger than with the standard ink setup, this means that the light colors are printing over the standard colors to increase the color saturation where necessary. You just cannot print without a profile in this case, printing without a profile gives too much color saturation.

 

[martin0reg]

Some unusual experiments, with interesting results.. But what about the cleaner, does it affect the results? And what about the light areas of an image, will it become more grainy?

Maybe I should try this with a B&W ink set! I made one with dye ink instead of pigment.
And diluted black, especially dye, use to fade more than undiluted, so skipping the light channels means skipping the high dilutions. One problem remains: the highest dilution is for Y.
..and I have no idea how to profile this..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm not familiar with B/W printing, the inks and profiling, so I can't comment on that really. I don't know how much the light channels are still printing in my test, the cleaner is not visible as such on the paper. the droplet size of the Epson photo printers like the L800 and the other 6 color models are pretty small with 1.5pl, there is no graininess visible, differences may become visible under the microscope and 1 pixel width lines and patterns, but I'm not looking into that.