Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[Ink stained Fingers]

the Hydrangea reach about a similar light brown as my black ink patches do after a month or more....

Fading in the sun...

 

[martin0reg]

... And wish someone had the EPSON udps printer utility because I still have not found any links

Just send you a PM.. but it only works with 3800 and driver 5.5, not newer. No 3880, but r285, 1400 and some more

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The fading tests above show that both the ink and the paper have a big impact onto the performance, let me list some items and the possible pricing range

An A4 sheet needs max about 1ml of ink - approx. for this calculation

I can get dye inks for 10€/litre, that makes 1ct for one A4 print
I can use the Fujifilm DL ink for 200€/litre, that's 20ct per A4
pigment inks are somewhere in between , I could pay 80€/litre, that's 8ct per sheet

the Labelheaven 180 cast coated runs at 4 ct per sheet
the Sihl/Aldi/Netbit PE RC coated paper runs at 10ct/sheet
the Tecco PG230 - Photo Glossy - runs at 35ct/sheet
the HP Photo Glossy Plus runs at 50ct/sheet
a Tecco PHG280 - Photo High Gloss - runs at 70ct/sheet like other premium papers, and some specialty papers even above that price

I could create a pricing matrix but I don't, I could use the cheap China sauce and print onto the Labelheaven paper - that makes a total of 5ct/sheet, such prints will probably fade even in the dark.
Would it make sense to use that ink on the higher price papers - I wouldn't think so

I could use the DL ink on the Labelheaven paper for a total of 24ct, that gives me some decent printouts, quite stable, the gloss is o.k., the touch and feel of the paper is ---- paperlike

I could use the DL inks on the Aldi/Sihl/Netbit papers for 30cts, that gives really pleasing prints, a good and heavy paper, a pretty good gloss, a good feel of the paper - a very appealing combination, with pretty good fade performance as well

I could use the DL ink on the PG230 - for 55ct - the gloss looks a little bit smoother than on the Aldi papers, in direct comparison, the feel of the RC paper is about the same, the fading performance is somewhat better than with the Aldi Papers, this is a pretty pricey combination with very good fade performance

the Tecco PHG 280 and the HP Glossy Plus have an even better , smoother look of the gloss than the previous papers, but the difference is only visible in direct comparison, that's the range where you pay significantly more for only slight improvements , these papers with the DL ink together run at
70 to 90 ct, that's above my cost considerations, but it looks very good and the fading is very slow.

there are lots of combinations possible, some don't make sense, others very well , but you need to be clear what you really expect and what combination fits a particular purpose of a printout. All these combinations would need an icm-profile for best performance, and I'm not including here any assessment of the gamut of a particular ink. The black levels vary slightly, and some ink may be better in the magenta or cyan range.

I'll comment on pigment inks on some of these papers separately - with and w/o Glop, let's see.

 

[The Hat]

@Ink stained Fingers, that’s a very interesting way of looking at which paper /ink combination to use when printing something, I would never have considered that in my wildest imagination.

I only source paper that is in my price range (Low end) and never use anything that’s expensive, that way I stay in my comfort zone, the same goes for the ink, I never would consider using OEM ink for any of my prints, all dough retired I still can source digital copier at trade prices when the need arises, which is not very often now.

My black ink fade test is starting to show some signs of fading on the plain paper, but I still intend letting it run the full two months, and by then the results will be very obvious.

http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/black-ink-fade-test….11026/

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

@Ink stained Fingers, that’s a very interesting way of looking at which paper /ink combination to use when printing something, I would never have considered that in my wildest imagination.

I didn't consider that either when I started to look into the fading question. I started off to think - it's the ink , but did not have any idea how much more complex it became . And I hope that the testing will come to an end pretty soon, otherwise it would become endless with more inks and more papers etc

 

[The Hat]

I find most times that testing doesn’t prove anything except to remind me to avoid the papers and situations that give the poorest results, I used to print on dozens of types of paper but now keep it down to a few basic weights and surfaces, and Matte coated smooth bright inkjet paper caused the biggest colour shift of all...

The only reason I continue to test periodically is because the inkjet market has changed considerably, not only have the OEM inks changed but so too the 3rd party inks, I reckon in the rush to keep up with the newer OEM inks, their inks are not as colourfast as they used to be on cheaper paper.

The OEM inks are also narrowing down the field by formulating their newer inks to work exclusively with certain high quality papers, so unless you can afford to use these papers then you might as well stick with non OEM inks, and if longevity is important to you, then the use of pigment inks are a better alternative and value...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I did some testing with a Gloss Optimizer GO as an overprint for dye or pigment ink prints to see the effects of the GO. There is an assumption that a GO overprint is extending the fading time of dye inks, the test is going on and does not give any clear results yet.

I'm using for this test the Labeheaven 180gr paper as a budget paper, and the Photo Glossy PG230 by Tecco which they sell for Drylab/Surelab printers, and I'm using the Fujifilm Dye ink set and a pigment ink set in a R265. The pigment inks are a mixed collection of inks from previous tests to find an ink with good gloss behaviour on glossy papers, inks that are sold as compatible to the R2000 Ultrachrome Highgloss 2 inks. There is a wide range of differences, some inks are just useless, others create prints with a lesser amount of bronzing and gloss differential. But as always it all depends on the combination of inks and paper, other choices may give different results.
I'm using a GO by farbenwerk.com which they sell as part of their inkset for the R2000/P400, which is pretty expensive with about 200€/l, other companies offer GO down to 40€/l and any price in between, I didn't test different GO's, I don't know how much difference they would make, another variable in the testing gamble.
I'm not printing with an R2000 or alike, I print with an R265 running pigment inks, and have swapped the black channel for the GO for this test, so I overprinted the finished prints in a second print pass.
A R2000 would print the GO directly in the same print job, directly onto the moist ink in the same print pass which may as well make a difference - I don't know.

I printed 4 target sheets - with 2 types of inks - dye and pigment - onto two sorts of papers - Labelheaven and Tecco which makes 4 sheets. I overprinted half of the color patches in length with GO so I have 8 test fields in total.

There are no fade test results yet - the inks are too good for quick results in this respect, but there are other observations I can report already.

There are two sheets with pigment inks - the GO shows a visible improvement reducing the bronzing and improving the color saturation when viewed against reflecting light


The right sides of the color patches are GO covered. This is the Tecco PG230 paper, it shows
an adverse effect that the surface crinkled, the paper does not do good in the outside environment with changing humidity I guess , form hot and dry to cold and moist from indirect rain. The Labelheaven paper does not show this effect, not with dye or pigment inks.
This effect of improving the colors and eliminating the bronzing is similar on the Labelheaven paper.

When overprinting dye ink patches there is the opposite effect, the saturated colors are covered by the GO adding an additional sheen and reducing the color saturation - against strong reflecting light, it looks too glossy, the same effect is visible on both papers.
This is the PG230 paper with DL ink, the right side is GO covered, here again you can see the
crinkles on the surface, a backup copy kept in the dry does not have this effect.


So the GO on dye inks does not do any good visibly, and only would make sense if it significantly would improve the fade performance - some results to follow later.

 

[The Hat]

@Ink stained Fingers, Overprinting GO onto solid ink surfaces never goes very well if the application is too heavy, and it does not do well on plain or matte surfaces either.

I use a standard middle colour setting for the printer and a solid Aubergine colour reduced to 40% with the media set to glossy or plain paper depending on the ink coverage that was on the surface of the papers.

I tried doing a photo on glossy paper and then after half an hour used exactly the same image to overprint the GO on another machine and the results was poor, it just wasted more GO and took ages to dry with no better results.

The few fade tests that I did with dye inks were very positive at the start, but once the GO treated colours started to fade they caught up rapidly with the untreated colours, and the results were nothing to talk about...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

@The Hat, your findings go somewhat in line with my observations, I was using the black channel with the GO in the R265 and could vary the density by varying the gray level of the print (with grayscale printing on), but I did not run many tests by changing the density. So far the GO does not improve anything for me on glossy dye prints, it looks worse - in direct comparison under particular light conditions. If it does not really improve the fading performance significantly I won't use it. Prints on glossy paper with my pigment inks look visibly better with GO on the PG230 - very close to dye ink prints, you only could see slight differences in direct comparison, but pigment prints on the Sihl/Aldi Glossy paper do not give a very good glossy look, and not even with a GO overprint, so I cannot generalize from own experience that a GO overprint would always improve the look with pigment inks on glossy papers - no, it all depends, on the paper, inks and GO combination, there is a wide range of combinations to test for the best result. And funny enough - I'm using a 24" roll glossy paper 280gr by Emblem on the Pro7600, that gives the best results overall, without GO, it shows the least bronzing and a good and even gloss , but that paper is not available as sheet ware.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I looked after my fading targets again and observe something unexpected, I have some patches which I overprinted partially with a gloss optimizer, and funny enough - that one is gone on the cheap Labelheaven CC paper, on both sheets with dye and pigment inks. The GO is still visible on the Tecco paper which runs in parallel. I assume that the GO on the Labelheaven paper disappeared into the coating, by the widely varying conditions - humidity probably - some kind of GO migration....So I won't be able to tell you whether the GO makes a difference to the fading performance - whether the GO would give some more protection on this paper. A copy kept in the dark still shows the GO on the paper so it is not a simple aging process. A behind glass test would run much longer than this one. I'm running as well some patches with pigment inks and laser print, on normal paper, here I cannot report any valid changes yet after 70 days so far.