Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[Ionlab]

Using Colormunki i have profiled the 1500w using the L800 inks...
I also profiled my rx520 using the same inks (only the normal ones not the LM, LC).

Using perfX gamut viewer the two profiles look VERY similar. In fact the RX520 profile seems to cover a larger volume, but since I am a novice here I try to not jump to conclusions. Also the difference with the default Epson profile for the claria inks seems not substantial. Paper used was epson premium glossy paper.
I did print the Colormunki patches in 10x15cm paper so these were scaled down to 50% of actual size (had no A4) but i did not have false reads so i do not know whether that played a part.
Will post the profiles soon. I will also test with a completely different paper and see if the profile produced is different, because if not then the munki, as is, seems like a big waste of money.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

why would you expect much of a difference between the profiles - it's the same ink on the same paper. The light inks don't contribute much to the size of the colorspace, they are not saturated. The printers differ in their droplet size, you may see some different graininess in lighter less saturated color areas or a difference in sharpness between the printers. Just try the extreme - profile plain copy paper - and compare that to the Epson glossy paper

 

[Ionlab]

Will do. First of all I want to determine if not using A4 to print the patches is having an impact on the profiles. Although as i said i had almost 0 read errors

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm running a last - I think - fade test comparing some black inks, on the same paper, printed on the same printer with the same driver settings and exposed to the same sun.
I'm scanning the patches and compare the relative luminance values taken from the histograms of the black patches, these are the readings now after 5 days, 3 of the inks don't show fading yet, no spreading of the histograms

Inkthrift CL------------------ 31
EV6/Precisioncolors----- 25 --- 39 delta 14
Fuji DL -----------------------23
Epson Ultrachrome D6 ----- 27

the black levels vary - quite a lot - the differences are visible in direct comparison, and these differences would have impact on profiles with these inks. I'll let the patches stay out in the sun for some more days

 

[Ionlab]

Ok just did the plain paper and the profile is significantly less voluminus...is there any free program to check the volume of an icc profile? The better the profile and consequently the paper performance the larger the volume i guess

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you can do lots of things with Gamutvision which is now available for free

http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/my-profiles-just-suck.10850/page-2#post-91020

see posting #12

You may search the forum for Gamutvision for lots of tips and findings for and with Gamutvision.

Most profiling packages come as well with some kind of profile viewer, but these programs are not available as stand alone, I'm using an old program 'Monaco Profileworks' by X-Rite which was part of the Monaco profiling package. Programs calculate some volume number but these are not comparable between different programs.
Relevant for profile assessment are both the volume and the shape of the gamut, and part of it is the black point, the bottom tip which defines the overall contrast range you can acheive with a particular paper. The shape will show you whether you have good coverage for all colors, and this is the area in which you can see differences between inks, they may have the same gamut volume but one ink is stronger with magenta, another stronger in the cyan lbue green range

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

recently at a bicycle tour I happened to meet a hobby photographer in a restaurant, and he is a member of a foto club in a nearby town. We got into talking about this and that, the cameras and the photo occasions and the printing of images. He is using an Epson 1400 and a 1500W for the convenience of the WLAN connection, and he is a fan of the Lyson Fotonic XG dye inks because of their claims of a very good longevity.
http://www.ink2image.com/Fotonic.html
I'm copying from there: 'Fotonic XG is also equally as fade resistant as the Claria inks. '
I thought - Ooops - am I missing something ? and checked around a little bit, Marrutt in U.K. is distributing these dye inks as well - at an exorbitant price of almost 40€ per 125ml, or 320€ per litre, that should be an ink with tremendous fade performance at this price point.
http://www.marrutt.co.uk/epson-1500w-other/lyson-fotonic-xg-bulk-inks-for-epson-1500w-printer.html

But checking some test reports at the Aardenburg archives shows that this ink is performing pretty poor
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/AaI_20130917_SN002Lf.pdf
Their rating is about one tenth or less than tests with the genuine Claria inks , results vary with the paper used.
I'm in contact with this photographer, we'll meet again pretty soon, and will talk about inks some more in detail about their performance, and I'll have to tell him cautiously that these Fotonic inks are way to expensive , and even more that the longevity is far short of any claims and promises for this ink. He promised me to provide some ink to test for a direct comparison with the Surelab/Drylab inks we have discussed here in detail.
When looking to the Aardenburg report this Fotonic ink is tremendously overpriced and an extreme example that high prices are not a good indicator for good performance. The Aardenburg test does not compare the gamut of this ink set to the genuine Epson Claria inks, there might be an advantage which I wouldn't exclude at this time

 

[RogerB]

Ok just did the plain paper and the profile is significantly less voluminus...is there any free program to check the volume of an icc profile? The better the profile and consequently the paper performance the larger the volume i guess

As Ink stained Fingers suggests, the gamut volume, as a number, doesn't really tell you anything about the "quality" of a profile. The colour gamut of a printer/ink/paper combination is determined by the physical characteristics and any profile should yield more or less the same colour gamut.

The most important thing about a profile is how it renders colours, both in- and out-of-gamut. Gamutvision can help a lot in evaluating accuracy of colour rendering. You can find several discussions on how to do this in other threads here. Now that Gamutvision is free, it's a no-brainer for anyone that regularly makes profiles.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Is there anything new what I can report from my fading tests - not too much at this time, no - I'm not running out of ink....
I currently have black patches out in the sun or whatever, with the Fujifilm DL ink, the Epson D6 ink, the Inkthrift CL ink and the EV6 ink , they started with different black levels (measured with a scanner in a range from 0 - 255)
DL = 24, D6 = 29, EV6 = 25, Inkthrift = 34, that's differences in the black tone you can see in direct comparison when printed on the same type of paper

The lightness of the black patches start separating between the exposed and unexposed parts as explained above, these are interim numbers after about 20 days

DL goes up to 33 delta 9
D6 goes up to 37 delta 8
Inkthrift goes up to 45 delta 11 these three inks are pretty close together
EV6 goes up to 67 delta 42 which currently looks like dark brown chocolade, the delta lightness increase makes about 4x of the other inks, but starting at a very dark black point of 25 which makes it a decent ink if light fastness is not the prime requirement.
The tests from last year had shown that there are about 3 performance groups - DL/D6 and now Inkthrift CL - EV6 and some other inks - and a group of really fast fading inks - actually those which where labelled as UV resistant by their Chinese suppliers ......As long as the pricing follows the performance I don't see nothing wrong with that, but wrong longevity claims make it difficult for a potential customer to make the right choice.
One of the limitations with all these tests is the complete lack of knowing the cumulated exposure which varies with the sun, the orbit, the weather, so I think I'll just use one of the inks itself as a reference, plot their fading over time, and use that as a reference for a next test, the fading characteristic of the ink is not changing, that's about the only constant in the game - why not using it.

I got a few milliliters of the most precious Fotonic ink - black and cyan - and these patches are out since a few days, and if they don't fade at all I wouldn't have anything further to report.....but I'm not making or taking any bets for these inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The sun is doing its work these days - bleaching my targets...the overall trend reported above continues.

The black level of the Fujifilm DL black is better than the Epson D6 black, the fading of both inks is about the same.
The Inkthrift CL black (Vermont ink) does not perform as well as the DL/D6 inks, better than the EV6 black, but is not really worth the purchase price. The Inkthrift CL Cyan performed similarly like the D6/DL cyan in a previous test, that's o.k.
The Marrutt Fotonic XG Cyan is performing about equal to the EV6 cyan, this XG ink with this performance is not recommended because it is very much overpriced.
The Fotonic XG black runs better than the EV6 black, but it needs a few more sunny days to let me conclude how good it actually is and worth the very high price.