Not another Fading Test.......

[Ink stained Fingers]

I looked into my ink cabinet recently and was wondering that I have quite a number of ink, black inks,
left overs from previous tests, and I took them for a test to compare the black levels on different papers.
All patches are printed on a WF-2010W with the same driver settings - matte paper - ICM off

I'm using a dye mix and a pigment mix, both a mix of leftovers from previous tests a year or 2 ago, the mixing ratio and ink brands are unknown.
I tested recently the use of pigment inks in a Canon IP7250, the black is a pigment photo black for the Pro10s, PGI72 PK by Octoinkjet. Lyson, Conecolor and precision colors (PC) are offering K3 HD inks suitable for the P600 and equiv. printers.
I got a Durabrite (matte) black from InkOwl recently, together with their dye inks and still had a Chinese ink - photo black - for the R2000 in the cabinet. The numbers posted are the measured (with a i1Pro2 spectro) luminance values of the printed black patches, averaged over several spot measurements each. There is no Gloss optimizer used after the prinouts, the GO may improve these black levels visibly and significantly as shown in previous tests, specifically with pigment inks.


______Ink_____Type______Copy___Inkjet__Labelheaven_____Netbit
________________________Paper__Paper___glossy__cc______PE glossy


Dye Mix_______dye_______31.7____16.1______11.1_________14.6

Solution CL___dye_______29.3____13.0_______6.4__________3.6

Fujifilm DL___dye_______28.4____13.0_______4.5__________4.0

D700/3000 Ch__dye_______28.7____14.5_______4.5__________3.9


Pig Mix_______pig_______35.2____23.5______17.5_________13.4

Canon PGI72PK pig_______29.3____19.5______17.0__________7.3

Lyson HD PK___pig_______43.2____26.1______24.2_________10.2*

Conecolor HD__pig_______38.5____23.6______19.1__________2.4*

China R2000PK_pig_______42.1____22.3______21.5_________10.3

PC K3HD PK____pig_______46.8____27.0______25.9_________10.6+

InkOwl MK_____pig_______19.5____16.5______19.1________(11.2) matte
(Durabrite comp.)

(*) The Lyson K3 HD and even more the Conecolor Pro HD show banding in the black patches with
an uneven gloss, as such pretty unusable, the nozzle check was o.k. before and after printing these
patches.
(+) the PC HD black patch showed the best, most uniform gloss of all pigment inks, without GO.

The InkOwl pigment ink prints very well on matte papers, but rubs off on a glossy paper (it's not
made for that and is pretty matte on the Netbit glossy paper).

As you easily can see it is impossible to specify a black level for a given paper or a given ink by itself without reference to the other parameters, the black level with the same ink can vary significantly
across different papers, as much as the black level of a paper can vary depending on the ink used.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

About to leave on vacation so have not been able to evaluate figures, but result is very interesting.

On the inkjet paper, and allowing for discarding the highest and lowest outlier readings, we see a huge difference. By my hurried count from 13 to 26.1 on matte and 4.5 to 24.2 on the glossy

I am assuming these are L* values, and with the same media setting on the same printer.

I am interested because I do a fair amount of black and white printing and will be doing a fair amount of serious B&W images come the fall. So I want to try to get the best DMax possible. I work on the theory that I can control the DMin with good post processing

Some time ago I tried similar tests using the venerable Colormunki Photo but it just was not up to the degree of precision required and my resultes were inconclusive. Still saving for the i1pro2 spectro, but rhe Canon Pro1000 is beckoning first.

Now I have the Epson 3880 with the ABW drive may give the Colormunki another try with some of my favoured papers.


rs

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, that's the L* values, I'm not showing the (ab) color values, all inks are pretty much neutral except on copy paper when pigments turn brown.
There are a few conclusions you can draw - PE tpye glossy papers like the Netbit generally
give better black levels than the same ink on a budget cast coated (cc) paper like the Labelheaven or LogicSeek types I'm using now and then when longevity is not that important.
These cc papers typically fair better here with dye inks. But their lower ranking in the fading tests is presented elsewhere.