Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[Ink stained Fingers]

Ref Gloss optimizer - I had a chance to look to printouts from a Epson SC-P400, that pretty new successor of the R2000 A3 printer model. I must admit - I'm disappointed about the effect of the GO and the look of original Epson Higloss2 inks - I may be too critical but I saw gloss differences and not a very visible effect of the GO. The driver does not allow you to tune the GO intensity - it's one setting - on auto or full and off. I'm getting the impression that my previous tests overprinting printouts in a 2nd print pass just with GO e.g. via the black channel puts more GO onto the paper than the P400. It could be as well that the ink is still wet when the P400 uses the GO whereas I would print onto the already dried out printout in a 2nd pass getting some different surface effects.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think I'll close most of the reporting about fading inks for this year, I got the questions answered I was looking for with the conclusion that the Fujifilm Drylab inks are a class of its own in respect to fading. There is one little detail left after several months - the EV6 ink by Precision Colors did not fade visibly yet in my kitchen nor in my living room although I now can see the first signs in the scanning results which are above measurement fluctuations. I was looking for some protective effects of some Gloss Optimizer overprinta over dye inks (DL) - I did not see an improvement worth such effort. Such GO overprint may do some good with less performing dye inks but that's not what I'm interested in. I'll test some more the effects of the GO with pigment inks and report it in a separate thread.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

oh well - I still had a few patches out in the sun - comparing EV6 black and cyan vs. Fotonic black and Cyan exposed for 60 days (EV6 by precisioncolors - Fotonic XG by Lyson)



Just look to the cyan and black patches, these are the lightness shifts as measuered via the histogram of the exposed patches vs. copies kept in the dark

the EV6 cyan shifts from 43 to 82 delta 39 the Fotonic cyan shifts from 45 to 78 delta 33, the EV6 cyan performs quite well in this case vs. the muuch more expensive XG ink, that price delta does not give an adequate performance increase

The EV6 black shifts from 30 to 146 delta 116 , it's not even a gray anymore but with a slight greenish tint, and the black has by far taken over the cyan in lightness, lots of other inks perform similarly or worse.

The XG black shifts from 23 to 41 delta 18, a very good black level and performance, comparable to the Fuji DL black. This shows how different inks of the same inkset actually perform, and that pricing alone is not a sufficient enough performance indicator.

The EV6 inks show - indirectly - that a mix of C and M as a black substitute would perform better than the
pure black ink, only the black level wouldn't be that good. A kind of such test is still out in the environment.

 

[martin0reg]

...
The XG black shifts from 23 to 41 delta 18, a very good black level and performance, comparable to the Fuji DL black. This shows how different inks of the same inkset actually perform....

As you know I have tested a set of fotonic XG for canon, my sample is a B&W print using all colors:
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/refilling-canon-with-oem-ink.10712/page-5#post-94011
While using all 4 colors for this B&W print, the XG set seems to fade slightly more (to the greenish side) than the DL set.

But your sample shows a very good single K of XG, which seems to be even better than the single K of DL. I remember in your tests the DL-K fading to brown, while this sample of XG (above) seems to remain almost unchanged, without any color fading.. (not so for the 3 colors though).

So this black may be a good alternative for mixing a pure B&W ink set!?
I've done this with different blacks, mostly pigment, but also one with DL dye ink, for best gloss. Downside was fading to sepia (what yet looks better than fading to green).
Now I'm curious to see how XG will perform as the base of such a self diluted "K-6" ink set, and will soon try it out

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you know that I'm not specifically looking into B/W printing so I would just interpret my results in that respect with caution. Your tests, and by others, had shown repeatedly that diluting a black ink to gray would not keep the gray neutral, so this XG black most likely would show the same effect I'm afraid. I rather would create a
'small gamut' inkset, mostly diluted black + 10 or so % M or C, creating a profile with such inks, and running a 2nd optimzation pass with gray patches with your ColorMunki, that should give you a pretty accurate gray axis.
And please don't forget that the paper as well has an impact onto the tint the black fades into, as previously tested most papers let the black fade to a shade of brown but the HP premium photo glossy let the black ink shift to a slightly blueish gray - another point of consideration.

The XG inks may be the only 3rd party choice for a good performing ink set for Canons aside from the OEM inks for best light fastness, I'm curious about your further test results.

The XG black turned into a slight dark brown, not directly visible in the jpg image, but not as strong as the DL ink, the XG black has a very good black level, but is more expensive than the DL black.
And to make the choice of inks more complex - even if the XG black performs very well the cyan does not, not at all and is not worth the premium price. So you cannot even choose this or that ink set for best performance, you would have to test all colors individually if you really want the best. Just to give you another example, I tested as well the Epson D6 Surecolor inks, I think last year, the black was not as good as the DL black, the cyans are comparable, and the D6 magenta gives a somewhat wider gamut in the red/magenta range visible when you run a profile with both inksets and compare the gamuts.

 

[martin0reg]

...
I rather would create a
'small gamut' inkset, mostly diluted black + 10 or so % M or C, creating a profile with such inks, and running a 2nd optimzation pass with gray patches with your ColorMunki, that should give you a pretty accurate gray axis.
...

Interesting Idea, because I'm missing the option to profile B&W ink sets with colormunki.
But it leaves me with some questions:
- I never tried it: is it correct that profiling a B&W testchart with colormunki is not possible with the standard program, because it expects colors?
- So is the "small Gamut Mix" meant to be a workaround to do the profiling of "almost" B&W testcharts anyway?- And what is the "second optimization pass" ...?..there are two passes for profiling, optimization would be a third pass..?

I'm using the CM only with the standard sogtware. And I would expect the CM software to be irritated when scanning a B&W testchart!?

 

[The Hat]

@Ink stained Fingers, I am curious as to how you printed your black swatch ink test and which paper you used for it, plain or glossy, also did you print each swatch separate or all in one pass for each..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

'small gamut' ink set - not much color saturation , just the more or less accurate gray level + some color - e.g. 10%, and you just profile as normal - I don't know if the Colormunki software would come up with an error message. The 2nd opt. pass is meant as the 2nd color munki profiling pass for which you select a specific image - and nothing prevents you to choose a B/W one - I think to remember there is even one like that in the collection available. You may try a 20 step gray scale wedge as such test image. And I remember that you could run this optimization pass several times with the CM software, it is adding this way more measuring points to the process.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the fade patches are printed with the L300, on a Labelheaven 180gr cast coated glossy paper, I first printed the left half of the sheet with one ink - EV6 black and cyan, magenta and yellow are a mix of some inks from previous tests. Actually I printed several of those sheets, kept them in the dark for a while, changed the inks to the XG inks, and printed the same 4 color purge sheet with the same driver settings on the other half of the preprinted sheets, cut the sheet in half - the upper half for the sun - the lower part for reference, and I always scan them together to reduce scanner variations when calculating the deltas .

 

[The Hat]

The reason I asked was because when you print your colours on the coated glossy paper, each of the colours are not true standalone colours.

There is a tiny bit of another colour mixed into the cyan Magenta and yellow swatches, but the black swatch has more of cyan magenta and yellow in it than it has black.

Most of the colour fade on the black swatch will be down to all of the colours not settling properly with each other into the mix and are tending to migrate much quicker then then should..