Opinions on Precision Colors newer EV6 dyes?

I know that folks had some glossiness issues with Precision Colors older Image Specialist inks that they sold. Recently (not sure how recent?) they switched over to a new line (EV6) that is made in USA and they claim much better then prior inks.

From their website:
"We now offer a second generation Claria Compatible Dye ink replacement that is far far superior to the older Image Specialists product"

Questions?
How has the glossiness and other factors improved in the new line?
Is it close or better to the glossiness offered by inkjetmall's Thrift inks?

I typically print on Costco Kirkland Pro Photo Paper (one with flower on package) and get real awesome glossy prints using what I believe are high quality Japanese or German inks (not sure brand) and I get great results with no bronzing or any banding at all and pretty vibrant colors to these old eyes from my Epson 1430 refill carts with this ink, but wanted to maybe try another 3rd party who supplies bigger/bulk quantity of ink and had in mind Precision Colors.

I'm not aware of a particular measure for glossiness, so judgement remains a personal view. I used the EV6 ink , I think almost 2 years ago and found it performing well, similar to other inks like those by Vermont ink or Chinese inks, but glossiness was not my main interest at that time to test various inks, I was looking for the best performing fade resistant ink. I only remember that I saw bronzing (by a dye ink) on cyan with dye inks by OCP for the 1400. I don't think gloss is a major problem with dye inks overall, and gamuts are as well pretty similar , the main weakness is the UV fade resistance of most.

Dye ink generally NEVER has an issue with gloss, because the dye ink is supposed to wholly penetrate the top surface of the RC coated paper and reside UNDERNEATH beneath the surface of the paper. This leaves the level of gloss exactly to what the paper provided.

If you overload the paper past its ink limit, you might get some bronzing effect but not likely with the EV6 because the density of the color is high. If you use low density colors and attempt to get a dense tone, you end up putting a lot of ink to the paper and thus potentially overload it...leaving ink on the surface. So if you get light prints with the OEM profiles and have to compensate with the sliders or profiles, you need to watch for the ink limits of the paper. On most older Claria printers, the printer combines all 5 colors to form dark shades of grey and other tones. The Black ink channel is only used for pure black. As a result, with the Claria printers attention must be paid to the density of color of the other 5 colors because the printer could put down a lot of ink to the paper if the ink is not dense enough.

The older IS ink for the Epson 6 color machines had been replaced at least 3 years ago from this date.

IS older pigment ink being of old origins had gloss issues...but all older pigments dating back to the early 2000s had these issues including Canon and Epson. Precision Colors hardly uses any older IS pigment ink and have replaced most with totally new generation of glossy pigments in the last 3+ years.

I'd really like to know where the evaluation of gloss on dye inks came from because it appears very misguided. Dye inks simply do not work the way the you have possibly surmised.

Ink stained Fingers said:

I'm not aware of a particular measure for glossiness, so judgement remains a personal view. I used the EV6 ink , I think almost 2 years ago and found it performing well, similar to other inks like those by Vermont ink or Chinese inks, but glossiness was not my main interest at that time to test various inks, I was looking for the best performing fade resistant ink. I only remember that I saw bronzing (by a dye ink) on cyan with dye inks by OCP for the 1400. I don't think gloss is a major problem with dye inks overall, and gamuts are as well pretty similar , the main weakness is the UV fade resistance of most.

Click to expand...

Of which there is ongoing work to correct the weakness. Every inkset has some weakness but when identified, I attempt some means of improvement. No inkset in Precision Colors is cast in stone. I will improve it if it is possible and if the improvement warrants the cost and effort.
Some have higher priority than others.

Almost all of the current photo papers/glossy are of the instant dry type, a coating on the paper base with a good absorption rate for the ink/solvent and almost immediately dry to the touch after printing.
But such papers are really dry only after hours, the solvents need some time to evaporate. When laminating prints you should let the prints dry for a while, a day , or you otherwise trap the solvents under the lamination film which may lead to a separation of the coating from the paper base.
When the ink/solvent hits the paper during printing it invades the coating which changes its properties, it may swell a litle bit and becomes softer for a while until it is dried out again. Some papers - of the glossy type - slightly change their look after being printed upon, this becomes visible when I print a pattern of lines with the solvent only, no color, no dye , just the solvent I use to dilute light/photo inks, and this pattern with the 'invisible' ink becomes visible on the glossy surface. The effect is small, visible on some papers and not visible on other papers. It's not a critical effect to any degree but shows the complexity of interaction of the ink with the paper, it is never the ink alone having some particular property - like gamut or fade resistance or gloss in this dicussion - it must be judged and seen always in combination with a particular paper. But overall I have not seen gloss issues with dye inks at all (except one case) but sometimes an ink does not harmonize with a particular paper. I have seen that with a leftover HP ink which I printed away in an Epson printer, this ink did well on most glossy papers except one budget cast coated one , the printed areas got a kind of semiglossy look differing from the unprinted glossy areas. It's a rare case but it happens.

Just got an Epson XP-820 and a PC EV6 refill set. Swapping the original Epson and PC colors a few times yesterday to compare, just printing the same photo(s) a few times on glossy and plain paper.

The difference i can see is that prints with the EV6 inks look maybe just a tad "lighter". Almost as if the EV6 inks are well color matched to the epson colors but that there is a slight difference in surface absorption, eg: the EV6 inks seem to get sucked in a bit more. Not really a scientific analysis, sorry.

Should have an i1 pro next weekend, but given how i am a total novice on this, it will be probably a lot longer before i figure out how to compare two ICC profiles.

you don't mention the paper for your tests, photo papers as well have an impact onto the color reprodution of prints. Just wait for the i1 - most likely a package with a spectrometer and software bundled with it. Start off just with a small number of patches to get used to the overall workflow, there is a preset for 283 color patches available. You may as well look into the Gamutvision software, freeware and very capable to analyse profile properties http://www.gamutvision.com/ which is freeware at this time but only available for Windows to my understanding.

Paper was HP everyday photo letter size. I ended up wasting a lot of time printing miserable results because (i think) i did not fill/refill the bloody Epson 273 cartridges correctly and not all nozzles would simultaneously render ink correctly when printing full letter color photo or glossy. It would print "fine" on smaller size or on plain paper. Obviously it was not "fine" on large plain paper, you just wouldn't see the individual dots missing with plain paper, but instead the colors would look brighter.

Alas, precisioncolor does not explain the filling of these cartridges on the webpage, and i had overlooked the magical instruction page that came with the ink *rotfl*. The fill is a bit of a magic art opening and closing the different openings of the cartridge at the right time, wiggling the ink into the sponge. Thats the core: keep the sponge moist.

I also managed to have not all openings closed when removing a cartridge which flooded some magenta into adjacent cartridge spaces, making some nozzles of blue render a composite for a while which made hunting down the problems even more exciting and having to figure out how to clean up that mess. Oh well, all cleared up now. Dump of ca. 40 latter sized prints. Steep learning curve.

Maybe i even killed the cartridges somehow because the air/ink-flow to refill the sponge during operations may not work correctly (eg: dried ink in the upper air opening...). Will have to experiment more. Wonder if these printers would print correctly without a sponge. Eg: maybe the sponge is not only there to avoid too much leakage during replacement but also to provide a higher ink pressure when the total ink level becomes lower in the cartridge.

Since full prints show no missing nozzles, the print results are probably pretty good (plus profiling with i1pro). Not yet an expert enough to make absolute judgements.

One of the chinese vendors has a perfect disclaimer:

a. Most of our products are compatible,quality not same as original.
b. When you choose cheaper and compatible items,You will meet some risk.
c. If you have high expectations,maybe bring your unnecessary trouble.

Are you trying to refill the original Epson cartridges ? Aren't there refill cartridges on the market at this time ? Refill cartridges are typically spongeless or are you trying to refill regular 3rd party cartridges which may have a sponge inside ? Refilling such cartridges only works reliably if you work with underpressure to get the foam soaked again with ink. And creating profiles only would make sense if the nozzle check is clean and o.k. as a starting point. So there is probably something wrong when you get that many spoiled prints so far.

I bought empty refill cartridges from precisioncolors.com (with sponge) and with EV6 ink.I first tried to print the argyll stripe pages (on glossy) and when those came out with banding i started to hunt down and fix ink/cartridge issues before redoing the stripe pages and profiling. Profiling was only done with "perfect" prints.

Browsing on the web, all the T273XL refill cartridges i see have sponges. What i wonder about is that i seem to be getting "unrecognized cartridge" errors when the cartridge has i think more than 50% fill in its chamber. But the sponge looks depleted then. Aka: seems as if the sponge does not well soak itself from the chamber under normal operations. Even though of course the cartridge is running in the printer with the hole atop the sponge open. Hmm... maybe i should rather open the hole over the chamber not the sponge during operations..