a question on Photo Inks and 6-Color Printers

[narmenia]

When printing photos on photo paper does a 6-color printer use the regular cyan and magenta?
or use only the photo cyan and photo magenta?

 

[Grandad35]

My i9900 uses the Photo inks on the light tones, the regular inks on the dark tones, and a gradual transition with a mixture of the two on the mid tones. This results in more dots of ink on the light tones, giving a "smoother" appearance. See (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=15229#p15229) for more information on this subject.

 

[fotofreek]

I'm using a canon i960 excelusively for photo prints and color graphics and it literally drinks the light dye load photo cyan and photo magenta. These inks are used at about a two to one or greater ratio to the magenta and cyan inks, and yellow around 1.5 to one compared to C and M. Black is used least for the most part. A question for Grandad - I suspect that, when set for plain paper, my printer does not use the PM and PC. What do you think?

 

[Grandad35]

A question for Grandad - I suspect that, when set for plain paper, my printer does not use the PM and PC. What do you think?

I have no idea what happens on plain paper, since I use my laser printer for that. The "smoothness" gained by the photo inks couldn't be seen on plain paper, so it makes sense that they do not need to be used. It would be easy to check - just install cleaning carts in the PM and PC slots and print a color image.