another formulab ink test page on 88inkjets.com

[jesoonster]

Hey guys I wanted you guys to take a look and evaluate this photo. They claim they used formulab ink on the right side of the test photo using an epson printer.

http://www.88inkjets.com/printout_comparisons.html

If you look at the formulab ink on the right you can clearly see that there is a darker tint compared to OEM ink. I'm wondering if this is an anomaly or if this is the norm.

THe only other side-by-side test I saw with formulabs ink was in nifty's post with housevest?(that weird cartoon character with the thumb up and that "H" bleeding incident".

 

[Grandad35]

1. Was this for pigment or dye based Epson inks?
2. Even if it was for dye based inks, their Epson inks almost certainly uses different formulations than their Canon inks.
3. OEM Epson inks almost certainly have a different formulation from OEM Canon inks.

Therefore, even if the colors were identical to OEM Epson inks for this test, it doesn't tell us anything about how well Formulab inks will match OEM Canon inks.

I have a profile for Kirkland paper and both Canon and Formulabs inks. Using Photoshop to "Soft Proof" a test image, I can say that the Formulabs ink does not give the same colors as the Canon inks on all colors. This is not to say that either one is "better" - just that they are "different". If you have a good profile for the Formulabs inks, the prints will look very similar to the prints made with the Canon inks and profile.

I have not seen or read about any 3rd party inks giving "exactly" the same colors as OEM inks. When using 3rd party inks, some people are satisfied with the results that they get by tweaking the color adjustment settings while others require a custom printer profile to get the colors sufficiently matched for their purposes. In some cases, custom profiles have been required even with OEM inks.

Remember that it is not enough to get each individual ink color to match the OEM ink color - the inks must also match when blended in any and all combinations. This is almost impossible to achieve unless you have access to the OEM formulation.

 

[Nifty]

Regarding the bleed: I know why some people didn't get this problem, it is because they don't have a pigment based black cartridge in their printer.

I would have attributed the bleed problem to my printer if my brother didn't experience the EXACT same problem with his printer (both of us have i860s. It is possible that the wrong ink was put into the cartridges we received, or that maybe it was a bad batch / mix of pigment ink. I'm a pretty forgiving person, so if alotofthings.com or Formulabs wants to send me some new BCI-3ebk cartridges with new / better pigment ink then I'll run some new tests and post the results.

Other than this problem, I had pretty good results with the color matching with the Formulabs ink. The only thing I noticed was a stronger magenta tint to my photos but that was easily correctable.

 

[JV]

Grandad,

Thank you for your post.

Terms Soft Proof and Custom Profiles imply that you have experience with Color Management.

I have specified Adobe RGB(1998) in my camera and Photoshop CS. I am useing a 22" Mitsubishi CRT monitor calibrated with Adobe Gamma and nothing else in color management. I can see differences between monitor display and prints.

The next step, I guess, would be monitor profiling ($300 without knowing the improvement) and printer profiling ($40/custom profile or $79 for Profile Prism requiring good scans).

Please describe your experience and recommendations on Color Management.

JV

 

[Grandad35]

JV,

Before spending any money, you should first spend some time getting a good understanding of color management. I recommend these two links as a STARTING point (these are only two of many good links).
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/
This page has links to a review of various profiling systems as well as links to articles on color management.
http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html
This page has links to articles on color management.

Read these articles and follow their links until your head hurts, then read some more. Color management is not an easy concept to understand, but it will eventually begin to make sense.

You then need to decide how good your colors have to be - are you a professional that will be selling fine art prints, or are you doing this because your family gives you grief if there is a color cast to your prints? How much is it worth to you to get the colors right? How close is "good enough"? Since you are running PSCS, I assume that you are serious about this and are willing to spend some $$ to get accurate colors.

In general, monitors need to be recalibrated at least once/month to correct for aging (or someone's accidental changing of the contrast/brightness settings), so you really want to buy a hardware device to calibrate your monitor/LCD display. I have seen some recent discussions about Eye-One Display 1 being available for $80 on eBay. Look at this and the following 2 posts:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=13788962

As far as printer profiles go, there will always be an argument about using a scanner to generate profiles vs. using a spectrophotometer (like Dry Creek and Cathy's Profiles do). Some say that a scanner based profile is good enough and others say that a scanner can never give an accurate profile. There is also always the option of buying a custom profile. If you know what inks and papers you will be using and there are only a few critical combinations, the best solution may be to pay for a few custom profiles. Most articles that I have read say that OEM inks and papers are stable enough that a profile should be good for years. If you are using 3rd party inks, this statement may not be valid, as some vendors change ink suppliers without notice.

In any case, I looked at this as a long term investment that I will be using for at least 10 years, and I went with an EyeOne Photo system that profiles monitors, printers and scanners. I had some guidance from a friend who runs a photo shop that does a lot of fine art/museum print work, and his quality standards may have affected my decision. Do a search for "printer profiling" on http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1003 and do some reading. There are a lot of people using Profile Prism and only a small percentage of those who post seem to find it to be unacceptable. This could also be because the attractive price causes lowered expectations or that there don't seem to be a lot of professionals who use it (they typically use OEM ink and paper and pay for custom profiles). My friend has complete EyeOne and Monoco systems, and he still has an outside technician come in periodically to re-profile and re-calibrate everything, since he can't afford prints that aren't near-perfect. I can't repeat his comments about the concept of using a scanner for professional work.

aRGB is a good choice to give a larger color gamut.

Adobe Gamma is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it can't compete with a proper calibration. The response curves shown for my LCD after it is profiled show that the R/G/B response curves are all non-linear and very different from each other. Adobe Gamma could never give accurate colors in this situation.

HTH

 

[JV]

HTH,

Thank you for your post. I appreciate your comments and experience. I have read some of your references,
plan to read the rest, and will report back before I purchase anything. In luminous-landscape, I read about using 5000K fluorecent lights to view monitor colors. I have incorporated these lights in my ofice and find them most helpful.

JV