Cone's new HD Photo Black.

I did some very limited testing about a year ago, the Epson P600 was fresh on the market, and Epson made big claims about the much higher Dmax of their new black ink. I was using some3rd party ink, bought a photo black P600 cartridge , tapped the black ink and printed some patch sheets and made a new profile. I got at that time as well the black ink of a new P600 refill ink set by Lyson and tested that as well. I got this - my previous black gave me an L=8 on a particular paper, the Epson P600 black was L=4, and the Lyson black was L=5, that's variances you directly see in printouts - a drop from L=8 to L=4 is one f-stop additional latitude in photographic terms, and that is directly visible. I did not test all that on many papers which I don't use with pigment inks, but for me this new black made a difference. You need to run new profiles because otherwise the levelling off by the blackpoint compensation starts at the wrong black level. I could assume that this Vermont black would have a similar performance, but you need to test that in your printing environment - papers - profiles , and you may get to other findings with other papers. I have done quite some tests with inks, you need to take general claims about ink performance very cautiously, some are just small and measurable but not visible at the end in a printout.
 
Walker Blackwell here, the engineer who R&D'd the new ink. We just finished it and it went on sale last week, so the reply above is talking about an older ink. We are seeing equivalent or darker than current OEM PK pigment inks on Epson Ultra Premium Glossy. Cheers :)
 
Sort of along the same theme.
Have alok at this!

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The first generation of P-800 auto-reset chips had an unwanted cookie in them - allowing the Epson P-800 printer to lock out their use after only a few resets. Granted most customer do not go through several refills of ink in a short time - but we could not take the chance of selling refillable cartridges that might possibly lock out our customers from using their own printer.

Epson has been tracking the use of 3rd party carts in their printers for some time - but only in the new SureColor P printers are they actually employing firmware that can produce either a service error or simply lock the customer out of using 3rd party carts. When we test products, we do not simply install them, see if they work and then sell them! For this generation of printer, we have to continuously print to cause the carts to empty several times and go through numerous resetting operations in order to see if it's a supportable product.

We are now working with a new generation chip - and we will release our version of cartridge only when we feel confident that we will not be fielding customer complains a year later! So hang in there with us. We will provide you with a long term solution.

Joe
 
I just tried it in a 3880 and I'm impressed.

My L* went from 9.0 down to 3.5 off the basICColor test image with the two black starting patches on the beginning of each page. My old ones measured 9.0, and this new ink measured out to a much lower 3.5. Same held true for another glossy paper as well since I didn't believe it: A difference in the two black inks on the same papers averaged 5.5 blacker with the new HD-PK. Not bad!

A test print shows more contrast too, likely due to the blacker HD-PK black ink that fills subtle shadows, especially in portraits.

The wireframe attachment off the bottom of profiles I just made shows the same in ColorThink 3. A downward push of the black with the HD-PK ink (wireframe) where the colored one is higher up than the HD-PK wireframe and not as black with the older PK ink. Appears to be about 5 points darker L* as well.

Gloss is maintained and no bronzing evident on the two papers I tried. Due to the contrast increase, I may need to do some profiles using this new ink as I use 18 different papers.

W.F.
 

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that's an impressive improvement of the black level indeed. I would recommend to recreate profiles with this ink because the black point compensation otherwise would use a wrong black level. The effect may not be visible in all prints depending on your image. You may test this ink as well on a matte paper if you are using that at all , I have seen here an improvement as well, and I'm not using a separate matte black ink anymore.
 
One question. What other ink are guys incorporating this new black ink with?
For instance I am currently using OEM on my 3800/3880 and I am using precisioncolors PCK3HD on my P800.
In would be willing to test this new black against OEM and PC to see what visual improvements can actually be seen with human eyes.
I ink I will co tact Jon Cone.
Joe
 
jtoolman said:
One question. What other ink are guys incorporating this new black ink with?
For instance I am currently using OEM on my 3800/3880 and I am using precisioncolors PCK3HD on my P800.
In would be willing to test this new black against OEM and PC to see what visual improvements can actually be seen with human eyes.
I ink I will co tact Jon Cone.
Joe
Click to expand...

Interesting point. Is it feasible to increase the DMAX of the OEM ultrachrome K3 inkset by using the new HD black in place of the PK regular ink?

I realise a new profile would be needed. The concept is intriguing.

RS
 
Various tests, including Aardenburg's , have shown that the photo black of new Ultrachrome HD inks for the P600 yiealds a lower black level than the previous Ultrachrome K3 generation, this in comparison of both of these OEM inks. I can confirm that the 3rd party Lyson HD ink gives me as well a better black level than my previous black, and runs close to the Epson HD ink. One can expect that other suppliers like Vermont ink can do as good or better, you need to test the differences in your environment - papers etc and see whether you are happy with the results.

@ Roy - sure, why not, that's what I'm doing, my black is from Lyson at this time, and the other colors by other suppliers. Profiling would be advised.
 
While profiling this new HD-PK Photo Black ink for some PremierArt Gloss White Canvas, I found "zero changes" in L* dMax between it and the old photo black ink on the same canvas. Weird when compared to the difference in glossy papers above.

So some of this new ink's blackness must be based on the paper and its carrier surface too? Very odd as I would expect to see some dMax black improvement on it as well (Got L=20.5 on both.) even with a +5% ink load applied in the Epson driver. I'm pondering if I should increase the ink load to maybe 25% and see if it improves or changes the dMax at all, but manual feeding 8.5x11 sheets of canvas into the 3880 rear leader is a pita due to skew errors.

Added later that day...
I noticed the canvas that had the HD-PK black had a bit of a green tint to it outdoors in sunlight compared to the old PK black ink print. The glossies appear to be black, so it might be the HD-PK and white canvas interacting oddly. I'm wondering if the canvas dMax being the same (L*=~20.0) if the coarse weave of the PremierArt canvas is affecting the i1 PhotoPro 2 head making the greenish color and same density both. I may spray the basICColor test prints (To diffuse the weave?) and re-run it for another profile as a comparison and see if it affects the HD-PK black.


W.F.
 
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