Small desktop printers We are able to achieve stunning results with even the smallest printers from Epson, Canon, HP and other brands, with both genuine Epson ink and some third party inks.  Even a small A3+ printer like an Epson 1160 which is already for many years on the market.   Our favourite printers are :   Epson 1160 / 1290 / 2100 and the latest 2400. You do not need to buy a high end professional Wide Formar printer like a 4800 or 7800 in order to achieve stunning results, but of course these desktop printers are not production work horses like the wide format printers.

Wide format printers:    

First of all we believe that they are much better build machines and of course  they come at a very different price tag.   We can mention a few advantages:  

a. We can feed media on the roll, which we experienced as being much more reliable than sheet feeding particulalry with heavy Fine Art papers.  
B.  The genuine Epson ink is relative a lot cheaper for these printers since we can buy the ink in large capacity cartridges of 110ml, 220ml and even 500ml.
C.  For these printers are a lot of professional Rip drivers available.

About inks: 

We believe that still a lot can be improved in the field of inks and papers.  Although we are able to get stunning results with what is on the market today, to our opinion there are is still no holy grail on the market and every type of ink has their own up – and down sides.   What is crucial is finding the right paper and ink combinations for the type of printing your are doing

Small desktop printers:

We have to admit;  we never use ourselvels genuine Epson ink in our own small desktop printers because the OEM ink is just so expensive (we think it's far over priced) and printing costs are just too high.  Printing with a CIS system (Continuous ink flow system) filled with a third party ink is at least 5 timers cheaper compared with using the genuine Epson ink

Of course we do not use just any third party ink, but one of the third party inks we consider to be a serious option  for producing professional quality prints:

The third party ink manufacturers we consider as a possible professional alternative are:

Lyson, Mediastreet, AIC Symphonic

Using a professional third party ink in a wide format printer?  These inks are still a lot cheaper, but only if you are prepapred to invest in a set of (6, 7 or 8) 1 Litre bottles, otherwise the price difference is not that much anymore between the original inks and the third party inks.

Third party inks compared with the genuine Epson Ultrachrome inks:

It is true: The Epson Ultrachrome ink (Epson 4000 / 7600 / 9600) and the latest Epson K3 inks (Epson 4800 / 7800 / 9800) is of exceptional quality. The third party ink manufacturers have to work hard in order to be able to match the quality of these inks.

Still we are able to get very satisfying results with some third party inks as well and only an expert might see any difference, if their would be any difference at all.

Some third party inks however do have the advantage over Epson ink (like Lyson Photochrome) that we can use one and the same Black ink on both Photographic media (like Gloss and semi Gloss) and matt media. Unfortunately we experience here a slight downside: if we look at prints under an angle particularly on Gloss papers we can see that the Lyson black is slightly more matt than the other colours and is causing a slight differential of sheen.  Using the right type of paper, we hardly see any problems on Semi Gloss, but the ‘matting’ is still visible on Gloss papers.   For some customers this is not an important issue at all (like myself), but for other customers it is. This problem does not seem to be an issue anymore with the latest ink from Lyson, developed for the K3 ink printers from Epson.

Differential of sheen                       go back

Still the overall complaint about pigment inks is that we still can see some kind of differential of sheen (even with the Epson ink).  For this reason Epson is now bringing to the market printers which spray a gloss optimiser over the whole print in order to get rid of this differential of sheen (Epson R1800).

Bronzing?

Bronzing is the phenomenon of being able to see bronz colours in the high light area's of a print if we look at it under an angle. This is a problem we encounter particulalrly with the Epson Ultrachrome inks for the Epson series: 2100 / 4000 / 7600 / 9600 / 10600
We hardly see this problem with the latest Epson series: 2400 / 4800 / 7800 / 9800 which are using the Epson K3 inks. The way Epson solved this problem is using a third black ink cartridge with Ligtht-Light-Black. This channel is used in the high light area's of the print and is hiding the effect of bronzing.

Reduction of differential of sheen:

With the use of the Shiraz Rip software we have been able to reduce this problem even more, because this software allows us to control the amount of ink being laid down which allows us to find the maximum possible density we can reach which each ink channel whilst making sure the printer is not putting down too much ink. We try to find the point at which we reach the highest possible density and colour gamut whilst making use of the least possible amount of ink!  Particularly a so called overinking will cause the pigment ink ‘sitting’ on top of the surface and will increase the differential of sheen.  Avoiding over inking will reduce this problem. It's a problem very often seen with the standard Epson driver.

Although the Colorbyte Image Print Rip does not allow us to control the Rip like as described with the Shiraz Rip, still this Rip is able to produce prints with less differential of sheen than what we have seen with any other driver!

Dye-based ink                                 go back

But if you want to achieve the highest possible colour gamut and deepest black (and longevity is not much of an issue) it’s very likely that a dye-based ink will outperform a pigment ink particularly on Matt papers. The difference between pigment ink and dye-based inks is less noticeable on semi gloss and gloss.

An interesting copmparison:

Epson 1160 versus Epson 7600  (Dye ink versus pigment ink)

Can we compare these printers at all?

Comparing a small desktop (A3+) printer with a professional Wide Format (A1+) printer?

An example:  our Epson 1160, using either genuine Epson ink or lyson Fotonic using Ilford gallery Classic Pearl paper is able to outperform our Epson 7600 (using either genuine Epson UltraChrome ink or Lyson photoChrome ink and using a fast drying semi-gloss paper like Epson Lustre or any other similar paper.

Outperform in which way?               go back

The prints from the 1160 seems to ‘look’ sharper, the black’s are deeper and the colour saturation slightly better than the 7600 system or any other pigment ink system.   The downside of the 1160 is that we are only able to outperform the 7600 using  slow, non- water resistant papers (like the Ilford gallery Classic Pearl) , whilst the prints coming from the 7600 are instantly dry on a fast drying paper, like Epson Premium Lustre or Fuji Hunt Satin, longevity is probably much better and we would see only a slight difference holding prints side by side.   From the 7600 we are able to get stunning B&W prints as well, which we will not get from the 1160 even with the best possible profile.

Interesting enough, if we would use a quick drying (micorporeus) paper  with a dye-based ink and compare it with a pigment ink we will get a better black and colour gamut using the pigment inks.

Although we are getting the best prints from the 1160, we still prefer pigment inks in printers like 2100 / 4000 / 7600 / 9600, because the sacrifice in colourgamut is particularly on photographic media relatively small and at the same time we experience a lot of benefits: prints nearly instantly dry, very water resistant, good ‘black point’ on fast drying papers, black & white prints much better and probably the best possible longevity we can achieve with inkjet printing today.

Our advice?

We have customers who do like to 'look' and 'feel' of Fine art papers on which dye-based inks perform a much better colour gamut and black point than pigment inks. Only if longevity is not an important issue, one could consider using dye-based inks.

The difference between dye-based inks and pigment inks on Semi Gloss and Gloss papers is much less, so for this reason we prefer the pigment inks. The Ultrachrome inks still suffer from bronzing and differential of sheen, but with the latest K3 inks, this is much less.

For fine art reproduction the answer from for us is simple:

We do not believe that the longevity of any dye-based ink presently on the market is able to match the longevity of a pigment ink.  So we think that a pigment ink is a much saver route to go.


About software Rip >> Go to the next page >>

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