4900 First thoughts.

[Wayne Fox]

I seem to remember that the two new cartridges were only useful in proofing situations and not for general purposes.  Perhaps that is what your finding notes.  It would be interesting to see long term what the ink usage patterns of the two new cartridges are.

There are thousands of ways to create any individual color when screening and dithering.  The main purpose of the two new colors was to allow creation of spot colors, but the firmware still utilizes them on every job.

I've followed print jobs, tracking ink consumption of various colors.  We run a mixture of landscapes, portraits work, and art reproduction work on the 7900.  we send black and white work to the 11880 so the 7900 prints only color prints and we only use PK, no MK.  So far it appears Orange accounts for about 5.7% of the total ink used on average, and green about 3.3%.  As comparison, Cyan - 2.3%  Yellow 3.8%  Light Cyan 6.9%  VMagenta 3.2%  VLMagenta 10.7%.  I was surprised to see orange used more than cyan, but this was about a 30 job stretch and I suppose there were some anomalies in the work printed (such as sunsets etc) which might account for that.  I'm going to track it again after Christmas - just a little curious about it.

Blacks are the surprising element here, as PK is about 6.7% but LK is 34.7% and LLK is 22.7%.  So about 65% of the ink on the paper is one of the blacks.  I've know LLk is the most used color for some time, but didn't realize LLK was used that much.

So I suppose it is possible that the orange ink itself being used in place of other color the 78/9890 printers would use to achieve the same colors could cause some metamerism issues, but still of the opinion it just isn't enough ink to make a difference.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

The orange and green are certainly useful to photographers, although it will take an image with very saturated oranges and greens to really notice much of a difference. Graphic designers will see an improvement in Pantone coverage, although people doing straight proofing of output to a SWOP or GRACoL standard without spots will see zero difference. Honestly the 9890 is a great deal with all rebates being offered right now.

Also I just did a quick and dirty metamerism index on the orange green and the cyan and magenta inks. According to the numbers(illum A vs D50) the Orange and green inks should display less of an illuminate shift than than the cyan and magenta, or at the very least be no worse. Of course the Orange and green will almost never be printed without being mixed with some other color so numbers alone don't mean much in this case, although it does NOT support the argument that the orange and green inks are at the root of some sort of problem.

[Ernst Dinkla]

The orange and green are certainly useful to photographers, although it will take an image with very saturated oranges and greens to really notice much of a difference. Graphic designers will see an improvement in Pantone coverage, although people doing straight proofing of output to a SWOP or GRACoL standard without spots will see zero difference. Honestly the 9890 is a great deal with all rebates being offered right now.

Also I just did a quick and dirty metamerism index on the orange green and the cyan and magenta inks. According to the numbers(illum A vs D50) the Orange and green inks should display less of an illuminate shift than than the cyan and magenta, or at the very least be no worse. Of course the Orange and green will almost never be printed without being mixed with some other color so numbers alone don't mean much in this case, although it does NOT support the argument that the orange and green inks are at the root of some sort of problem.

In my last reply that got lost with the other thread I mentioned the fact that more and less black generation and different types could have an effect on color inconstancy with changing lighting but also the way the extra hues (OG here) are substituting CMY color mixes. The last can be done on hue angle and bring OG even in the grey spine of the gamut if there is a conventional CMYK black generation done where black only substitutes composite grey from 100-60/70%. If the OG substitute CMY mixes only at the highest saturation levels of CMY mixes then that is less likely to happen. It makes quite a difference on the color constancy if all the hues CcMmYOG are still in the printed greys. I also mentioned the dithering/weaving then as contributing to the problem.

With the Wasatch SoftRip and the (few) media presets delivered for the Z3100 a lot of what I mentioned above was done (or not done right) and there was a dramatic difference in color constancy to the print made with the HP driver. A microscope tells a lot then to find the cause. All the greys up to 60/70% had CMmYRGB droplets in the mix.

I doubt Epson made that mistake but it sketches that even with the same inkset used and inks that behave properly on color constancy it is possible to make a mess of it.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Dinkla Gallery Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html

[Mark D Segal]

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RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.

Epson Technical Support has now confirmed to me that we CANNOT get any data from this printer on the total amount of ink it has used - only the "per job" information. They also told me they have no information about how much ink the main maintenance tank can be filled with before it needs to be replaced. Julian, if you think they are misinformed about either of these points and you know how to extract the information, it could be useful to many of us. I could find nothing in the manual, on-line or in the driver itself whether on the display or on the printer providing such information.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

Mark,

So you are right, I missed the fact that the "total ink used" is no longer available in the menu. That does make it nearly impossible to account for how much ink is being used in the cleanings. I spoke with a few folks with Epson as well to see if there is any way of accessing these counters through some of the service modes. No info yet.

Now there may be a work around to this if Epson makes the MyEpsonPrinter active for the 4900. This is their web based usage tracking system and it's actually pretty slick.It's still in beta(and has been for some time) so I'm not sure of the future of this service, but it does allow you to track the total ink used for all jobs printed on an Epson printer. The reporting is pretty accurate, and allows you to punch in the cost of consumable to track expenses. Right now it's not setup for the 4900, although the 4900 control panel has it listed.

As far as the main maintenance tank goes I think the number I remember was about 400ml of ink. No idea about the "full bleed" maintenance tank, although I would suspect that should last a good long time.

For anyone interested the review of the 4900 is up on our website.
http://www.spectraflow.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=67

[abiggs]

Stupid question alert: can 7900 / 9900 profiles be used on a 4900 machine, or are there distinct differences in either ink or printhead technologies?

[Shane Webster]

Now there may be a work around to this if Epson makes the MyEpsonPrinter active for the 4900.

I heard back from Epson Technical Support and was informed there will be no MyEpsonPrinter support for the 4900.  I find it odd that Epson Europe has managed to get its mEP program out of beta and it supports the 4900 (though US versions of the printer don't seem to work with their program--it won't recognize the serial number).  Total ink usage would be beneficial as well as file names to go along with jobs.

[Dano Steinhardt]

Andy:

Nice meeting you at IUSA. 

Checked with colleagues and concensus is 7900/9900 profiles can be used with the 4900 e.g. "compatible" BUT most have found that dedicated 4900 profiles produce better output quality.

Dan (Dano) Steinhardt
Marketing Manager Professional Imaging
Epson America, Inc.

[abiggs]

Thanks so much, Dan. Much appreciated. I have already put mine through the paces, and I think I can get better quality out of it by making new profiles, as my 9900 profiles are off a little bit when I use them on the 4900.

Got any good jokes today? :-)