Right, no gloss differential or bronzing with dye-based inkjet media, but color constancy (the correct term rather than metamerism) under different lighting can still be an issue with dye based systems as well as pigmented inks. In general, the flatter the reflectance spectra when trying to make neutral and near neutral colors, the less color constancy issues will be present in the finished prints. Hence, the move to the "3K" photo grey ink sets (first in widespread use with the Epson Ultrachrome K3 ink technology) brought the annoying color constancy problems under much better control. In this regard, I would expect the Pro-100 with its 3 levels of photo grey inks will objectively outperform the Epson 1430 Claria dye-based printer and most dry lab mini lab printers which typically make the neutral and near neutral "equivalent" colors totally out of the CMY inks (the black channel is reserved exclusively for the maximum black print densities).
I haven't done any instrumented evaluations of the color constancy characteristics on the Pro-100 yet, but just "walking some B&W prints around" into different lighting conditions including tungsten, cool daylight, soft white fluorescent, etc., the Pro-100 B&W prints do not take on any objectionable hue characteristics from what I've observed to date. They tend to stay in a range of visual appearance that is entirely appropriate to the warm or cool color temperature of the illuminants, especially considering that all the Canon OEM RC papers for this printer do have some OBA content present. I'm also really quite impressed with the Pro-100 prints' initial image quality, especially the image microstructure which is amazingly "continuous tone". I'm pretty near-sighted, and when I take off my glasses to examine the prints up really really close, I just don't see any noticeable dot structure. Very impressive and as close as I've seen to analog darkroom printing (noting that some of the Piezography 4-7 shades of "gray" systems do this as well). Totally outperforming my Canon iPF8300 on dot pattern but that is understandable. Nobody tries to make 4x6 print on a wide format Canon as far as I know
, but if they try, the Pro-1, Pro-10, and Pro-100s will clearly do better.
One last interesting observation about the Pro-100. When you choose "print as black & white" the driver will make an RGB desaturation move (probably using a "preserve luminosity" algorithm), but the printer is still printing under full color management workflow with the Canon ICC profiles "under the hood". I found this out because the supplied Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II paper profile is not so good. If you've hear people complaining on various forums about brown tints to their neutral B&W prints on the Pro-100, I bet they are using the Glossy II media setting. The neutral tint B&W conversions with this setting are notably warm (brown toned), and one gets the identical output when printing as neutral RGB triplets though the full color workflow. Changing to the Pro Platinum, Pro Luster, or Paper Plus Semi-gloss media setting produces much better neutral output. My conclusion: The photo grey inks are being exploited entirely by gray component replacement (GCR) color management methods. There is no different B&W screening and color mixing mode to the Pro-100 like there is with Epson ABW mode. That said, the results are so nice that I don't think a different B&W mode is really necessary on the Pro-100.
best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com