Ok so I bought a cheap CIS on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/CIS-CISS-Bulk-ink-system-for-Epson-rx580-rx680-rx595-77_W0QQitemZ380101865893QQcmdZViewItemQQptZBI_Toner?hash=item380101865893&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14

and i just hooked it up and i notice my colors are not hmm as vivid as the oem inks i printed the same image one the same paper and also printed the same dvd that I had a copy of printed with my oems Most noticably is the black its not as dark as the oem black I notice the other colors also but not as much. would this be just cheap @$$ ink or the cartrage heads or what? I also notice that alot of the say 100 dollar kits say UV ink and mine does not would this make a differance should I buy a new kit or new ink??

TIA

Brandon

Brandon,

The biggest influence on the colour gamut (range and saturation ) that you can achieve will be the ink. Different ink sets have different colour gamuts and usually different colour balance on a given paper. Unfortunately a lot of cheap inks do have limited colour gamut.

Once you have chosen the ink and the paper the only variable you can change is the media setting in the printer driver. (That is assuming you have a perfect nozzle check - always the first thing to look for!)

The media setting will influence the amout of ink laid down on the paper so it may be possible to improve the quality of the colours by choosing a different media setting. In the Epson driver, under "Media Type", you could try a setting lower down the list, as the amount of ink put down generally increases as you go down the list. The risk is that if your ink set is just too weak, that is too diluted, you may well find that the paper just can't absorb the extra ink and gives you pooling or smearing.

If you do decide to change the ink be very careful about mixing two types. Try mixing a few drops outside your CIS to start with, just to make sure there are no nasty reactions!

Good luck.

Roger

Just thinking Roger, that perhaps an "Inks 101" course on a separate thread to cover all the Colour Gammut, profiling, etc... might be worth putting together. I could certainly use a refresher


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

hmm thanks ya Im thinking mabey its to diluted I notice on the cds i print the ink that gets on the clear platic hub beads up really tiny drops i dont think my other ink beaded like that :/
where do you recommend getting good dye ink?

Brandon,

I'm not sure that the beading you are seeing on Cds is an indication that the ink is no good. I suspect it's just that the ink just does not wet the uncoated surface and that you would see the same with any normal (water-based) ink.

I don't really feel qualified to recommend an ink because my own experience is limited to Lyson dye inks. These have given me excellent photo quality in my Canon printer but they are not the cheapest by a long way. You may find more discussion on this in other threads.

I'm guessing you're based in the US or at least North America in which case you could look at Precision Colors for inks. They resell, Image Specialists inks which have a good rep and they're what I use albeit through a different re-seller so worth a look.

As to the ink beading that's something you'll see with any inkjet based ink... CD'd have a special coating which can accept and absorb the ink into it, whereas the clear plastic areas will just repell ink and let it coalesce into droplets as you've seen. Most likely you're just using a printable CD with less printable area than your printing software thinks you have or similar.

Hope that helps...


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Printers: (Canon) MP500/830, MX700, iP4000/4200/4300/4500/5200, iX4000(A3) (Epson) C84/86, D88, CX6600, R285/800/1900 (HP) K550, K850, K5400, L7680

I had the problem with black not black enough.
I found that changing from draft mode to standard fixed the problem.