Ink Set For Epson 4880

[Bill W]

Greetings,

Just received my 4880 printer and noticed it has 3 blacks; Photo black, light black and light light black. I also see that a matte black is available, but was not included.

Anyone care to shed some light on what blacks to use. We are creating proofs for flexo presses and one thing I noticed on my 4000 with ultra chrome inks is the inability to proof accurately in the black low L areas. That area on a "wide open" profile from the proofer is smaller that the profile from our presses.

Our present 4000 has matte black on the CMYK side and photo and light black on the light cyan, light magenta side.

I realize that the 4880 uses ultra chrome K3 inks and the 4000 uses ultra chrome inks, and maybe there are not comparisons.

We are slowly moving toward a G7 environment so maybe when finished the black of the printer will cover the black of our presses.

Thanks to all that answer.

-Bill-

 

[meddington]

GAnyone care to shed some light on what blacks to use.

Depends on the substrate. Matte black is intended for matte papers. If used on gloss, semigloss, or even semi-matte papers, it has difficulty adhering to the substrate and can be easily rubbed off. However, if using a matte stock, or some specialty substrate it can allow a much darker L* compared to Photoblack.

You can only use either Photo black or Matte black, not both at the same time, even in the 4000 model, which allowed them both to be loaded simultaneously.

The quality of the paper will play a large role in the quality of the profile, including the ability to hold deep shadows.

 

[juergenroesch]

K3 refers to 3 levels of K. So black, light black and light light black.

You might have seen some years back for photographers ink conversion kits for consumer inkjets which used several levels of black and gray. They were commonly referred to as quadtone printers (you can google that). While these converted printers could obviously no longer print color, they produced stunning and smooth levels of gray for really excellent black and white pictures.

The K3 inks are created to reproduce this effect and as a huge percentage of those machines go to photographers (or check the photolab area in your local supermarket, you might see one there), it is a big strength to produce perfect levels of grays.

For proofing this simply means that you can expect less peppering (= visible dots) on your proofs and an easier gray balancing.

What black depth you can achieve seriously depends on the paper used just as Mike Eddington points out. Also the software you use to drive your printer is important. The normal printer driver (no matter if PC or Mac) is an RGB driver, so unless you use a RIP you can't accurately send CMYK to it (yes, you can use simulation profiles with the normal driver, but even though they look not bad, accurate is something entirely different).

Whatever proofing tool you need: it's the paper that defines what colors you can achieve!!!