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PermaJet inks for Monochrome Printing
Features and Benefits
MonochromePro
The MonochromePro inks for the Epson 1290, 1290S and 2100 printers offer an expanded range of tones from cool to full sepia. In addition, these inks will print on semi-gloss and most gloss papers and do not require the use of Photoshop (except for semi-gloss and gloss papers) - just alter the tone using the colour balance sliders in the printer driver! You can get excellent results printing from software such as word processors and DTP as well as imaging packages. Best results will however still be obtained using adjustment curves in Photoshop. Check out the instructions for use for further information.
Why use specialised monochrome ink sets?
Monochrome images that are produced with colour inks will show a slight overall hue which will show up mostly in the neutral grey or shadow detail of your image. You can vary this by control of colour sliders but generally you will only move the hue from magenta to green or blue to yellow. This is due to the way coloured inks build grey. Usually, the hue will vary depending on the type of illumination of the print - for example it might be slightly magenta in tungsten (room) light and slightly green in daylight - this change is called "metamerism". If you print your images using only the black ink, metamerism will be reduced but you will have only black dots to produce grey - the more widely spaced the dots the paler the grey. This will produce a poorer quality image as you are using fewer dots per square inch.
The PermaJet system uses neutral-coloured inks, one full density in the black cartridge and then 5 or 6 shades of grey in the "colour" cartridge. Using micro size carbon particles carefully suspended in the ink solution PermaJet have added a small amount of blue ink to some of the grey inks. By varying the amount of use of the blue shades you can alter the tone of the print. To control this, you can use the colour balance sliders in the printer driver or in your image manipulation software, but for best results use adjustment curves which have been specially developed for use with each printer and paper combination. The curve is loaded in your image manipulation software such as Photoshop just prior to printing. There are 4 basic curves which will suit most users, available from the PermaJet web site. The advanced Photoshop user may wish to manipulate the curve to create something more individual, and you may also swap curves with other users - it's easy once you get started.
The use of a pale grey ink to print the lightest tones of an image means that discernible dots of ink on the print are much reduced and the overall tonality of the print is smoother. For an illustration of this see the Dot Free Prints page.
PermaJet Monochrome inks are pigment based for maximum permanence and we recommend the complementary range of PermaJet Fine Art papers for best results. MonochromePro inks can be used with excellent results on semi-gloss and many glossy papers as well as fine art papers.
Recently some printer manufacturers have been introducing printers with several densities of black inks in an effort to improve monochrome prints and while these are quite successful they do normally still use a small amount of colour ink in the final mix. This means there is still the likelihood of metamerism and differential fading over time.
Features and Benefits
Longevity Pigment based inks are more stable than dyes. Tests suggest a likely print life in excess of fifty years. Because no colour ink is used, differential fading (the situation where one colour fades faster than another, leading eventually to colour casts) is not a problem. Toneability A range of tones from cool through neutral to warm is available from the same ink set by varying the colour balance of the image prior to printing or by the use of adjustment curves. MonochromePro inks offer a genuine sepia tone as well as cool, neutral and warm. No Metamerism The print colour does not change in different types of lighting. Dot-free highlights If adjustment curves are used, only the palest ink will be used to print the highlight areas and so dots become virtually invisible. In addition, image tonality is smoother and more nearly resembles a traditional silver print. No profiles necessary ICC profiles are not required to get the best results - simply use the adjustment curves provided for Photoshop. These are available on the PermaJet web site. No cleaning required MonochromePro inks have similar properties to the standard Epson inks and so when installing the new inks, cleaning cartridges are not usually required unless non-Epson inks have been in use. Economical Best results are obtained with the printer driver set to "Photo Quality Glossy Film" - this minimises the amount of ink put down on the paper resulting in ink savings of up to 40% (PermaJet's figure). Continuous Inking System The Permaflow system replaces the standard ink cartridges with a specially designed system using replaceable bottles of bulk ink. This is much more economical than using cartridges and will especially suit the higher volume user.
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