michael_ward1

The 1270 has a tank to collect the excess ink. In the normal course of events, the ink will evaporate and the tank will take a <I>long</I> time to fill up. But if you do a lot of head cleaning (perhaps due to use of archival inks) the tank can get full. The R800 actually has a light-blink pattern that indicates this error condition. If this does happen, the printer will no longer work. It can be serviced by Epson, but be warned that it is <I>very</I> easy to spill the contents of the tank and there's <b>lots</B> of ink there. (I speak from very messy experience).

Greg,

 

I don't how you used to specify size and resolution, but CS2 works the same way I've always used it: in the toolbar, type "4 in", "6 in" and 300 (for example) in the width, height, and resolution text boxes.

 

Michael

I had thought that people who frequented this particular forum would be aware of the issues surrounding dye-based vs pigment-based inks for inkjet printing. Apparently, judging from the responses I have seen, I was wrong. In a nutshell, the issues are these: Most inkjet printers use dye-based inks as the standard, vendor supplied ink. These inks have varying degrees of ability to withstand fading due to exposure to light, and also independently varying degrees of ability to withstand fading due to atmospheric contaminants, mainly (but not entirely) ozone. The lastest generation of photographic six-color printers have used inks that have excellent resistance to light, but very poor resistance to fading due to exposure to air. I have had prints made with Epson printers show severe color shifting in as little as two months. I've read reports of even worse fading. Because the fading is caused by particular atmospheric contaminents, the fading is not consistent across all environments, and may not occur at all in some. So the fact that someone has inkjet prints that have not faded says nothing about this problem. Because the photographic, or light, cyan inks suffer the worst from ozone attacks, the first effect of this kind of fading is often a shift to pinkish orange.

 

Third party vendors have been offering pigment-based inks as a solution to this problem, calling them archival inks. They claim that these inks do not suffer from atmospheric attacks, and have even better lightfastness than dye-based inks. Pigment-based inks, however, suffer from many drawbacks compared to dye-based inks. They tend to have a smaller gamut, and they are not as readily absorbed into paper. When printed on resin coated paper, they are hardly absorbed at all, leaving them very prone to smearing for a long time (as long as a couple of months) after the printing process. The different color inks also reflect light differently, and they shift colors as the reflective angle of the light changes; so they can look very strange when viewed from the side. A wide-gamut pigment-based ink was developed, which Epson incorporated into their 2200. This ink, however takes just a little longer to dry, and if used on the 1280 printer will result in prints showing tiny track marks, where the metal rollers gripped the paper to pull it out from the printing mechanism. This is probably why 2200 printers cannot print borderless on cut 13x19 inch paper - prints have to be pushed out.

 

These drawbacks were considered more acceptable than the problems of fading that the dye-based inks suffered from, so many people (including me) started using these inks for printing photographs. Many photographers I know have been selling prints made with these inks, expecting them to last for eighty years or more.

 

Now, it seems, the use of pigment-based inks is not a sure-fire way to avoid fading due to atmospheric contamination. While prints made with this ink may well last as long as the vendors claim, they might not, and if one is selling the prints, that's not a risk I would take. Also, since the resistance to fading is not inherent in the nature of pigment-based inks, no vendor's longevity claims can be believed until the claimed period of time has actually elapsed. The accelerated fading tests on which longevity claims are made obviously do not test actual resistance to fading over time.

 

As far as I am concerned, this is as much a blessing as a curse. It means that I will not have to put up with the downside of pigment-based inks, and can return to using vendor-supplied (or equivalent) dye-based inks. On the other hand, any prints made on the inkjet can only be considered for long-term usage if mounted behind glass or plastic, or kept in an envelope or folder away from the air. Prints made to be pinned to the wall will have to come from some other print medium.

Joe, Are the prints you have had for over a year behind glass, or open to the air? If

open to the air, what kind of ink did you use?

 

One year does not archival make, but it sure does so break. There is no way anything

that goes bad in a year could be called archival. Not if we're speaking English.

I just noticed that several prints I had made about a year ago using

archival pigment-based ink (from MediaStreet) have noticably faded.

One of them was hung on a dark wall, subjected to no direct light,

all were in a home environment. It looks like the cyan has faded,

since the pictures have taken on a pinkish tint. I now wonder if

this is what we can expect from any or all inkjet inks.

I'd certainly like to participate in this. It's the best idea I've seen here since the Critique Circles.

I can contribute about ten hours per week, and can do just about any of the listed tasks. I have heavy Linux/Unix (Solaris&AIX) admin, including shell, Perl, vi and emacs. Quite a bit of HTML, but not recently. CGI and non-dba Oracle. I've installed and set up CVS, but not used it a whole lot. I'll be happy to learn AOLserver. Plenty of networking experience and some Linux and AIX load balancing.

 

Just let me know what I can do.

 

Michael Ward