Thursday, January 04, 2007
So now you are educated about the basic properties of ink, and the trade offs of each different manufacturing process.
OEM Ink versus Third Party Ink
As the industry has evolved over the past ~10 years when Pigmented inks were first introduced by HP, Third part manufacturers first had to discover what was needed to be done to (in effect) copy the color reproduction properties of inks manufactured by the OEMs. This problem was made more difficult further by the price discounts needed to be maintained to remain competitive and then by ensuring that key Patented methods were not duplicated so as to open these manufacturers to lawsuits.
Third Party Inks meets the grade
After extensive development and investment many of the more reputable ink manufacturers provided the home user with clearly competitive products that met with similar functionality to those of the OEM manufacturers. I.E. The average user (Desktop environment) couldn’t distinguish between comparable products being marketed. It was during this time that many third party manufacturers became established organizations offering stability to a previously volatile industry.
The Next Challenge
With the advent of digital photography the capability and the desire to create you own photographic reproductions became evident, hence a new challenge was introduced to the marketplace.
Water Resistance/Fade Resistance
In order for the OEMs to provide photographic quality printers, they could no longer be content to provide output that could rival the appearance of Photographic Prints, but they also needed to ensure that longevity of the product could rival that of the older, yet more mature chemical photography processes. Here is when, and still does, a differentiation between manufacturers exist.
Each manufacturer now has to ensure that they develop color tables to match the appearance of your photo’s on your screen (Using RGB) technology, to that of your printer (using CMYK )technologies. In addition, the paper products used for reproduction offer varying level of brightness and permeability causing there to be variance with a single manufacturer just based on the paper being used. Now add to this the fade resistance and water resistance to provide for longevity.
Trade offs Abound
As we now have so many potential conflicting elements involved, each manufacturer has taken steps to provide for what they consider to be the key variables to ensure end user happiness, while taking advantage of their technologies advantages and disadvantages.
Epson leads the Market
At the current time Epson has taken a lead in the ink wars where they are offering their “DuraBright” inks. These inks, specially formulated allow for improved Water Resistance, and increased Fade resistance versus earlier ink formulations while maintaining increased overall brilliance. Of course these advantages will be short lived as competing suppliers constantly modify their formulations to compete with the latest innovations introduced by their competition. This is all good news to the consumer, as we can expect to see continuing improvements in head technologies, print speeds and quality.
Filed under: FAQ, Inkjet Info | Tagged: brightness and permeability, color tables, digital photography, Fade Resistance, Ink versus Third Party Ink, photographic reproductions, Pigmented inks, Water Resistance | 2 Comments »
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