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 Post subject: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:56 pm 
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This has to do with a Canon Pixma MG6821 which has 2 black ink cartridges in it.
The large one is used when printing text on plain paper and is pigment based.
The small one is used on glossy photo paper and coated paper and is dye based.
I've printed black and white photos using the ink from the large black cartridge by
selecting the plain paper setting in the printer settings and inserting glossy photo paper in
the printer instead of plain paper.
The result looks fine to me and I'll get a lot more black and white prints from the large
tank than the small one.
So now I've got pigment based ink on glossy photo paper but will it last just as long
as prints with dye based ink?


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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2017 2:18 am 
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As a general rule the prints using the Pigment based ink will probably actually last longer but I cannot say that for fact as you are mismatching paper and ink. Still I doubt that you need to be concerned. Even with answering your basic question you should still read the following.

Dye based ink is liquid with the dye totally dissolved like sugar in water. Pigment based ink is actually minute particles suspended in a 'carrier fluid'.

Dye based ink, being totally liquid, will give smoother edges and more subtle color blends. The smoother edges is one of the reasons that it is preferred for photos. You should get better photo results with the dye based ink but, with today's printers, it is likely to be hard to tell the difference.

Pigment based ink, actually being solid particles, is more durable. The durability is one of the reasons that pigment based ink is preferred for text.

A couple of disadvantages of dye based ink.
1) Being a pure liquid, and water based at that, it will probably sustain more damage if it gets damp.
2) It is much more susceptible to fading. In this regard its biggest enemy is ultra violet light. For the best longevity with dye based ink keep it out of sunlight.

Do you use Canon photo paper or another brand? If another brand you may want to get some small packs of different brands and see if there is a difference in appearance when printing with pigments. Not all photo paper is the same and different brands have different coatings. Some forms of pigment based ink will not be as readily absorbed into the coating on one paper as it may be with a different paper. This means that the minute pigment particles may end up not totally within the paper's coating making the print more susceptible to smearing.

Something that you may want to look at is a grey cartridge that replaces the pigment based black. If your printer is like my Pixma MG 5320 such a cartridge is available. You would only insert the grey cartridge when printing B&W photos. I have never used one but they are reported to give much better B&W results when combined with the dye based black as it allows true grey scale printing which equates to B&W.

Another thing that you may want to look at is the following link.
http://www.suppliesoutlet.com/
If I go to Walmart for my ink each of my five cartridges averages ~$16.00. Through Supplies Outlook I pay ~$5.00 each. They are not Canon cartridges but rather rebuilt with some old and some new parts. LOL! Of course the ink is one of the new parts. :mrgreen: I guess that you would call them generic cartridges yet they carry a 1 year warranty. I have been using this ink for probably around 2 years without issue. They also actually fill the danged cartridges! I'll print up to ~8 borderless 8.5X11 photos before any of the cartridges will even show as not being 100% full. Printer manufacturers will sell a printer dirt cheap making their profit from ink sales. In fact one printer company, I think it was Epson, lost a class action suite for under filling their OEM cartridges. Supplies Outlet is not afraid to let you see how much ink is in the cartridge as, at least in my case, the cartridges are translucent. You can actually see the ink level.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2017 10:25 pm 
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Thanks for the excellent answer, Jay.
I think my next step will be trying out the "gray" cartridge.
So far, I've gotten "compatible cartridges" from two different suppliers and the cartridges
were transparent.....you can see the liquid and the sponge.
I looked at PGI-270 XL and CLI-271 XL for my model at suppliesoutlet.com and they wanted
$70 for the 5 bundle. My other sources were down as low as about $5 each.


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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 4:25 pm 
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Interesting thread. We always used Epson printers and used JetTec compatible ink, it was a lot cheaper, the ink came in separate cartridges for all 4 colours.

Hubby wanted a new printer and got himself a Canon but the cartridges are a Black cartridge and the colour one that contains the other 3 colours. It still has the original ones in it but I've got to start looking for the replacements whether original or compatible and check out the prices, not had to buy for a Canon before.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 9:46 pm 
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An interesting thing about this Canon Pixma MG6821 is that when printing black and white photos the color ink is used too. Just today while printing black and white the CYAN cartridge displayed a (!) low ink notice and maybe 20 or so prints later it displayed (X) warning to replace the cartridge before damage may happen.
In this session all the original B&W photos were scanned on this machine, using the BLACK button, to the computer for editing then to the printer for B&W glossy prints.
It puzzles me as to why color is involved in B&W printing.


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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 12:00 am 
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@ Smitty: Like I said I've never used the gray cartridge but I THINK that the main purpose is so that color inks are not used for B&W printing. Without the gray cartridge the color cartridges are used to form gray by mixing.

In fact my first inkjet was an HP that was strictly a printer. The documentation said that it could print without the black cartridge and sure enough it would including black text.

Think about it... Of course this is really involving the light spectrum but white is actually a combination of all colors and black is the absence of color. I'm not sure if the same aspect applies to ink but it seems that it may. Let's take your magenta cartridge; The dye is not magenta. Your magenta cartridge is actually every other color except magenta. At least in the light spectrum this means that all colors are absorbed except magenta which means that magenta is reflected. Since it is the only color reflected it is the color we see.

I have to admit to being a bit surprised at the price you saw on Supplies Outlet. I just ordered 2 5-packs the other day for a total of ~$38.00 for both. Then again my printer (Pixma MG5320) is an older model than yours and I don't get the XL cartridges.

@ Joan: I would suggest that you check the ink prices at JetTec as you are used to dealing with them but also suggest checking with other places too. Mayhaps Smitty will post his sources also. I doubt that you will find it hard to get good prices on your Canon ink if you check out a few sources.

I DO cringe when you say that your Canon printer uses one cartridge for all colors (Tri-color) as it seems such a waste to me. You run out of cyan ink and have to replace all the colors as they are all in one unit. I mentioned cyan ink as the thought of tri-color ink cartridges brought back memories of my first inkjet that used a tricolor. I did a lot of photos of an air show and of course there was a lot of sky which used a lot of cyan ink. I had to replace the cartridge due to being out of cyan... Sigh, the yellow and magenta portions were still about 30% loaded. That is just a total waste. As long as I have a choice I will never again buy a printer that uses tri-color ink cartridges. They are just too wasteful in my opinion.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 4:14 pm 
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I agree with you Jay but he went ahead buying it without even checking how many cartridges it used. I know when we first started getting ink for a printer that came with tricolour, I was so happy when things changed over to separate for each it's so much easier and cheaper.

The place I've been using for ink for our Epson printers so far is http://www.premier-ink.co.uk/index.php and the last time I bought ink was just over £14 for a multipack of all four colours.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:20 pm 
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Smitty wrote:
An interesting thing about this Canon Pixma MG6821 is that when printing black and white photos the color ink is used too. Just today while printing black and white the CYAN cartridge displayed a (!) low ink notice and maybe 20 or so prints later it displayed (X) warning to replace the cartridge before damage may happen.
In this session all the original B&W photos were scanned on this machine, using the BLACK button, to the computer for editing then to the printer for B&W glossy prints.
It puzzles me as to why color is involved in B&W printing.

B&W involves color because it's hardly ever just black and white. There's a lot of grey there so the black has to be toned down. Imagine all the different tones of grey. Amazing that a printer can actually do that.

The low notice thing is a bit previous and the warning a bit amplified. I find that I can print for a long time before anything actually goes wrong. I think they start the warning at about 20% left to get your attention. There's actually another warning when it gets really low. As far as damage, I'm not actually sure what it can be. Sure you may print a bad photo but if there's no ink coming out then a new cartridge is coming soon so what's to damage...

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:08 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
.... As far as damage, I'm not actually sure what it can be. Sure you may print a bad photo but if there's no ink coming out then a new cartridge is coming soon so what's to damage...

I think the damage warning is just hype. On my Pixma MG 5320 I have never changed a cartridge until the previous is totally empty. When a cartridge is empty it stops printing and lets me know. I change the cartridge and it continues printing. The output is fine and you would never know it stopped.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 4:46 pm 
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Same here Jay, I carry on printing till then end. The printer software tells you when a cartridge is low, it also gives you a message that you can carry on by mixing other colours, but when one is empty it will not print and shows the cartridges and how much ink they have in them, if one is empty it shows as empty with a red cross through it.

After using the cartridges that come with the printer I always switch to using JecTec manufactured cartridges which usually have more ink in them and are very compatible replacements for the originals.

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:57 pm 
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jaylach wrote:

Something that you may want to look at is a grey cartridge that replaces the pigment based black. If your printer is like my Pixma MG 5320 such a cartridge is available. You would only insert the grey cartridge when printing B&W photos. I have never used one but they are reported to give much better B&W results when combined with the dye based black as it allows true grey scale printing which equates to B&W.

Another thing that you may want to look at is the following link.
http://www.suppliesoutlet.com/


Careful Jay.
It appears that neither you nor I can use the gray cartridge. Your MG 5320 and my MG 6821
hold 5 cartridges. The machines that use the gray cartridge hold 6.
Check suppliesoutlet for 'gray' compatibility and our model numbers are not on the list.
Anyway, using "grayscaling" solved the slight green tinting I had in black and white photo printing.


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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 11:55 pm 
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From my searches at least the MG5320 can use the gray cartridge. The difference between the 5 and 6 cartridge printers seems to be that the 6 cartridge printers have a slot to permantely mount the gray where the 5 cartridge units rely on you manually switching between the gray and one of the blacks.

Like I said I've never used a gray but when searching ink suppliers results show a gray cartridge as available. Please not ethe following image.

Attachment:
canon ink.jpg
canon ink.jpg [ 89.54 KiB | Viewed 10362 times ]

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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 11:57 am 
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Interesting.
My guess is that the gray cartridge as illustrated in your attachment won't work in your printer for 2
reasons.
1. the black slot is going to be looking for a cartridge with a black ink chip and therefore won't be recognized
2. your printer takes the '226' cartridges not the '251' as illustrated.

My machine takes PGI, CLI 271 and I asked my supplier if it would work in mine and they said it wouldn't and that it is designed to be used in a 6 cartridge printer.
I went to Staples for Canon gray cartridge and was told the same thing...it's for a six cartridge printer.


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 Post subject: Re: B & W Photo printing
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 2:54 pm 
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Mine is supposed to take either 226 or 251... supposedly.

Shoot, at $5.00 I guess I'll just have to try one of the danged things. :mrgreen:

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