Colourful Propaganda
The Age
Thursday June 20, 2002
The debate about whether to use the manufacturer's brand or generic cartridges in your inkjet printer is hotting up.
Over the past few weeks there's been a terrible tearing noise in the Bleeding Edge cave. It's the sort of sound you get when your belief is being stretched to its limits. It has been caused by Epson's advertising campaign in support of its expensive inkjet printer inks.
The company has been running two colour advertisements warning their customers that if they buy anything but genuine Epson ink cartridges they are likely to damage their printers, compromise the quality of their prints and lose time and money.
The ads are graphically arresting but what makes them memorable, in our opinion, is their sheer sophistry and equivocation.
Nothing in these ads changes our view that the prices charged by companies such as Epson for inkjet printer refills are outrageous, and that users should look for cheaper cartridges or refill their own.
One of the ads shows a time bomb and the message: "It's only a matter of time before the wrong ink may (our italics) ruin your printer." Somehow, the assertion lacks conviction.
After a lifetime of creative expression in expenses claims, Bleeding Edge has an instinct for obfuscation. Anything short of an outright declaration that "The wrong ink will ruin your printer" doesn't impress us.
The "Four Genuine Facts" that Epson presents in the second ad as evidence of "How Non-Epson Inks Can Ruin Your Printer" are absurd:
"Genuine Fact" 1: "Non-genuine Epson inks can be up to 40 per cent more expensive. Genuine Epson inks can give you 108 per cent more printouts per cartridge." Epson claims that its inks are somehow cleaner, require fewer (ink-consuming) head cleans and reprints of bad prints, meaning more pages per cartridge.
The experience of the scores of users who've contacted us is that printing with Epson inks costs much more than printing with replacement inks.
"Genuine Fact 2" suggests that non-genuine inks don't work with the Epson PerfectPicture Imaging System, that their colours are flatter and their print quality "nowhere near as sharp".
We have a photographic print on our mantelpiece that was taken with a digital camera and printed out on an Epson 1270 printer. The resolution and the depth and range of colours are stunning and, after a year of exposure, the colours have not begun to fade.
The problem for Epson is that it wasn't printed with Epson ink. Several photographers who have seen a version printed with Epson ink have expressed the view that they prefer the non-genuine inks. In the US, photographers are doing brisk business in limited-edition prints. Some of them are being produced on Epson printers, but nearly all of them use non-Epson inks.
Even worse for Epson's case: after more than a year of operation with those non-Epson inks, there's been no damage to our printer. Other readers who have been using Epson printers and replacement ink for two years have seen no signs of damage. In fact, in our view it's the Epson design that increases the possibility and the cost of print head damage. Canon - the brand we recommend - and Hewlett-Packard build their print heads into the cartridge, so they don't require expensive repairs if something does go wrong.
If you use a recognised ink brand or the services of a specialist retailer (OfficeNet in Malvern, for instance, or any member of the Australian Cartridge Remanufacturers Association) or if you buy a continuous inking system, you're going to be protected by a guarantee - and you're going to save a lot of money.
Bleeding Edge is at odds on this issue with a colleague, who recently defended the inkjet printer manufacturers from "cynics".
The writer told of his experience of comparing two digital prints from the same computer, one with Epson inks, the other with an unnamed replacement cartridge. His verdict: the Epson ink produced more accurate tones and sharper colours than the cheap cartridge. In our experience, that doesn't qualify as an adequate test - particularly given that he was testing Epson ink against an unnamed brand of ink cartridge he'd picked up from a suburban railway station.
Even using the same ink, the colour output will vary dramatically if you change the type of paper. If you use the same ink to print to TDK glossy paper, for instance - which, in our view, is the best paper on the market for glossy prints - then switch to Epson archival matt - very good for long-life prints - you'll find a dramatic difference, particularly in magenta. If you introduce a different ink, you'll have to experiment with different driver settings. And if the ink isn't a good-quality ink to start with, you may never achieve acceptable results.
For the average consumer, the key to good colour-matching is to make several test prints of the same image - 6x4 inches (15x10 centimetres) is adequate - using different printer driver settings to match output to what you see on the screen. You will also have to use different settings for each type of ink and paper that you use.
If you're really serious, you can invest about $900 in a device called a Monitor Spyder, which uses a piece of software called PhotoCal to calibrate your monitor. You can then use a scanner and a test print to build a profile in Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for each type of paper and ink. You can also rent the device, from the Scanner and Printer Place or AIM.
As the big printer manufacturers move to protect a market that extracts $500 million annually from Australian pockets, you can expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, has recently begun distributing a glossy 36-page booklet, The 2002 Colour Printing Companion, with computer magazines. Many of the arguments are tendentious, serving to protect Hewlett-Packard's interests rather than the consumer's.
But that print on our mantelpiece is proof that you don't have to spend a fortune on the ink supplied by printer manufacturers to get superior results. We might be cynical, but if you don't investigate their potential, sooner or later your inkjet printer may consume the contents of your bank account.
Charles Wright's The Edge column appears in Tuesday's Next section.
cw@bleedingedge.com.au
© 2002 The Age
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