Welcome Inkjet Online Update 1-7-09.

www.inkjetonline.com.au

• Printing Tips - Better colour on plain paper
• New site search
• New 'Quick Reorder'
• Now selling Laser Cartridges  
• Aussie dollar climbs again, prices set to fall. 
• A new range of Generic Cartridges

Printing Tips - Better colour on plain paper

1. Light - Be sure you are in a well lit environment, what you are seeing may not be what you are printing.  Dim or tinted lighting will alter the brightness and colour of your print.  The whiter and brighter the environmental lighting the more accurate and brighter your prints will be as there is more light to reflect all the colours off the printed sheet into your eyes.  If you are in a room lit with a definite tint, like an old yellowed bulb giving off yellow tinted light, the white paper you are printing on will look a dull yellow.  This yellow light source will be hiding shades of yellow in your print and effecting other colours. 
   
2. Paper - Is your paper really white?  Compare it to other sheets from different sources.  You may be quite amazed at all the different 'whites' out there.  The white of the paper you are printing on is part of the colour printing system.  Its one of the colour components to the printed colour image, in fact its the primary colour in the system as it's present in all your prints.  Its not just a medium to print on, its part of the colour.  Try printing a sunset on blue paper.  You'll get something very different because the printing system needs the white paper to complete the colour.  Take a close look at the surface of the paper.  Plain, cheap paper can be far from white, somewhat see through and is also usually quite coarse to touch.  This coarseness, a little like sand paper, is tangible evidence of a highly uneven surface.  To see an image in colour you need white light to hit the image and bounce off into your eye.  An uneven surface disperses the reflected light in all directions reducing the amount of light that hits the back of your eye.  An increase in amount of reflected light is an increase in brightness.  So look for a white smooth paper.  Double A is a brand of plain 80gsm paper that has very high quality.  The next step up from here is paper made for laser printers.  These papers are often more expensive but nowhere near specially coated paper prices.  Lastly be sure that your printer settings are set to plain paper.  The wrong printer settings will have a massive impact.
   
3. Ink - There's not much you can do about this one as you probably already have your printer but its definitely worth knowing about especially for next time.  The type of ink your printer takes can have a real impact on print quality on plain paper.  There are 2 basic types of ink used in inkjet printers these days.  Dye based and Pigment based.  Dye inks are more prone to soak into paper than Pigment based inks.  As the dye ink soaks in it runs in all directions feathering the edges of things you want to remain sharp and spreading the amount of colour out over a larger area causing a wash out effect.  The particles in Pigment ink are much larger and usually coated with a resin.  This helps them resist soak in, staying on the surface of the paper in the location they were put as they are more easily caught up by the fibres.  All inks suffer from soak in effects but Pigment inks are definitely better at resisting this.  This only applies to ink when being used on plain paper.  Dye inks used on specially coated papers can actually have a higher colour density than pigment inks.

New Site Search

New Quick Reorder

Now selling Laser cartridges

Aussie Dollar Climbs Again

A new range of Generic Cartridges

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