using black and other paper with colour printers

[Colin J Denman]

Curious to know if other colours of paper can be used as a base,
particularly black paper to print predominantly black images, with the
intention of saving ink. e.g the kind of astronomical image at the hubble
telescope site.

Any experiences? What needs to be done to the image? Using an Epson
durabrite CMY system.

 

[Hecate]

Curious to know if other colours of paper can be used as a base,
particularly black paper to print predominantly black images, with the
intention of saving ink. e.g the kind of astronomical image at the hubble
telescope site.

Any experiences? What needs to be done to the image? Using an Epson
durabrite CMY system.

You can't use black paper. For a start Google for additive and
subtractive colours and you'll see why. The *very* simple explanation
is this - printers use paper white as white. If you print on any
colour paper white will come out as whatever the base colour of the
paper is. Other colours will be affected as well. As for black
paper...just imagine what will happen when the printer is printing
based on white being the paper colour...

 

[jbuch]

You can't use black paper. For a start Google for additive and
subtractive colours and you'll see why. The *very* simple explanation
is this - printers use paper white as white. If you print on any
colour paper white will come out as whatever the base colour of the
paper is. Other colours will be affected as well. As for black
paper...just imagine what will happen when the printer is printing
based on white being the paper colour...

--

Hecate
(e-mail address removed)
veni, vidi, reliqui

There is no "White Dye".

A white "ink" requires a white pigment. The white pigment reflects the
oncoming light of all incident light colors (wavelengths, actually)
pretty equally and has very little color tone itself (in other words,
white pigment is about as clear as glass... and finely ground clear
glass powder makes a fairly good white pigment).

There may well be no white pigmented inkjet inks.

The market is real small compared to black or other colored dye or
pigment based inks. So, one might go broke trying to sell "White" inkjet
inks, especially if the pigments clogged heads in dye based printer designs.

White paint is typically fine titanium dioxide pigment in a carrier
fluid which also contains a glue like substance to make the white
pigment stick to what is painted.

On the other hand, the wax printers may have white colored wax sticks to
do what you want. I haven't heard that they do, but they might, or might
not.



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[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.periphs.printers and a copy was sent to
the cited author.]

Curious to know if other colours of paper can be used as a base,
particularly black paper to print predominantly black images, with the
intention of saving ink. e.g the kind of astronomical image at the hubble
telescope site.

Any experiences? What needs to be done to the image? Using an Epson
durabrite CMY system.

Generally, most ink systems use dye-based colors. These require a light
background. A pigment-based ink may work, but they are really only found
on some high-end systems today (outside of HP's black ink on many models.)
Even then, you would probably need custom inks and software to print
white.

Another option is solid-ink like the Xerox Phaser 8400 that uses wax (I
think I read there is even silver and gold colors available?), or laser
printers with their toner. Again, you might need custom materals and/or
software to get white.

 

[Douglas]

Lasers can't print white either.As for the solid ink printers,you would
still need a custom made driver to support printing white,even if you could
come up with white.What you would need is a dye-sub printer!Fargo used to
make one and had white,as well as silver and gold.I don't think the Phaser
uses silver or gold either.

[This followup was posted to comp.periphs.printers and a copy was sent to
the cited author.]

Curious to know if other colours of paper can be used as a base,
particularly black paper to print predominantly black images, with the
intention of saving ink. e.g the kind of astronomical image at the hubble
telescope site.

Any experiences? What needs to be done to the image? Using an Epson
durabrite CMY system.

Generally, most ink systems use dye-based colors. These require a light
background. A pigment-based ink may work, but they are really only found
on some high-end systems today (outside of HP's black ink on many models.)
Even then, you would probably need custom inks and software to print
white.

Another option is solid-ink like the Xerox Phaser 8400 that uses wax (I
think I read there is even silver and gold colors available?), or laser
printers with their toner. Again, you might need custom materals and/or
software to get white.

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law!!
http://home.att.net/~andyross

 

[Yianni]

I think it isn't possible someone to make a white pigmented ink for inkjet
printers. Inkjet inks normaly contains 5-10% of pigment load, this amount is
not enough to cover the paper color. Even if someone use a high load pigment
ink (e.g. 30%), things won't be better because of paper absobment. Think it
like painting a black wallpaper! It is needed a thick coat of ink to cover
the behind black color.
I have done some experiments with white ink [a 10% load, not well formulated
ink], it wasn't noticable in the black paper!!!

--
Yianni
(e-mail address removed) (remove number nine to reply)


--

 

[Colin J Denman]

Thanks to all for the responses. I'd not even considered that a colour
printer can't print white. I'd imagined it would be a neccesity for
reproducing photographs and such.

Ah well, more black ink please...

 

[Fred McKenzie]

<< Thanks to all for the responses. I'd not even considered that a colour
printer can't print white. I'd imagined it would be a neccesity for
reproducing photographs and such. >>

Colin-

Several years back there was a printer on the market that did just that. It
came in two versions, one with some kind of wax ink, and one that would work
with either the wax ink or a dye sublimation ink (for use with special plastic
coated paper).

The wax printing was claimed to be able to print on any paper, even a grocery
bag. Laying down a layer of white was an option when printing on non-white
surfaces.

I can't recall the name of the printer. It was available in a parallel-port
version as well as one that had both parallel and SCSI ports. The latter was
intended for use with a Macintosh computer. Perhaps this will jog someone's
memory who can recall the brand, and tell us what ever happened to them.

Fred

 

[Colin J Denman]

(e-mail address removed) (Fred McKenzie) wrote in

Laying down a layer of white was an option when printing on non-white
surfaces

Thanks for the info. I guess it was one of those "doh" moments realising
most don't work as I'd imagined. From one point of view, it seems quite a
technical achievment to come up with a printing system that doesn't
generate one common colour. I'd imagine it might have taken real effort.

 

[Tom Ruben]

Several years back there was a printer on the market that did just that. It
came in two versions, one with some kind of wax ink, and one that would work
with either the wax ink or a dye sublimation ink (for use with special plastic
coated paper).

The wax printing was claimed to be able to print on any paper, even a grocery
bag. Laying down a layer of white was an option when printing on non-white
surfaces.

I can't recall the name of the printer. It was available in a parallel-port
version as well as one that had both parallel and SCSI ports. The latter was
intended for use with a Macintosh computer. Perhaps this will jog someone's
memory who can recall the brand, and tell us what ever happened to them.

That was the Alps MicroDry series of printers.