Canon Announces 8 And 12 Color Ink and Cartridge Developments
Expanded Color and Cartridge Refinements Produce Astounding Results
Canon has leapt ahead in design recently with the LUCIA 8 color ink and cartridge system. The biggest apparent advantage of the LUCIA system is the fact that there are a total of eight colors, which allows finer mixing and an even better economic factor - the more base colors, the better and more efficiently the ink is used and the better the resulting prints will turn out. If quality is important to you because you are a purist or because you are in the business of small run printing, you will not believe the difference this makes in fine photo and art prints..
The colors for this system includes cyan, photo cyan, magenta and photo magenta, yellow, black, matte black and gray. This wider color gamut, especially the different blacks and the gray help to create smoother gradations and reduce graininess. This helps to create a crisper monotone output, and the multiple blacks and grays help to increase the density of the color black (it is actually one of the toughest colors to reproduce.
The inks are delivered through twelve ink channels and two print heads, which is also a big help, delivering better ink coverage. This increases the cartridges productivity and does so without sacrificing image quality - the printer cartridge in this case is for the iPF8000S.
The system goes further than that, though, with a total of 12 colors in this pigmented printer ink cartridge system. This allows for an even more refined color gamut, including multiple blacks which help make this type of technology deliver such breathtaking results, and which helps create infinitely smoother gradations. You will have no trouble seeing the difference between the expanded colors technology and the old three and four color systems.
image source: canon
The Advantages of Increased Color Gamuts
The LUCIA system delivers a wider color gamut, better image quality and accurate color reproduction. The availability of the new colors increases the accuracy of the color reproduction. There are also other benefits to this specific ink formulation. It has an increased polymer coating which, especially for photo printing leads to increased print longevity.
The inks can also be used over a wider array of specialty media, eliminating the need to buy special cartridges if you print on non-conventional materials. More and more ink cartridges will be adapting this technology as the advantages are quite large, and the compatible ink makers will already be working on replacement cartridges, or will be offering remanufactured cartridges soon. The print world never stays still for long, and it does not take new technologies, if they are worth the money and produce better prints, to work their way through the system.
More and more printers will be using this type of ink technology, and soon you will be able to buy cartridges as good as OEM for a much reduced rate. And that is great news for people who use toner cartridges and printer ink cartridges.