[argyllcms] Re: Printer: CMYK or CcMmYK or ...

Hi,

Geert Janssens wrote:
At the same time, all of these models claim to be "photo" printers. So I start to wonder about the value of more than 4 basic colors. Do these 6-color or 8- 
color printers really have a larger gamut than the 4-color versions ?
Depends what the extra colours are. The main point of light cyan and light magenta isn't so much to increase gamut as to make dithering patterns less visible.
On the other hand, extra colours such as the Epson R800 and friends' Red and Blue inks can increase gamut.
And also, suppose i use argyllcms to profile these printers. As far as I understand argyll only profiles CMYK (4 primaries) and not 6 or more primaries. I am told that if the printer is "well behaved", this is no problem. But would I then still have any benifit from the additional color cartridges ? I mean, if more than 4 primaries would potentially give me a larger gamut (my first question), would the fact that argyll only works with 4 primaries not be the limiting factor in the output chain ?
A lot here depends on the printer driver. Just as in RGB mode the driver is responsible for splitting RGB colours to CMYK, in CMYK mode the driver is responsible for splitting CMYK to CMYKcm or CMYKRB or whatever.
How good a job of this the driver does is what we mean when we talk about it being "well-behaved". As long as whatever the driver's doing is "smooth" enough, a profile can track it, and you'll get good results. That's a big "if", though. 

All the best,
--
Alastair M. Robinson

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