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

Hello Geert,

I split your question into two parts.

1. Photo Printers:
Indemendent of printing technology, amount of used colors and so on,
a photo printer is a device that outputs images in photo quality.
There for you can use papers with the look and feel of a classic photo (high glossy, semi matt, etc.). A photo printer delivers printouts without visible dots and should use color pigments for long life archivation. The color gamut on photo paper should be simular or larger as a classic photo print. 
It doesn't matter if the technology uses CMYK,  CcMmYKk or what ever.

2. Colors of an Inkjet Printer:
CMYK and CcMmYKk is the same from the point of colormanagement.
The use of a full color like C together with a light color c is only to eleminate visible dots. For example, to print 20% Cyan with a CMYK device, the printer output are a few little points of C on the white paper. 
If you are printing a big area of 20% Cyan you will see the dots.
With a CcMmYKy device, light cyan or a combination of C and c will be used to print this color. 
More ink is used to print and you will see no dots.
The combination of C anc, M and m, K and k is done by the printer driver (or RIP software) and you don't have to care about this by making an ICC profile. 

Regards,

Clemens Beisch
http://colorxact.net

Am 21.02.2009 um 14:35 schrieb Geert Janssens:


Hi,
A more general question on printers: if you look at the wide range of printer models these days, you find printers with 4 colors (CMYK), 6 colors (CcMmYk) 
or even 8 or more colors (???).
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 ?
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 ?

I hope I make some sense here...

Thanks,

Geert

--
Kobalt W.I.T.
Web & Information Technology
Brusselsesteenweg 152
1850 Grimbergen

Tel  : +32 479 339 655
Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Other related posts: