Pigment V Dye Printers

Printing at home vs outsourcing, the Lightroom print module, and more...

A4 sized image on 11x14 and 16x20 paper. Those measurements are random but represent an almost 3:2 aspect ratio inside a 5:4 display area. With a lot of white space they fit very neatly at native aspect ratio or perfectly with a slight trim.

There have been a few discussions in our community about buying and using a dye based printer as opposed to a pigment based printer. These discussions usually are centered around smaller printers such as 13in and 8 1/2in printers (A3+ and A4/Letter sheet printers for our EU and UK subscribers). There’s a lot of choices and a lot of competition in the industry for these smaller printers. Many of the cheaper multi-function home printers can produce incredible prints even if paper manufacturers don’t provide profiles. Theoretically you could buy a newer “eco printer” that is marketed to be far less expensive to run with refillable ink like the Epson EcoTank ET-15000 and make your own ICC profiles. I’ll bet you would be surprised at the results.

Things get even tricker when comparing printers like the Canon 200S and Canon 310. These two printers are nearly identical. The 200S is $300 less expensive than the 310. The 200S uses dye ink, the 310 uses pigment ink. Many paper companies have profiles for both. The ink for the 200S is around twenty percent less expensive. The 200S has a wider color gamut than the 310. Both are marketed to the “Pro” photography market and both produce great prints. So which one do I go with? Yes… the pigment based 310 is archival but the 200S ChomaLife100+ inks are marketed to last 100 or more years…