When does Canon I860 use the black pigment inks

[Rick]

I know that the Canon I850 is equipped with black pigmented inks for
the purpose of printing fade/water resistant text documents. But when
does the printer use this ink?, how does it know when it is printing
text.

Doesn't the printer just receive a bunch of 1's and 0's at the end of
the cable no matter if it's printing a photo or text?

Does this printer determine which black cartridge to use based on the
Paper Type selection. Perhaps if I select plain paper it will use the
pigmented cartridge and if I choose any of the other paper types it
will use the dye cartridge.

Or perhaps I have to open the printer options and select the gray
scale option to force it to use the pigmented ink. What if I chose
Photo Paper as the paper type , and then selected gray scale printing.
I would think that in this case it would still use the photo black (ie
dye) cartridge.

Or perhaps the driver looks at the entire print job, and if it only
detects black, then it tells the printer to use the pigment cartridge.
But what if I have a text document that is all black except for the
title being underlined in a thin red line. Will that be enough to
trigger the printer into using the dye based black cartridge.

I have read the Canon documents and also searched Google, but I can't
find the answer to this one. Any help with this would be appreciated.



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[Bill]

I know that the Canon I850 is equipped with black pigmented inks for
the purpose of printing fade/water resistant text documents. But when
does the printer use this ink?, how does it know when it is printing
text.

If the document contains only true black, it will print using the black
only pigment-based cartridge.

However, most documents have some other colour in it, even if it's
almost black, but not quite, the printer will mix the CYM to produce
black. I've found that my i850 mixes the colours about 90% of the time
when printing text, unless it's forced into grayscale mode.

Or perhaps I have to open the printer options and select the gray
scale option to force it to use the pigmented ink.

This is what I do with my i850 to ensure it uses the pigment black
cartridge. It prints in black almost twice as fast and its speed
difference is very noticeable (separate 320 nozzles for pigment black
and it spits out sheets quickly).

What if I chose
Photo Paper as the paper type , and then selected gray scale printing.
I would think that in this case it would still use the photo black (ie
dye) cartridge.

I don't know the answer to that one. I would think it should use the dye
black, but I'm not sure.

 

[BF]

I print almost all photos with my i950. The black gets used as fast as
cyan and magenta. (photo cyan and photo magenta go much faster) What
that is telling me is that black must be getting used for black parts
of the photo. It probably is getting mixed with other colors to make
shades of gray, although I don't know that for sure.


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[Ray R]

I print almost all photos with my i950. The black gets used as fast as
cyan and magenta. (photo cyan and photo magenta go much faster) What
that is telling me is that black must be getting used for black parts
of the photo. It probably is getting mixed with other colors to make
shades of gray, although I don't know that for sure.

It appears thar when CY and M are greater than 80% dark that
the black ink is used. If you print a gray scale graduation the
color inks are used until it reaches about 80% gray. After that
back is used.

 

[Bill]

It appears thar when CY and M are greater than 80% dark that
the black ink is used. If you print a gray scale graduation the
color inks are used until it reaches about 80% gray. After that
back is used.

I concur...my Canon i850 has only cyan, magenta, and yellow in dye ink,
and black is pigment. But black is still used in photos for dark areas.