Fine Art Inkjet Products
Image Science offer a unique selection of the finest inkjet materials available in the world today.
Our pricing is very competitive and we have extensive experience with the products (we use many of them in our own printing services).
Inkjet Printing in 2006
There are two major ink types in use today with inkjet printers, namely dye based inks and pigment based inks.
Until recently, only Epson manufactured pigment ink based printers in the desktop sizes (A4 through to about 17 by 22 inches), so they have pretty much completely cornered the market in pigment ink based printers with their Ultrachrome (& K3) line of printers (the R800, the R1800 & 2100/2200/2400, and the 4000/4800, 7600/7800, 9600/9800 and 10600). Recently Canon have begun offering a line of pigment ink printers as well.
In the gloss arena, Canon, Epson and HP all compete and all produce highly capable printers for amazingly low prices these days. Of course, dye based prints can fade remarkably quickly, but a lot of the testing seems to indicate 25 year life spans now for some of these inks on the right papers, which is about on par with standard mini-lab photos - always assuming you store your images properly (basically, behind glass or in an acid free album).
Dye based inksets are still noticeably superior on high gloss papers, and offer a truly enourmous gamut and excellent d-max on almost any surface.
Pigment based printers work best with cotton rag papers (usually matte), although recent developments with the R800 and R1800 and new Ultrachrome K3 printers vastly improve the results with gloss papers. The gamut will likely still be a little smaller than the dye based inksets for some time, but only slightly, and pigment inks offer so many other advantages that over time they are likely to come to dominate the market completely, and certainly are already dominant in the fine art world.
Read about printing with the Pigment Ink based printers (typically Epson Ultrachrome Printers).