The market is saturated with printer inks and cartridges, so there are plenty of ink cartridges Australia has to choose from.

This article is not about telling you which ones to buy or choose but to give you more information about their make-up of them.  

For the majority of the time, the printer maker themselves is the best company to replace your inks with. Drop for drop, I can tell you printer ink is expensive and can be compared to the cost of fine perfume in some cases. 

However, printer manufacturers do spend billions of dollars in research, analysis and development and, in many cases, sell the actual printer hardware at a loss. 

So as is the case with any business, they need to recoup their losses and make a profit from somewhere. But some of this can be recouped while selling the printer by supplying a low amount of ink in the initial installation cartridges. 

Then as a consumer, you get the shock of buying the higher-capacity cartridges when they run out and realize they cost more than the printer did. 

'Compatible Cartridges' 

Many manufacturers out there sell 'compatible cartridges, which can be tempting. You should seek advice from professionals to see precisely how compatible they are.

Sure, you can get lucky and get good results problem-free; but you could get unlucky. If you end up with the latter, your printer can experience unreliability, the possibility of the print heads blocking, and even find the cartridges start to leak. Your print quality then falls off a cliff. 

The right manufacturer's genuine printer inks can deliver photo prints with a lifetime guarantee. A cheaper option can lead to quality and fading within just a matter of weeks. 

Of course, independent cartridges are higher quality than others, but you are taking a gamble nonetheless. Sticking with the brand you bought (although more expensive) is always the safest option. 

Inks

The more affordable units on the market usually use just two cartridges. Typically one will be pigment-based black ink (K), the other being tri-colour. This contains dye-based ink and comes with cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). 

These inks are ideal for colour and mono documents. Still, there is a limit to their quality as far as photo printing is concerned. This is because the very dark colours and blacks are created through 'composite black', which is produced by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow inks, which is not the same as 'photo black ink'. So therefore, even though the printer was cheap to purchase, the cartridges will tend to be expensive. 

Dual cartridge printers tend to come with the print head already built into the cartridges, so you're purchasing a new print head each time you buy a cartridge. 

Typically the premium photo printers in today's market have permanently fixed heads that can be fed using more straightforward replaceable cartridges that are cheaper to manufacture. 

For example, Canon has been manufacturing five-ink printers for many years that use pigment-based black ink and the CMYK dye-based inks in separate cartridges. 

They have delivered high-quality document and photo printing and are an excellent all-around bet for your money. The advantage that separate cartridges have for each ink is that they can be replaced separately when each one is finished, not as one, therefore throwing away unused ink in the tri-colour cartridge. 

A new convenient way of photo printing is using CMKY dye-based inks in conjunction with additional light magenta and light cyan ink, which is now a six-ink system.  

Epson is an excellent range for this format and comes individually replaceable. However, there is a downside: dye-based black ink can tend not to be as dark as you want. It ends up with a greyish effect on plain paper, also known to smudge easily when it comes in contact with water. 

Having said that, Epson does produce some good quality six-ink photo printers with decent quality black text for your document printing. Also, if you use glossy paper, you'll get high-quality, vivid colours with them. 

Professional Grade Photo Printers

Large-format professional-grade photo printers add an extra dimension of additional colours and different shades of greys.  

This not only applies to the colour space (gamut). Hence, it extends to enhance the colour spectrum for photographs that can be produced. Still, the black and white photo printing has its fidelity improved. 

These printers provide a far superior tonal range from bright whites to superior deep blacks; meaning less colour inks are used, eliminating unwanted colour casts. 

These dye-based inks can't be beaten for ultra-smooth finishes on glossy paper. The secret behind this is that the ink gets fully absorbed into and beneath the outer layer of glossy paper, acting as protection. 

The good news about these printers is their speed and output, whereby the use of glossy paper when printed is dry upon leaving the printer. 

However, the top-of-the-range professional-grade photo inkjet printers use only pigment-based inks. This means you get a slower printing speed and longer drying times. However, now that matte black has been introduced in conjunction with photo black inks, you now get a richer, deeper colour and black print. 

Dye-based inks are dissolved fully in water, meaning the pigment-based inks' larger molecules are only poised in liquid; therefore, they are more robust. This gives them superiority for archival quality prints on both fine-art media and matte photo paper.  

If there is a slight negative, the ink isn't fully absorbed into. Beneath the outer layer of glossy paper acting as protection, so you can get bronzing and definition loss over time and when viewed from different angles. 

Canon uses 'chroma optimizer' cartridges for their premium pigment ink printers to avoid gloss differential. 

SUMMARY

With the market in Australia flush with so many printer ranges and cartridge ranges, it is vital not to rush into any purchase without proper advice. And in Australia for many years now, I have recommended to friends and family to call Hottoner. They are throughout Australia, offering premium products but excellent advice based on your needs and requirements. It's worth contacting them before making a move that could end up costing you more and causing you future problems. Good luck with your choices.