Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

There are two major aspects of calibrating the color rendering of your system if you want to make prints that match what you see on the display. And while no print – a reflective medium – can hope to match the dynamic range of a transmission technology like an LED screen, you still want to get as close as possible.

The first is to use the right icc paper profile for your printer and paper, something I describe here. And you must not let the printer manage color. The only way to invoke and use that paper/printer profile is to set up your computer to manage color. Leave the printer color management turned off.

The second aspect is monitor calibration. While in OS 10.15 Sequoia it’s hidden away, Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator is still around and has been for ages. It’s a cheap (free) alternative to calibration hardware which will set you back a minimum of $170. While my Benq monitor comes very well calibrated out of the box, the Apple tool can make things even better. As for my X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter it is toast as the makers have refused to update it to work with Apple Silicon CPUs. A business with the integrity of Adobe.

The problem is that Apple seems not to want anyone using the Monitor Display Calibrator as it’s well and truly hidden. Here’s how to find and use it.

Go to ‘System Settings (Apple symbol)->Displays’:

System Settings->Displays

Click on ‘Color Profile->Customize’:

System Settings->Displays->Color Profile

See that little ‘+’ symbol at the lower left, below? Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click it. This will get you into the Monitor Display Calibrator which looks like this – be sure to click on ‘Expert Mode’ in the right hand window:

System Settings->Displays->Color Profile-Customize

The application will walk you through a five step process to adjust your monitor. Be sure to do this in an ambient light setting as similar as possible to that in which you will display your prints, as ambient light color (‘temperature’ if you speak Geek) affects color rendering in a print. Save the result and then go back into ‘System Settings->Displays’ and make sure your new monitor profile is the one you have selected – see the first image above.

You are done.

A nice print to display match.

In a word, frugal.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

One of the claims made by Epson for its ET-8550 ink tank printer is that is uses ink frugally.

Here are some data from my early experience. Bear in mind that about 1/4 of each ink bottle is used to fill the feed tubes and print heads when the printer is new, so the actual ink use is even lower, and I allow for that in my calculations.

110 prints made from new.

All prints made have been 13″x19″ in size. In practice I made 31 monochrome prints, not 3 as shown, as I now output them from Lightroom as ‘color’ originals which have been converted to B&W. Epson counts those as ‘Color’ as it cannot tell the difference.

Here are the ink levels after those 110 prints from new:

110 prints made from new.

Each ink bottle is 70ml in size, meaning we have to add back 25% of that amount, or 17.5ml, to take out the effect of the ink stored in the lines and heads. Obviously these do not need refilling – it’s a one-off permanent ‘ink sink’ for a new printer.

This computes to use in mL and % of full as follows after adjusting for the ink sink:

BK – pigment black – 0ml, 0%
PB – dye Photo Black – 17ml, 25% – this confirms that the 8550 is only using dye black ink for prints, not pigment black ink. In fact, the 0% use of the pigment black ink suggests that pigment black ink is being reserved solely for printing office documents and dye black is used, by default, for making photographic prints.
C – dye cyan – 25ml, 35%
Y – dye yellow – 17ml, 25%
M – dye magenta – 26ml, 38%
GY – dye grey – 81mL, 116% – I have refilled the GY tank once with 70mL of ink added

The high GY use reflects the many B&W prints made, but averaging the five dye tanks out use (pigment black is not used for prints so that sixth color is disregarded in the calculations that follow) is 166mL or 2.4 tanks for 110 13″x19″ prints. Stated differently, five dye tanks will allow printing of 230 13″ x 19″ prints or, if you prefer 608 (!) 8.5″ x 11″ prints. The cost of five 70mL dye ink bottles of genuine Epson ink (only a fool would use aftermarket substitutes at this price) is around $85 or 48 cents a 13″x19″ print.

That agrees with my definition of frugal, and while you can print office documents using that pigment black ink, I do not recommend that for two reasons: first, it’s bog slow. Second, a cheap desktop laser printer is faster and cheaper.

One note. Dye ink is absorbed by the swellable HP printing paper I am using and probably handled in much the same way by Epson papers and those from other makers. The dyes soak into the emulsion of the paper and need time to dry. In fact, you can feel the tackiness of the surface of a fresh print. So leave new prints out in the air for 24 hours before putting them in sleeves or heating them for mounting, etc.

My high end print drying area.

Not at all bad.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

Keith Cooper of Northlight Images has an excellent video about monochrome print making on the Epson ET-8550 here. He knows better than to obfuscate with fancy words but his opening dissertation on the issue with many dye ink jet printers reflecting color casts under artificial lighting is important. That behavior is known as ‘metamerism’, and you really do not want it. Suffice it to say that using HP Premium Gloss paper there is no evidence of metamerism and Cooper reports that all is also well with Epson Premium Luster paper.

What is intriguing about the design of the Epson ET-8550 is that it uses no fewer than three monochrome inks:

Pigment Black, Photo Black Dye and Photo Grey Dye Epson ET-8550 inks

Because the ET-8550 doubles as an office printer, printing on regular paper, it includes pigment ink for that purpose. Pigment ink, like wall paint, dries on the surface and is not absorbed into the substrate, whereas dye ink must be absorbed and the paper chosen in photographic applications must be capable of absorbing ink. Not all photo papers will do that.

Whereas you might think that that no pigment ink would be used in making monochrome photo prints in the ET-8550 Cooper avers this is not the case and it appears that Epson is using some clever combination of the PB Photo Black Dye ink and the BK black pigment ink in printing monochrome images. Do we care? Well, the only thing that matters is the result, so to test things I made two 13″ x 19″ monochrome prints:

Nikon D3x, 35mm f/1.4 Sigma, color original converted to B&W in Lightroom

Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, TriX, scanned in a Canon 4000 film scanner, monochrome original.

In both cases I used the Freestyle custom profile described here. Both prints are drop dead gorgeous – no color cast, no metamerism, just pure monochrome tones.

So it appears that the ET-8550 does a fine job of monochrome printing, but take heed of Cooper’s warning that papers differ, so experiment, and use the right color profile. Epson Premium Luster appears to be a safe bet, based on his experiments, or HP Premium Gloss, based on mine. The Epson printing utility Cooper refers to in the video linked above is not to be found in the US and I much prefer using Lightroom as it simplifies work flow – one tool for all prints. I suggest you adopt a similar philosophy.

Paper jams:

Confirming that with photo printers “It’s always something”, I find that if more than 5 sheets of paper are loaded into the rear paper feeder, the printer will jam. This is for relatively thick paper. The HP Premium Gloss I use weighs in at 280 g/sq. m. So keep it to 5 sheets or less, or be prepared to try and decipher Epson’s arcane un-jamming instructions, invoking garage language and generally wasting time in the process.