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Mary Schilling discusses objective inkjet print quality comparisons and the benefits of a data-driven approach. Objective print quality analysis provides clear comparative data and removes all personal bias and visual subjective deficiencies when reviewing prints off competing inkjet devices. Inkjet beauty is more than skin deep!

In the previous post How to Make an Inkjet Sandwich I talked about the potential different ways that ink can react to a substrate when used in combination with other fluids such as primers or post-coatings. Those interactions make it critical to optimize all the fluids for your entire process, prior to linearization and profiling, to avoid print defects such as color to color bleed and coalescence.

Stop the (Ink) Bleeding. Check primed or inkjet coated print for color-to-color bleed/coalescence. Run test images w/ varying solid, single process & combined colors which touch or overlap. Create color areas > 4”x4” to see how ink volume of one image will spread or react to the primed/coated stock when touching another. If only printing pretty bitmap images, bleed effects can be hidden leaving print clarity surprises with solids and touching colors with hard edges.

Monitor Cross-Process Variance. Run a weekly test print showing solid color bars across the web. Include 100, 75 and 30% individual process color bars of at least 3” depth across the entire web width. Testing will show how well your paper path is controlled and identify any jet or head variation causing solid area defects.

This the first in a series of articles by Mary Schilling that will drill down on specific print quality metrics, what they mean, how they are measured and what factors in your printing process can affect them. Optical Density is one of the important quality metrics that can be objectively measured and it can be correlated to a number of other quality metrics.

Contributing author Chris Lynn provides and insightful explanation of “Apparent Resolution”: what it means, how it came to be and whether or not it matters for your application segment when evaluating an inkjet press.

We got a lot of good feedback on Elizabeth’s post on Peanut Butter and Workflow so I thought I would keep the sandwich metaphor going. When using pre-coatings and post-coatings with inkjet, you are creating an inkjet sandwich served on a paper plate. Each layer of the sandwich can make the ink spread and dry unevenly if not managed before profiling, creating a soggy sandwich.

Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies discusses specifications that actually tell you something about inkjet print quality – so, yes to gray levels and not-so-much on DPI and number of nozzles.

…and what they can’t. I posted an open letter to inkjet OEMs last week and got some feedback on the specifications people find most important when comparing production inkjet technology.

What determines production inkjet print quality? This is a complex question which can’t be answered by simply looking at the published spec sheet for a device. Many OEM’s tout higher

Transaction print, transpromo and transitional print are all ways of talking about segments of the production print market that produce statements, invoices, letters, notices and other important customer communications. The

Discussion of the key performance indicators (KPIs) and segment definitions that matter when evaluating equipment for inkjet book printing.

Often people discuss inkjet print quality in terms of dots per inch and the number of colors available, but this is just a small slice of what goes into the discussion of print quality. To get at the heart of quality in the age of ever smaller print heads with more densely packed nozzles, we need to look at the gray areas. Join us for a discussion of grayscale.

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Before you start any paper trials, know what you’re finished product goals will be and design your trial around them. Paper evaluation needs to consider a broad array of issues beyond compatibility with a specific device. If you don’t consider the big picture, you can waste a lot of time testing papers or miss out on opportunities to save money and improve quality.

Fingerprints are an indispensable way to help your customers understand the benefits of inkjet and the paper selected for a particular job.

If you see any signs of cross-process density shift, get a baseline by running a diagnostic test pattern on a high holdout inkjet coated sheet.

Stripes can be a wonderful design element, but when we see stripes when printing solids, we might call that “banding.” In inkjet terminology, it is more correctly referred to as “cross-process density shift” which is a bit of a mouthful.