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Alternative Ink For Epson Printers
Epson printers are one of the most widely used brands, especially in the photography market. As a result, there have been some companies that have come up with some alternative ink for Epson printers.
One of the most common alternative inks is what are known as "archival" inks. These inks are designed to hold their color and tone for much longer than the original Epson ink. This is most useful for photographers who are printing their images with Epson's printers.
The archival inks will last for 50 years or more with no loss of quality, but they still offer the excellent quality prints that the original Epson ink does. In the past, it was a tradeoff between quality and longevity - the high quality ink wouldn't last as long as archival inks but the archival alternatives didn't have the same color balance and tones.
Another alternate type of ink for Epson printers is "Quad-Tone." These cartridges use four different intensities of black ink rather than the single black and three colors that most Epson printers use. This lets photographers print true black and white images that are every bit as good as traditional film photography.
The black & white that is an option with the standard black and color cartridges is not truly black & white. If you magnify it enough, you'll see that there is color used to simulate the gray tones. The alternative quad-tone cartridges will print a true black and white.
There are also other colors available for Epson printers, such as fluorescent ink that will glow under black light.
The only catch with these ink cartridges is that they are not available for all models of Epson printers. There are some specific models that are well-suited to using alternate inks, and unfortunately many of them are discontinued.
There are companies that specialize in these types of ink and printers, however, and they often have the older model available for purchase. These may be reconditioned or new, but either way they have been tested to work with these alternative types of ink.
We've got information about suppliers for these specialized inks on our printer ink supplier reviews page - take a look there for the best sources.
