This index card is not available in the “Basic“ version of TurboPrint
The controls of this menu page enable you to optimize the print quality or to reduce the ink consumption – whereas high quality and low ink consumption are not necessarily mutually exclusive. With TurboPrint you can save ink without a noticeable loss in print quality.
The generation of grayscales with colored or black ink is influenced with this slider. The advantage of using more black ink is a lower ink consumption whereas mixing grayscales with more color leads to smoother and less grainy colors. Bright tones of gray are ideally generated with colored ink, whereas with darker gray tones, black ink is used increasingly instead of using colors. The “black level” control determines the usage of black ink when mixing colors.
In the default setting black ink is only used in darker gray tones to avoid visible black dots.
Shifting the slider upwards leads to black ink being used for brighter gray tones and further replaces more color by black ink in the darker gray tones. Each drop of black ink drop substitutes for three drops of colored ink – in this way a considerable amount of ink can be saved. As a drawback, your printout may be slightly rougher.
In contrast, shifting the slider downwards leads to even darker gray tones being printed using colors without using black ink. As a result you get finer gradations but the ink consumption will be higher.
Note:
This control is only available if pure black ink can be used. Some printers only use pure black when printing on plain paper.
This function is not supported when using ICC printer profiles.
TurboPrint Studio: In “CMYK Proof” mode the mixing of black is performed according to the CMYK data of the source document as much as possible. When reproducing color tones that the printer cannot produce as prescribed there may be modifications of this precept – e.g. additional color may be added to black tones in order to obtain a deeper black.
The setting “Black Level (UCR)” is not effective for the color mode “CMYK Proof” mode. However it affects the “CMYK Proof (mix black)” mode.
(These controls are not available with ICC color profiles)
The use of the additional colors “bright cyan” and “bright magenta” of photo printers can be controlled with these sliders. You can reduce the use of the bright inks (values < 50) by replacing them with the corresponding dark inks. This results in a decreased total ink consumption but produces slightly grainier printouts. Conversely you can use more bright inks with values greater than 50.
When using printers with combined ink cartridges (several colors within the same cartridge) the consumption of all colors should be balanced – i.e. if significantly more bright cyan has already been consumed than dark cyan, you should shift the slider downwards to save bright ink (respectively upwards to save dark ink).
Depending on the internal color profile, there are either two sliders for controlling the usage of “bright cyan“ and “bright magenta“ separately, or a single “Photo Inks“ slider that changes the usage of both inks concurrently.
Total Ink Max
With this control you can limit the maximum amount of ink applied per printer dot. Its purpose is mainly to prevent an over-soaking of the paper and “bleeding” of the colors.
For example “300%” means that a maximum of 100% of the yellow, magenta and cyan inks may be applied at the same time. With “400%” an additional 100% of black ink may be applied.
Higher values cause a richer black (with higher ink consumption), lower values result in a lower ink consumption (with a lower intensity of black).
If excessive ink is applied resulting in smearing (“bleeding”), you can reduce the amount of applied ink by shifting this slider towards lower values. (You may also use the control “Color Saturation” of the “Main“ index card).
Separate ink limit sliders for black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks
With these controls you can limit the maximum applied amount of every ink color separately. As only highly saturated colors are affected, most colors will remain unchanged. With its integrated color profile generator, TurboPrint tries to adapt the affected colors as much as possible to keep the overall color balance unchanged.
The intensity of colors does not increase linearly with the amount of applied ink. Instead it increases similar to a saturation curve, i.e. in the upper region an application of 20% more ink results in only a 1% increase in color saturation. By cutting back in this region, you can save ink quite effectively without a noticeable loss in print quality. Hence ink is saved in the portions of the image with intense colors.
In case of a printer with a combined ink cartridge (several colors within the same cartridge) it is important to preemptively reduce the limit of the ink that tends to be used up first (in most cases the yellow ink) - this way the lifetime of the cartridge can usually be prolonged up to 30%.
Also you can reduce the amount of ink consumption with single ink printers by cutting back the ink peaks - and you can use this setting without having to consider the remaining ink levels.
If you have chosen „Perception Inksave“ as rendering intent some ink limits are already active. The “Separate Ink Limits” controls will then additionally reduce the ink limits (sliders downwards) or lessen the limitations (sliders upwards).
Exception - black ink limit:
To achieve very dark shades of colors not only pure black ink is used but the color inks yellow, magenta and cyan are added.
The control “black ink limit” does not change the use of the black ink. Instead the amount of color inks which are added to dark shades is changed. As a result the consumption of color inks is reduced when lowering the black ink limit. If you increase the black ink limit, more colored ink will be added to dark gray and black areas - resulting in deeper and darker gray/black shades.