■ Ink refill kitsfor empty cartridges.
■ Remanufactured ink cartridges. Old,
spent cartridges are cleaned and refilled
with third-party ink—nothing fancy here,
just recycling at work.
■ Continuous-ink systems. A few compa-
nies sell simple external ink supply sys-
tems that snake PVC tubing to the
printheads in the printer. Instead of
installing a small 15ml cartridge, you
attach a hose with a four-ounce or more
bottle of ink. The savings are tremendous
if you are a frequent printer.How do these third-party ink cartridges and refill
inks affect printer resolution? They don’t, but they can affect color. For this reason,
small software plug-ins—called ICC profiles—have been invented that overcome a
number of color issues.ICC Profiles
ICC profilesare plug-ins to image-editing programs that describe the exact color pro-
file of an output device, such as a printer or monitor. If you are serious about printing
photographs, make sure the printer or software you
use can support ICC profiling. Photoshop Elements has
a much simpler color space system (see Figure 18.5).
If you have Photoshop, follow these steps for a tour
of color profiles. Let’s create an image, save it with-
out color profile information, and then open it to
see what happens.- Open Photoshop, choose File, New, and cre-
ate a new image. Don’t worry about the set-
tings. Just click OK in the New dialog box. - Now save this blank image. Choose File,
Save As. In the Save As dialog box, uncheck
the ICC Profile check box (see Figure 18.6)
and then save this temporary file some-
where.
CHAPTER 18 PRINTERS AND PRINTER RESOLUTION 277tip
Save your empties! When
an ink cartridge runs out of
ink, do not throw it away.
You might need it later if you
decide to refill the cartridge
with third-party ink. Trust
me, ink is so expensive
that all digital photographers
eventually consider this cost-
savings technique.You can read more
about ICC profiles at the
International Color Consortium
home page at http://www.color.org.