Vanishing colors in inkjet printers?

Paul added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

Hi,

I used mainly black laserjet. Yesterday I tried a new inkjet
printer and I noticed something strange. I printed mostly black
and white yet the the ink levels of the colors are decreasing
too. Is this a normal in inkjet (HP) where you have to use both
of them together or waste losing the colors when only mainly
black is used? Where does the color ink go? Some kind of drain
below?? Why can't they design inkjets such that only the
black ink would get lessen if the colors is rarely used?

How many ink colors does your particular HP have, Paul? Are you
speaking of those combo cartridges that have the 3 CMY colors and
mix them to achieve a sort of "black" or maybe do you mean the more
typical example of one large cartridge that contains the CMY colors
and a smaller one for K? In the former, yes, you'll quickly use up
your ink and like you say, it is use it or lose it. But, with the
latter, your color cartridge should last for a long, long time IF
you mainly print in color.

I would hasten to add, however, that depending on the source of the
"image" you want to print, including a word processor document, an
E-mail, a web page or many others, there MAY be colors in the image
anyway OR the printer driver may THINK there is some sort of
overall tint to the black.

Sometimes, fairly often I think, the printer driver software will
allow you to vary this stuff according to whether you tell it that
the "image" is text-only, text and graphics, all graphics, and so
forth. And, telling the printing you are using plain paper will
provide much different results than in using the various
professional papers the printer supports such as photo matte, semi-
gloss, and glossy. For example, my Canon Pixma 6600 supports 4 or 5
glossy paper types of it's own manufacture, with the differences
being assumptions based on the absorbsion of ink by the paper and
the designed characteristics the prints expects the paper to
provide.

Incidently, as you may or may not know, changing the driver from
fast print quality to normal to high quality not only has a GREAT
impact on print speed, but almost always a HUGE difference in ink
usage. Again, using my Canon as an example, draft is generally crap
and "quality" is a major ink eater yet it is only minorly better -
to my eyes - than "normal" for graphics printing.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"Laid off yet? Keep buying foreign and you soon will be!" - popular
bumper sticker