As I enter to the world of printing, my principles becomes more concern about inks. According to Internet articles, word of mouths and facts, ink has variety of differences and those differences are essential for reliable printing service. And then, I’d come to realized that I must master these concepts in order to help others have a high quality print outs satisfaction.
As a tribute to those things I learn, I write this article, INK CONCEPTS – The simplest explanation. I decided to write the subtitle, “simplest explanation”, because this tutorial helps you become familiar in the ink concepts that are basic enough to establish a printing business.
Let’s start about inks definition.
Wikipedia defines ink as a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. As you can see there are 2 liquid types, those are pigments and dyes. Liquid types are those we neede for daily use like school project and company needs. While paste type inks are use by larger printing companies like printing press and company that print large outputs.
DYE-BASED INKS
- Dye is commonly used by inkjet printers for document and photo printing. Dye inks usually printed in hard paper edges.
- It is quick absorbing in photo paper but not on bond papers.
- This is recommended for standard (8.5 x 11 inch) and long bond paper sizes (8.5 x 13inch) like photo paper, but make sure that these papers will not be exposed in any liquid surfaces like water. Once this happen, it will spilled and bleeds throughout the entire paper.
- In addition, dye inks printed in photo paper will be for lifetime used only if, you sealed it in a frame or any other thing that will not exposed the paper from dust.
- Dye inks are more vivid or shiny than pigment-based inks.
PIGMENT-BASED INKS
Unlike dye inks, pigment are more expensive. This inks are used in commercial business designs like banners, stickers, PVC ids & mugs. For example, if you print pigment in a water-proof sticker paper, it will last for a long time because pigment-based inks are totally absorbed and dry in sticker paper texture, even it is exposed in liquids.
Note: Make sure you use the right type of paper for the right type of ink, or else satisfaction is not guaranteed. Pigment-based ink are water-proof ONLY for water proof paper! Just be wise.
I more thing. As you can see, I have no post regarding the sublimation-based ink. Even though there are lots of information regarding this matter, I will post SOON about sublimation-based ink topics once I have enough experience and research.
Additional Information:
DYE VS PIGMENT VS SUBLIMATION: http://ulop.net/forum/6-hardware-a-devices/330499-ink-dye-vs-pigment-vs-sublimation (FILIPINO FORUM SITE, Please copy paste all contents to Google Translate to view in your respective language)
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STANDARD DYE BASED-INKS: http://www.oddparts.com/ink/faq19.htm
