All of these tests were printed using the XG 6 color ink set in an Epson 1200. Note that these tests were not done in Bob Meyer's test environment, but in Troy Delnicki's. These are Troy's words:
It's been a week since I started my testing, and I thought I'd give you a progress report. First though, a little bit about my testing environment. I tried to duplicate what Bob Meyer had set up, within reason of course. One location for testing was the west side of the house under my porch overhang. This area gets two to three hours of sun per day.
The second location was also on the west side of the house, but indoors between the screen and the glass. Although there is a slight overhang on the roof, this area gets quite a bit of direct sun.
And now, the results:
XG Ink on
Epson Premium Semi Gloss: In the outdoor test, the ink has lost
much of its magenta layer, shifting heavily towards the green direction. The shift seems to be
fairly uniform, affecting the highlight, mid tones and shadows more or less to an equal degree.
In the West facing Window, indoors, this paper is showing the typical ozone fade look with the cyan layer fading the greatest. The color shift is red. The shift is greatest in the highlights, with almost no change in the shadow areas. Mid tones are affected only mildly.
(Editors note: These results, along with the previous tests of XG ink on Epson Premium Glossy, pretty well support the position that the Epson papers are not the paper of choice with XG inks.)
XG ink on
Ilford Semi-Matte: In the outdoor test, the ink has also shifted, but to a much lesser
degree. The loss is greatest in the highlight areas, with almost no shift in the shadows. The
weak link is again the magenta layer, although the yellow is shifting as well.
In the indoor test, the Ilford Semi-matte paper is unchanged!
I'm going to leave the Ilford paper go for another few weeks, but I'm pretty much done with the
Epson paper, as this paper is not going to work.
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