As is the case with adding additional shades of magenta and cyan as printers evolved from 4/C to 8 and more the rationale isn\'t just to make the overall gamut larger (i.e more saturation). That\'s one outcome of course but the bigger benefit is that the light magenta and cyan inks give the printer the ability to create smoother gradients in the mid-tone ranges of colors contain what would be a 50% value of the darker shade on a 4/C printer.
The same would be true of the green and orange inks. It\'s not surprising that not much difference is seen on the overall gamut plots and saturation of images but I would expect to see smoother gradients in the rendering of middle tones of orange and green objects where the printer was able to substitute those inks vs trying to render the same colors with CYM pattern of dots.
The first application of 6/C printing was in packaging. This web site of a package printer explains the reasons: http://www.dixiebox.com/hexachrome_printing.html One of the most significant is the first one, the ability to match most Pantone spot colors. If you do any design for CYMK printing you are probably aware that there are many Pantone colors a conventional CYMK press can\'t physically reproduce. That\'s a big deal in packaging where specific colors are associated with brand identity such as Coke red and consistent reproduction in packaging and advertising is important.
So in that regard having a printer with OG inks would be more important to a commercial photographer shooting products and needed prints that match the packaging that someone photographing portraits or landscapes, who likely wouldn\'t notice much difference in the type of photographs they print.
Jan 13, 2012 at 10:51 AM
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