Print performance evaluation of ink jet media: Gamut and dye diffusion

A method to quantify gamut based on equiluminance planes is applied to char acterize ink jet media and ink sets. Due to a mixture of spectral interpola tion and interpolation in L*,a*,b* the base set of experimental data can be much smaller if only L*,a*,b* interpolation is used. The robustness of the interpolation to the reduction of data points in hue direction is demonstr ated. The method is applied to the characterization of different ink jet in k sets on photo glossy media. The effect of media gloss, paper color, print ing pattern and colorants is shown. The influence of the spectral measureme nt geometry on gamut has to be taken into account when colors are compared on samples with different surface finish. Printed colors may change over ti me due to the diffusion of dyes inside the layer. A test pattern was develo ped to quantify dye diffusion of ink jet prints under varying environmental conditions.