Can a RIP change reduce ink usage?

Yes. In a side-by-side trial on a vehicle wrap shop's Epson S60600 printers, the same evaluation test print used 2.54 ml of ink through the existing production workflow and 1.87 ml through PrintFactory's Visual Match Plus variant — a 26.38% reduction, with better color accuracy and gray balance.

What is a PMM in PrintFactory?

PMM is what PrintFactory calls its color setups. The acronym stands for Printer, Media, Mode. Creating a custom PMM requires only a couple of charts to be printed and measured.

How do you measure ink usage per job?

There are three common methods: check the front panel of the printer, which reports per-job ink usage on many models; pull the data from your RIP software, sometimes as a paid option; or use the manufacturer's own tool, such as Epson Cloud Solution PORT.

PrintFactory RIP Trial: 26% Ink Savings on Epson S60600

This week I was working with a new client — primarily a vehicle wrap company. They run three Epson SureColor S60600 printers that came with ONYX Thrive, printing mainly on Avery 1105 with a downloadable profile.

I explained to the owner that we could potentially save him a significant amount of money by driving the printers with the PrintFactory RIP. He was hesitant about switching, so I asked if we could run a trial and show him exactly how much he could save.

Setting Up the Trial in 30 Minutes

I stopped over one afternoon. We created a trial license and had the software downloaded, installed, licensed, and configured to all three S60600s within 30 minutes.

We then created a new PMM — what PrintFactory calls its color setups (an acronym for Printer, Media, Mode) — on the Avery 1105, using the same settings they'd been running in production. Creating custom color setups in PrintFactory is quick and easy: only a couple of charts to print and measure.

Testing the PrintFactory Variants

With the PMM created, we output an Evaluation Test Print, which ships with PrintFactory. We ran it with three of their proprietary rendering intents — what PrintFactory calls variants:

Visual Match
Visual Match Plus (VMP)
EcoSave

These variants are only available in PrintFactory, and they're some of the secret sauce behind why the product works so well — and why it behaves differently from other RIPs. For a baseline, we also output the same test print through their existing production workflow.

How to Actually Measure Ink Usage

This shop wasn't estimating ink cost or usage at all — which is common. There are several ways to do it:

Look up per-job ink usage on the front panel of the printer (available on many models)
Pull it from your RIP software (sometimes a paid option)
Use the printer manufacturer's own tool — Epson offers Cloud Solution PORT, which I helped them configure to report ink usage

The Results: 26% Less Ink

Epson Cloud Solution PORT ink usage readout comparing existing production output at 2.54 ml against PrintFactory Visual Match Plus at 1.87 ml — Ink usage reported through Epson Cloud Solution PORT — existing workflow vs. PrintFactory Visual Match Plus.

Workflow	Ink used	Saving
Existing production workflow	2.54 ml	—
PrintFactory Visual Match Plus	1.87 ml	26.38% less ink

And the ink saving wasn't the only win — the PrintFactory output was better in color accuracy and gray balance as well. Less ink, better color.

What's Next for This Shop

Obviously, we'll be moving forward with my recommendation. Next we'll create custom color setups on just one of the printers, across all the medias and print modes they use. Once those exist, we'll recalibrate each of them onto the other two printers — PrintFactory does an excellent job of making all three printers match one another.

I just thought I'd share the details of the trial and the results.

Schedule a Consultation

Curious what a RIP change could save on your own ink draw? Contact Dan Gillespie at Alder Color Solutions.
dang@aldertech.com