How much ink for 450 prints?
A few things I've learned by keeping track of ink usage on my Epson printers
One of the habits I picked up from owing a photo lab is to track ink usage. Every time I change an ink cartridge, I log it on a spreadsheet that shows me how much I’ve used over time and what I use the most of, and that lets me do a rough calculation on the cost per print.
With this data available, I can predict how much ink I need to have on hand for my projects or for a workshop.
The table below shows my ink usage in ml for my Epson P700 printer after ~450 8x10 prints, mostly using high-quality mode on Luster paper.
I estimated that the starter cartridges that came with the printer had ~15ml of ink after charging the system. New cartridges are 25ml of ink and log accordingly.
You can see that LGY or Light Gray is the most-used ink. I estimate I get about 50 8x10s per LGY cartridge. Don’t ask me for the math on that—it is a moving target, and I keep notes as I go that support this.
GY or gray is the next most-used ink, and I estimate I get about 100 8x10s per cartridge from it.
The Epson P700 taps into these inks the most because it uses them to make up the foundation of an image with a process called under color removal, which you can read about on wikipedia.
Because of under color removal, or UCR, the Epson sips at the remaining inks, and their usage will fluctuate based on your images. If you are printing a lot of images with large blue skies, you’ll use more cyan and magenta inks, etc.
It goes through these inks so slowly that, even after my 450 8x10 prints, I have yet to replace MBK and V. But if you look at the first graphic in this article, you can see it is almost time to replace them. PK, LC, and VM are also low, and have been replaced once for 450 prints.
Putting this information to use, I keep two LGY on hand at all times, one GY, and I buy the others when the warning comes on, unless I am hosting a workshop, event, or have a large project to print.
The Epson P900 uses a similar amount of ink per print, but the cartridges are twice as big, and the cost per ml is much less. So, if you have the room and plan to print a lot, the P900 is the best choice.
If you want me to share more updates like this, let me know in the comments below.