Photo Review of Canon's PGI-280 CLI-281 Cartridges with Blue Ink

Today, we're going to do a color printing test on the Canon TS8220. Canon has this new series printer using PGI-280/CLI-281 cartridges. TS8220 is before the TS8320. Right now, you can see that basically, both printers are the same. I'm assuming if I review this one, it would be the same as TS8320.

In the last video, I compared the Canon TS6320, which uses the same cartridge except for a blue cartridge. It doesn't have the blue cartridge. I use the gamut analysis of LAB space. If you're not familiar with LAB space, vertically, this is the lightness. It's from really, really white to dark. Then the A axis is from green to red, and the B axis is from blue to yellow. These are all the colors that this Canon printer can produce. When we compare it to a real photo printer, and the wireframe is an authentic photo printer. You can see the wireframe. This is a much, much wider gamut than the Canon. The Canon is not by itself, and it's not the ideal color printer. Let's see if we can improve that with a blue cartridge.

This is the magic cartridge going to save the day. Let's see what a narrow gamut do in real life. On the left is the TS6330 that doesn't have the blue cartridge, and on the right, we have an actual photo printer. You're going to see the left one look like a TV anchor, look like she has some makeup, and her skin is fake. On the right, it's more real, and it's more three-dimensional. Just pay attention to her cheekbone. You can see how three-dimensional it is versus this one. It's like totally plastic surgery. In the real photo printer, those patches, they're evenly distributed. You don't see a big block of patches anywhere. We already know the blue will be wrong, and you can see the patch and a couple of colors just lumped together, and the lightness is not enough either. The gray is you have to mix up the other colors. Do you see it right here? Pay attention to region 102 to 216. You can see the Canon is from white to gray to dark, and the real printer has more transitions.

Okay, let's see if we add the blue cartridge and that that will fix the problem. Overall, she'd look a little bit more real now. Let's see if the blue cartridge set that ugly patch right here. You can see the patch is a lot more even, so that's a significant improvement. Notice the red to yellow's progress, and yellow is a lot more even than before. That's unexpected. When you compare it to the real photo printer, the sixth cartridge, that blue cartridge, really did some trick. It looked almost like an actual photo printer now. I'm happy.

Talk's cheap. Let's make a real ICC and put it on the LAB. This is our old five cartridge system. Let's put the six cartridge system down we test today. You're going to see just like what we've seen in the picture. The red and the yellow, that region improved a lot. That's surprising. What one small cartridge can do, and it beefs up a lot on the blue side. This is the improvement you got from investing in one more cartridge. Now let's put down the real photo printer. Now the actual printer is wireframe again. You can see, even with one extra blue cartridge, the Canon still has a problem with the blue. Let's do a cross-section so you can see. In a cross-section, you can see the outside layer as the real photo printer, and this one is the blue cartridge added, and the inside is the old five cartridge system. The Canon is halfway between the two, between the best and the worst. You can see that separation will be pretty consistent across all the lightness, and when the light changed your six cartridges, five cartridges, they are converged at some point. Then it doesn't make a difference if you add an extra cartridge or not. However, for the real photo printer, it's always better than this.

My conclusion is I'm going to suggest this six cartridge system to amateur or somebody just started with a limited budget. Yes, you can use this printer and print some photos, even maybe do a little bit of commercial and selling those photos, but you have to have a real photo printer in the long run.