My point with this article is to get people to use right printer setting if they want great photo prints. If you try using regular 20 lb bond paper using printers general settings you will be very disappointed with results.

Get some good quality glossy paper and try this test. Make a print on regular paper using general settings. Then make one with your printer set to glossy paper using high quality mode and compare. The first will look like a water colored newspaper picture. The second will look like you just got it back from Kodak!

This is not news to a lot of you but a surprising number of people reading this will suddenly go "hhhmmmmm, that explains some things".

Not so with pigmented inks. Pigmented inks are used in most black inkjet cartridges today. Epson has a version of color pigmented inks they call DuraBrite inks. They are very expensive to make and there is quite a hefty premium on bulk inks from any manufacturer that I have contacted.

DO NOT use pigmented inks in any cartridge that was designed to use dye based ink.

Generally speaking, HP and Lexmark inks are interchangeable because their process' are similar. Watch for color variations though.

The newer Canon cartridges, BCI-3e and BCI-6 colors are so close that I cannot tell them apart. Ironically cartridges are physically identical except for BCI-3e black which is slightly larger. The BCI-3e black takes pigmented while BCI-6 takes dye based. Be careful here. Some of new Canon printers take both BCI-3e and BCI-6 black cartridges. A lot of people are scratching their heads over this one. Now you know why. You get best of both worlds. Pigmented for archieval and dye based for photos. Since color inks are dye based and pigmented inks do not mix well with dye based inks.

To wrap it up I'll say that you can use most inks in most printers with exceptions that I already mentioned. Color variations, if they occur, might be compensated for in printer driver settings. Be prepared to fiddle with it. Physical damage to printer is unlikely in any case, unless cartridge is leaking when you put it into your printer. But you wouldn't do that. Would you?