First a little printing lesson.
Whiteness is measured by the reflectivity of normal outdoor daylight (what you see). The CIE scale goes up to 100 (but can be extended past this with fluoresces being added).
Brightness is measured by the reflectivity of blue light on a scale of zero to 100, higher being better
Shade is a colour measurement – true or neutral white has no shade but then there are ’50 shades of everything’ like cream-white, blue-white, high-white etc. A complex CIE LAB scale is used.
Most laser printed material is on 80 gsm (grams per square metre), 80+ whiteness, ‘copy paper’ – higher whiteness is the best thing to look for if you want brighter images (but be aware light colours can wash out on high-white paper).
Back to clever OKI
Why would you need to print white? Simple – you are using a coloured paper or you want to ensure that your printed image looks the same on all types of paper.
OKI's first offering is a C711WT - an A4, LED light (instead of laser) printer that uses cyan, magenta, yellow and white toners (black is ‘made’ by mixing the other toners – called composite or tri-colour).
At around $3,000 this 34ppm, 1200x600 dpi, Ethernet/USB interface printer is not intended as a typical office printer – more for the art department or short run specialist print like T-Shirt iron-on transfers, transparent labels, bespoke stationery (up to 250gsm) etc.
Print costs
It is not for normal office printing – the consumables costs are over 20 cents per print – more if you really use white printing to its best advantage.
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How to use white
Without getting technical your page mark-up software needs to support the use of CMYW (white) instead of just CYM/K. While the printer driver will certainly manage this quite well in standard Office software and paint programs top of the line PostScript 3 enabled programs like Adobe Creative Suite will allow you to do so much more – for example to lay down a white print under the CMY colour print - but you will need a drivers licence to run this software. You may also need more ram (comes with 256MB but 768MB – a $200 option is best for artistic uses).
Who buys this?
Graphic designers are the target - if you have an art department this reasonably priced printer is a no-brainer and will pay for itself in savings on expensive prototyping and proofing or just being able to use a range of coloured stock and have white print.
Whats afer white printing?
The next logical step is to add more print "heads" to lasers to allow for clear (called celo or varnished print) or specialist toners to be used. OKI is working on clear print and will release one soon.
