Luminous-Landscape have posted a brief preview of ColorByte's promised solution to running both matte and photo black in Epson's 800 series printers, coined Phatte Black.

On the face of it it sounds appealing - would any 4800 user say no to being able to swap between matte and photo black if and when they needed to without penalty? Epson should have delivered this 'feature' out of the box on the 4800 but didn't - can't say much positive about that.

For someone who hasn't already purchased Imageprint Phatte Black has a Phatte price which will sort out the men from the boys - or perhaps more to the point, the independently affluent from the working class photographers... or at least those that have a genuine frequent need to swap back and forth vs the rest. Imageprint is priced at $895-$1495 (US) which makes for an interesting comparison to the price of a new 4800 printer of around $1700. Photography always seem to suffer from the 'high prices because we can' vs 'because we should/need to' model.

But then, you could also say you only need to change blacks X times and you could have paid for Imageprint, or change blacks a few more times and have paid for a second 4800 and arguably reap the full benefits of running the full set of inks vs removing LLK ala Phatte.

Michael makes an interesting comment regarding Imageprint in a related thread:

"If you're just looking for great image quality then Imageprint may not be worth the money."

So questions remain for me:

- Epson's position regarding warranty when Phatte Black solution is used
- Possible negative consequences in print quality due to the removal of LLK on some papers, a step backwards or maybe it doesn't matter?
- Price and availability of modified of matte black carts

Would I like to be able to swap back and forth? Absolutely. Am I willing to pay $895-$1495US to do so? Not at this point in time. Print quality is great as is, my workflow is good enough, and I don't have a desparate need to swap blacks back and forth. Even if I did - if I'd waited this long for a solution to appear I'd be waiting a while longer to see how it all shakes down in practice.

For all you will have spent, do you end up with something significantly better than an Epson 4000/Imageprint combo and in no way inferior to the results of the 4800, both out of the box and using Imageprint (with the full K3 inkset)?