The OEM print drivers are designed to produce pleasing color on OEM medias using OEM inks. And while most drivers can accomplish this to some degree, they also severely limit the capabilities of the wide format printer purchased and the different medias available to print on. By selling printers with these “dumbed” down RIPs, large format printer manufactures ensure that users who rely solely on the OEM print drivers are locked into their inks and their media, regardless of quality and price.
While it is true that you can use third party inks and medias and still use the OEM print driver, it is rare that the profiles designed for OEM inks and medias will be optimal for a third party ink and/or media. Even in the unlikely event that they are there is still the inconsistent variable of the environment that the OEM drivers are incapable of making adjustments for. As one can imagine, in different environmental conditions ink will dry at different rates and will require less or more ink (depending on conditions) to achieve the same color.
Take care not to misunderstand the message here, the OEM drivers do a good job at what they were designed to do. They produce “good” output as long as OEM products are used and the user is not concerned with having accurate and/or consistent color.
For some users accuracy and consistency are not of concern but for many professional businesses who need to produce the same product for customers on different occasions repeatedly, the only way to achieve consistency is with customizable color profiles. This is something that OEM print drivers do not facilitate and is one of the primary reasons that we recommended that our customer utilize third party RIP software.
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