Canon developed LUCIA pigment inks to meet professional demand for fine-art quality printout that renders natural tones in both color and black-and-white printing for photos, while producing vivid artificial colors — colors extending beyond those found in nature — for industrial design output. In addition to the six standard colors for large-format printers, LUCIA employs 3 primary colors — red, green and blue (RGB) — and two shades of gray, achieving an expanded print-color gamut with clear color expression.

Previously, gray tones were created by combining color inks. By contrast, the use of gray and photo-gray inks in Canon's LUCIA system achieves a rich grayscale and smooth gradation for stunning black-and-white photographs, accurately expressing the grayscale range from highlights to shadows. The innovation makes possible stable high-quality monochrome printing free of lapses in color representation.

Comprehensive Color Expression with CMYRGB Inks