Q: How can I change from Matt Black to Photo Black on a 7600/9600 without wasting money and ink? A: Known as the "South African Ink Change Method". How to change the photo/matte ink in the Epson 7600 and 9600 printers without using the costly Epson draining procedure: 1 – Make sure your printer is not switched on 2 - Open the ink cartridge lever in the ink cartridge bay 3 - Replace the photo black cartridge with the matte black cartridge (or vice versa) 4 - Leave the ink lever open ! 5 –Using the printer control panel go into Maintenance Mode 2 by by switching power ON while pushing the 'Paper source', 'Cut/Eject', and 'Paper Feed down' buttons. 6 - Press the 'Paper Feed down' button until you see "SERVICE CONFIG" on the display - press the 'arrow right' button. It then shows 'XXD' in the lower part of the display. 7 - Press the 'Paper Feed down' button until you see "NPD" - press 'arrow right' button. A value of '1' appears in the display. 8 - There are 3 possible value settings for NPD: 0 - no ink check 1 - pigmented ink (there should be s star "*" at this setting) 2 - dye inks 9 - Change NPD setting to '0' (no ink check) and press "Enter" - a star should now show next to the '0' value 10 -Switch printer off 11 - Switch printer on 12 - Close the ink lever in the ink cartridge bay 13 - Printer and driver shows the matte black ink is installed (or photo black ink) You can use the same procedure to switch from matte black to photo black or from photo black to matte black. What happens is that once you change the ink in that way the printer re-sets the 'NPD' value back to '1' the next time you switch on the printer in the normal way (non maintenance mode). At that point the previous black ink, either matte or photo black, has not been flushed our of the printer. Here is what you need to do to flush the remaining ink: A- With the 7600: The 7600 uses approximately 10 to12 ml of ink before the previous black ink is flushed out. 1 - Create a 23"x 40" image in Photoshop and fill it with pure black (RGB 0,0,0). 2 - I use inexpensive matte paper and print that image at 720dpi. 3 - When you look at the finished print you will see that 2/3 of the print is photo ink as it looks a little bit dull and the rest of the print shows the nice dark matte ink. 4 - When this image is done printing the ink line is charged with matte black (or photo black). B – With the 9600: The 9600 uses approximately 20-22ml of ink before the previous black ink is flushed out. Use the exact same procedure as described above but create a larger image: 43"x40". This larger image is needed to flush the longer ink lines of the 9600: 1 - Create a 43"x40" image in Photoshop and fill it with pure black (RGB 0,0,0). 2 - I use inexpensive matte paper and print that image at 720dpi. 3 - When you look at the finished print you will see that 2/3 of the print is photo ink as it looks a little bit dull and the rest of the print shows the nice dark matte ink. 4 - When this image is done printing the ink line is charged with matte black (or photo black).