MG3200 poor colour/contrast quality

[Riquez]

Hi,

I have a PIXUS MG3200 & I bought some Canon 5x7 photo paper for printing images.

The paper is Glossy standard kind.

Printing an image from Photoshop I have selected "Glossy Paper" & also "Photo Paper Plus Glossy II"

I made sure that the print quality settings were set to High.

I allowed Printer to select colour matching, but I also tried setting photoshop to manage colours.

The printer is about a month old & this is the first time I have printed on glossy paper.

Regardless of the above settings the print quality is very poor - I mean it is very washed out, low contrast. The actual resolution is fine, but the image is flat & lacking vibrance & the colour is muddy.

I have also printed the image using 'preview' (OS X default image app) & results were the same, again I was careful to select glossy paper & high quality print settings.

I am attaching a pic so you can see what i mean, the image below is close to what i am seeing, but actually the image below looks better than real life (slightly) the real photo has even less contrast.

Can you offer any advice for me to be able to improve results?

[Diannthus]

These two photos demonstrate this problem perfectly... I was trying to copy a developed photo initially, so I thought that was the issue, but even after I scanned it, the image printed out with poor contrast just like yours. I'm really disappointed as my 10 year old Epson DX6000 printed images far superior to this. The MG3200 series is also billed widely as producing 'photo lab quality photos' which this is certainly not. Any help with this annoying inferiority would be hugely appreciated!

[Alison]

My problem is as described above. The printer is only s few months old. It initially printed good quality photos but now they are pale and washed out. What can I do?

[Riquez]

Basically the answer is this is a poor printer. Use it for word documents etc.

General concensus online, after checking various websites, is buy Epson. 

Not what you or I want to hear but like the other person said, I had an cheap Epson around 1998 & it was better than this.

[kate49]

I am getting exactly the same problem with  Pixma MG7150 purchased today.

[Diannthus]

I'm afraid I resolved the issue by returning my printer and exchanging it for an Epson! My advice would be to do that now while you still can!

[Alafur]

I bought a Pro-100S last year and a G6050 this week. Both suffer from dull colours and poor contrast. It is impossible to print what is on the screen. Annoying when You have spent a long time processing the print to achieve an effect. Right now I would settle for a print that looked like the one in the camera.