PIXMA MX492 Very Washed out pictures

[leesher]

I have been trying to print up photos of our Grandson for his Baby book and the wall, and they are coming out horrible.  They are so faded and washed out, I can't even use them and I've done the deep cleaning, the check nozzles, the regular cleaning, and it hasn't changed. 

It also looks the same on regular paper as it does on photo paper, that doesnt' change anything.  I've searched and searched to find a way to stop this without finding anything to help with this. 

I'm attaching the photos, the one on the right is on reg paper, the one on the left is on glossy photo paper (yes, all the settings are as they should be, I've checked them several times).

Can anyone help?  I have a Canon MX 492 printer.

Thank you

[leesher]

You just saved my printer, thank you so much Bucktoof, you are a true Christmas Angel.  I hope you have an amazing rest of the holidays, and thank you more than I can say.

[BurnUnit · Accepted solution]

Though it's generally cheaper to have your pics commercially printed, I still enjoy seeing a well made image come out of my own printer at home. It's kind of like having your own color darkroom at home. But like anything associated with photography there is a learning curve.

What you have to keep in mind is that your camera sees colors in one way, your monitor sees them in another way and your printer may try to interpret them in a third way. Since you mentioned using PSP for editing, this link from Corel shows a fairly simple explanation of what's involved.

http://www.corel.com/content/vpk/pspx_pspa6/PSPX_Color_Management.pdf

If you were doing editing for commercial printing you'd want to do the hardware calibration of your monitor and the hardware can be kind of spendy. But for making inkjet prints at home a software monitor profile will usually be sufficient. And you likely already have the software you need to create your monitor profile.

Beyond that you may also have to change some settings in your editing and printer preference menus so they'll know to use the newly generated monitor profile.

[leesher]

Thank you, BurnUnit, I'm reading the link now, I really appreciate your help!!

[BurnUnit]

I think, in general, that the adjustment sliders in the printer drivers should be consider as more of a way of making fine adjustments or tweaking the printer output. If you're having to make major changes to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and color corrections, there's probably a bigger problem in hiding somewhere else. Like not having a good basic monitor profile, or software that's trying to work in the wrong color space, or a printer that's using (or not using) an ICC color profile when it shouldn't (or should).

[mshahawy]

That's great, but unfortunately I don't have those options present on Mac devices. And all my photos are washed out. There is no colour shift, but the colours are dimmed and washed out. I tried the cleaning thing and all, and in the test the colours come on paper alright, but when printing on glossy paper it is really bad. Any fix for that, and is there a way to get density option alongside the other printing options mentioned in the screenshots on mac. I was really searching for days to find a fix for this. Cheers!