Hi kittens8243! Thanks for posting in the Canon Community Forum. I see that your Canon PIXMA TR4520 is not printing properly.
There are three colors in the Color cartridge (Cyan (blue), Magenta (pink), and Yellow). The printer mixes all three colors to make other colors. If one of those colors is out or if the nozzles for it are clogged, then the printer will not be able to print colors properly.
It is possible to use up one of the colors before the others are gone. For example, if you print a lot of pictures of the sky or the ocean, then the Cyan (blue) ink may run out well ahead of the other colors. The color cartridge may still show that it has ink, but it only has two of the inks and not all three.
If you think that the color cartridge may be out of one of the inks, you can purchase a new color cartridge and replace it. Once it is replaced, then the colors will start printing properly. If you think that the cartridge should have plenty of all three colors, then you should print a nozzle check.
The nozzle check will show if the nozzles for any of the inks may be clogged. You’ll find information on how to print a nozzle check along with information on what to do if the colors are not printing properly in the following section of the manual:
https://ij.manual.canon/ij/webmanual/Manual/All/TR4500%20series/EN/UG/ug-131.html
If the nozzle check prints properly, you will see two long blue bars to the right of the letter C, two long pink bars to the right of the letter M, and two long yellow bars to the right of the letter Y. If that pattern is printing properly and your colors are still not printing properly, you may be dealing with a printer driver issue. Please write back if that is the case and let us know which operating system your computer is running (i.e. Windows 10, Windows 11, MacOS 15 Sequoia).
If one of the colors is missing from the nozzle check pattern, you can try up to three deep cleanings, but we recommend that you wait somewhere between 6 and 18 hours between each attempt. It is best to wait because that gives the ink time to soak through the clog and loosen it (like Drano). You don't want to wait longer than a day because you could be giving the ink time to dry up, and you don't want to do the next cleaning within 4 hours because you may not be giving the ink time to soak and loosen the clog.
If you use your computer to perform the Deep Cleans, you may be able to select the Colors Only option. When you do that, you will only clean the nozzles for the color cartridge (not both the black and color). To access the maintenance menu on a Windows computer, you will need to access the Canon IJ Printer Assistant Tool:
https://ij.manual.canon/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/W/TR4500%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_printer_assista...
To get to the maintenance options on a Mac computer, you will need to open the printer’s Remote U/I (user interface):
https://ij.manual.canon/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/M/TR4500%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_openremoteui.ht...
After each cleaning, you should print a nozzle check pattern to see if the cleaning helped. If the pattern prints properly, you will know the nozzles are no longer clogged. If the nozzle clog is not cleared after three deep cleans, it is possible that the nozzles are too dry (hard) to unclog. In that case, you should replace the color cartridge. After you replace it, the colors will start printing properly again.
I hope this information helps. Thanks for choosing Canon.
