Print comes out very grainy (Printer PIXMA ix6820)

[Luna1]

Initially, my printing experience boasted clarity and precision, aided by high printer settings, but now I am printing noisy/grainy printed images.

Things I did: (On new ink) meticulous maintenance procedures such as head alignment, deep/regular cleaning cycles, and cleaning encoder strip with alcohol --> the resultant prints exhibit an unexpectedly grainy texture. Even after fixing images at resolutions of 300 to 600 DPI in Procreate/Adobe with noise reduction settings at maximum level, the issue persists, confounding my customary workflow, which previously yielded high-quality results.

[Luna1]

The print quality used to be excellent at the top, but now it's noticeably worse at the bottom. I doubt it's because of the program settings since I've always printed in high quality.

[PGS]

Exact same issue over here. I bought a PIXMA IX6850 a year ago and it had always printed wonderfully.
However, about a month ago, it started printing very noisy (the first and last few centimeters of the page), and now the noise appears on the entire page.
I have spoken to Canon customer service and they can't tell me what is wrong.

I have also tried everything you mentioned, including changing the brand of ink and the print head.

Were you able to fix it in any way? I'm desperate

[Ron]

Welcome to The Canon Community PGS. 
We appreciate your participation, however, we need to let you know that the Canon Community is hosted and moderated within the United States by Canon USA. We are only able to provide support for Canon products manufactured for and used within the US market.  The PIXMA IX6850 isn't sold or supported by our team here at Canon USA.
If you live outside the United States, please CLICK HERE and select your country or region for your support needs.
You're welcome to discuss Canon products sold outside of the United States, but please be aware that you will not receive support directly from Canon USA.

[JayC1]

Hi! Thanks for posting in the Canon Community Forum. I see that your printed images are coming out grainy and noisy.

You mention that you have already tried cleaning and deep cleaning the print head along with cleaning the encoder film (timing strip). You also say you have tried printing at 300 and 600 DPI. Since that is not helping, I recommend you check the paper settings. For example, it the Media Type is set to Plain Paper, and you are using thicker paper, please try choosing Matte Photo Paper.

If this is happening with all the images that you are printing, I recommend that you reinstall the printer driver on your computer. For a Windows computer, you can install the iX6800 series Printer Driver Ver. 1.03 (sixth option). For a Mac computer, it is called the Canon iX6800 series CUPS Printer Driver Ver. 16.80.0.0 (sixth option). The drivers for your printer are available at the following website:

https://www.usa.canon.com/support/p/pixma-ix6820

If reinstalling the driver doesn’t help and you’ve had the printer less than three years, I recommend that you create a My Canon Account and register your printer. Once you do that, you should be able to call 1-800-652-2666 for technical support. You can create a My Canon Account and register your printer on the following website:

https://myprofile.americas.canon.com/us/signin

Should you prefer to continue getting help through the Canon Community, please provide a photo of your nozzle check pattern. For instructions that will help you print that pattern, please visit the following web article:

https://ij.manual.canon/ij/webmanual/Manual/W/iX6800%20series/EN/BG/bg-maintenance1200.html

It will also help if you provide answers to the following questions:

• What operating system is your computer running? (e.g. Windows 7, Windows 10, macOS Catalina Ver. 10.15)
• What type of paper are you printing on?
• Have you tried reinstalling the printer driver?
• If you print a photo on glossy photo-paper with the Canon Easy-PhotoPrint Editor program, do you get the same grainy results?

The Easy-PhotoPrint Editor program can be downloaded and installed from the following website:

https://www.usa.canon.com/support/p/pixma-ix6820

I hope this information helps. Thanks for choosing Canon.