Controlling output on an Pixma Pro-1

[mickey]

I'm trying to print photo positives on film with a Pixma Pro-1 and was wondering what combination of colors would create a very dense black, or if there were someway to control the dot size of the output, or if I can print with just black.

[Karl1]

Hi mickey,

The Pro-1 is going to use a combination of colors to get the shade of black needed, what combination of colors is impossible to say, because it bases that decision on the fly based on the ICC profile being used, the Operating Sysetm Color Profile being used (in the case of Mac, since Colorsync can't be turned off in the Mac Operating System), and whether or not the printer's color managment has or has not been disabled.  Your best chance to exert control over how the picture is going to look on the transparancy paper you are using would be to check with the manufacturer of the transparency paper and see if they've written an ICC profile for the Pro-1 and if they have, download and use it with Photoshop or your Photo Editing program of choice, just as long as it supports the use of ICC profiles. 

If you are using Photoshop or Lightroom, you can take control one step further by using the Easy Photo Print plugin we've developed for Photoshop and Lightroom.  To bring up the plugin once it's been installed go to Tools, then Automate and the plugin should be listed in the Automate submenu.  Click Color Adjustment, then choose Pattern Print.  Chose the size of the pattern and the direction of the pattern you want, load a sheet of your transparency paper, and click Print.  It will print your picture in thumnail form changing the values of color, brightness and contrast slightly each time and printing the values it used under the thumnail.  Once you see the thumnail that represents the output you are looking for, you just plug the values into Easy Photo Print and it will give you the desired output.

[mickey]

We are currently using our Pixma Pro-1 for advertising proofs.  We would also like to explore using it for in an unusual way. Because of the Pixma Pro-1's very high resolution and ink density we want to explore using this printer for creating circuit artwork printed on transparency paper.  We would then use the transparency to manufacture custom circuit boards.

We are testing this out to see if it will give us the results we want and we have had some promising results.  We are using Illustrator to create the circuit art using very precise dimensions.  We are looking to test whether we can set the printer to print with only one ink, either photo black or matte black.  Is there a setting in Illustrator or in Canon's print driver that would allow us to do that?

[Karl1]

Hi mickey,

Unfortunately there aren't any settings in the driver to tell the printer to only use one ink tank for printing.  As far as setins in Illustrator, you'd have to ask the experts on that program, which would be Adobe.