Canon Community

kmyers · ‎10-30-2014

Hi All,

I just purchased my Pro-100 and installed last night. I upgraded from an HP that was strictly CMYK (only 4 ink). I installed according to the instructions, but my prints seem to be coming out noticably darker than they should be. The lime greens are printing a darker kelly green. The bright blues are printing a darker royal blue. The bright reds are printing a very dark red. The pinks are printing a dark shade of pink. Skin tones are much, much darker than they should be.

I am printing from Adobe programs (Illustrator, Photoshop, and Pro - all CS6). Am I missing a setting somewhere? On my previous printer, I would choose "preserve CMYK primaries" and it printed perfectly. Now, I can't seem to get my prints a normal shade. I'm not attempting to "match my monitor", just simply trying to get the colors closer to their true color. I've unchecked preserve CMYK primaries and checked to have the printer decide the colors, but neither of those options seem to be helping.

I called Canon support, but they were unable to help me. He had me put my settings all back to default and test print. When that didn't work he stated "well printers vary per brand so theres really nothing we can do to fix it". I can't imagine that this great of a printer prints that far off on colors.

Any help is very greatly appreciated!

ebiggs1 · ‎11-04-2014

"... theres really nothing we can do to fix it"."

Well, of course this isn't true. I have three of these printers in this line. The 9000, 9500 II amd the Pro-100.

They all printed differently but after a little tinkering with the settings, they all did very well. They are great printers.

First off you must not let the printer set anything. Turn off every bit off control it has. You can do this with the Canon My Printer under the Printer Settings tab. Do you know how? I will guess, yes, for now but if you don't get back to me.

Second, you need to have PS handle all settings and color matching. You know how to do this?

And lastly, it is essential you get some settings on your monitor that somewhat matches what the printer is printing. Your printer may be doing exactly what you are telling it to do and you have no idea it is. Because your monitor is off. If you don't do this step, you can forget the other steps. However, there are only a few things that you need to be concerned with. You don't need any fancy extra add-ons to do this.

But you must get the grey-scale very close. You need to get the brightness very close and you need the contrast very close.

After you do these things you can make adjustments to your prints by just looking at your screen. Because you know the monitor and printer are on the same level. One more point, you can NOT get a printer to print every color exactly the way you saw it. It isn't possibile as all colors and adjustment effect all others. My goal is to get the skin tones right. That is what people notice.

For instance, I know my newest Pro-100 tends to print darker than what I see on the monitor. So, I automatically know to set it's prints one stop brighter in PS. It also prints with a slightly warn tone. Most of the time, with protraits especially, this if OK but sometimes it is not. In that case I adjust the "temp" setting slightly cooler in PS.

Make sure you have the correct ICC profiles and you are using Canon brand ink and paper untill you get good with the printer. Very, very important!

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

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