Canon PIXMA Pro 9000 
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How to get the best results from your printer. Please send corrections and suggestions to david@canonpro9000.com
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The Canon PIXMA Pro 9000 printer is capable of producing stunning prints with glorious detail and vivid colors. Prints that you are happy to display on walls or share with family and friends; prints that affirm your move from photo labs and show your photographic skills in their best light. However, it, like any printer, is also capable of producing disappointing results: prints that are too dark, have a red tint, are over saturated…or generally do not match the on-screen image you are trying to print. Prints that make you wonder why you just spent all the money when the local photo-lab gave better results. If you are new to printing on the Pro9000, or are not happy with the results, read on to find the results of much trial and error, lots of reading and my general experiences with this printer. Initial SetupThe Canon supplied manual does a good job of describing the initial printer setup. Follow its instruction and all should be well. The printer makes some disconcerting whirring and clunking noises when doing the initial setup and periodically afterwards during normal printing. Unless excessively loud or persistent, or accompanied by other issues (paper jams), they are not something to be concerned about. If you have an existing stock of photo paper, or were tempted by a cheap (but “High Quality”) ream of paper, I’d suggest holding off on using them until you have some good prints under your belt. The results may turn out ok, or they, like my own first attempts, could be disappointing. Reducing the number of variables in getting a high quality print is the best way to start, and paper choice is one of the key ones. I’d recommend starting with any of the Canon papers. Canon’s Photo Paper Pro is my favorite, but a cheaper option but still very good would be the Canon Glossy paper. Yes, excellent results can be had from 3rd party papers, but a little more setup is required and getting great prints out of the chute is the best way to start. The same comment applies to the inks. Stay with genuine Canon ChromaLife100 dye-based inks, at least until you have seen what the printer can do. There are 3rd party refills available, and while saving money is never a bad thing, I have not found anything I’ve been entirely happy with (I’m still looking). It’s a good idea to have a full set of replacement inks on hand, and the Canon 8-pack is typically the best deal. That way you have ink cartridges on hand for experimenting and then printing all of your favorite shots at 13x19 (or was that just me?) However, the multi-pack is not a good deal in general because you will use up the inks at vastly different rates. The photo-colors PM (Photo-Magenta) and PC (Photo-Cyan) will likely get used first, followed by C (Cyan) , M (Magenta), and Y (Yellow) at about equal rates, then BK (Black), with R (Red) and G (Green) lagging behind. Of course, this will depend on what you’re printing but the above has held true across a large number of different photographs. I see about a 5-1 ratio of PM/PC to R/G usage. See http://www.canonpro9000.com/Pro9000Store.html for the latest deals on buying inks. One final note on setup: a USB cable is not supplied. Buy one with the printer or be prepared to ‘borrow’ one off your old printer/scanner/memory card reader, etc. It is annoying, but then so is my closet full of old computer cables.
Getting Ready to PrintA number of factors affect the print quality: · The image being printed · Paper choice · Paper size (notably as concerns aspect ratios) · Inks · The software (Photoshop, Qimage, PaintShopPro, etc) that is being used to print the photo. · Printer Configuration · Printer malfunction (unlikely, but it happens) · Your monitor (well, not directly, but if you adjust an image to look good on your monitor it doesn’t mean it will look good in print). These are not in priority order: all contribute to a larger or smaller degree for any print. There are, of course, other factors (excess humidity, poor light quality when viewing giving a distorted impression of the print quality, leaving the image in the sun for a couple of years, smudging still-wet prints, knocking a cup of coffee over them….), but assuming none of those are factors, the above list will most likely affect the overall “goodness” of the print. Just one note on leaving prints to dry. This varies with the paper and chosen quality setting, but I tend to leave the prints uncovered for at least an hour and more typically a day before making too many value judgments or displaying them under glass or in an album. The colors will settle over time. If you know about all of the above already, but just want the printer settings feel free to jump to “Printer Configuration”. Before we get to printing, a slight diversion into color management… Color ManagementYour camera, monitor and printer all have different capabilities when it comes to colors. View the same image on one monitor and then on someone else’s and there’s a good chance it will be different. Perhaps the reds will be slightly brighter or shadow areas darker; and not uncommonly quite drastically different especially when comparing against different monitor qualities, or LCD to CRT. Now throw in that your printer uses different technology to render color (i.e. physical ink as opposed to electrons), that different paper types have different characteristics affecting how a print looks (how glossy it is, weight, ink absorption, etc) and that your camera is another device with yet another set of color characteristics. With all of the combinations and technologies at play it is not surprising that the colors you saw when taking the original photograph hardly ever come through unscathed from the camera to your monitor to your printer. If all of this sounds horribly complicated, well, it is, and whole volumes have been written on color management. Maybe one day there will be a universal color space that describes all possible colors that all devices fully support assuring complete transparency of this issue from camera to printed image. But until that happens (even if possible), the good news is that there’s ample technology in place to let us work with these different technologies and achieve outstanding print results. There are color spaces and color profiles. Both will be explained in more detail below, but for now it is sufficient to know that they describe the range of colors supported by a device (camera image, monitor display, printer paper, etc), how they are represented and, importantly, how to map from one format to another. Using an analogy of spoken language, a ‘color space’ could be the English language with a ‘color profile’ consisting of the 26 character alphabet and syntactic and semantic definition of the language. If we also have a similar definition of the French language we can construct an English-to-French dictionary. With that, any document originating in English can be passed through the filter and understood by someone in France. In much the same way, an image tagged with color space aRGB (Adobe RGB, see below) can be mapped to an equivalent rendering for a monitor display and then to printed output. The print looks the same as the original image even though the ‘languages’ are quite different. Of course, much like there are words and concepts in English that have no French counterpart (and the translation does the best it can with them). The same is true of color; some devices can support a wider range – called a gamut – of colors than others. The conversion process does the best it can, attempting to preserve the same colors as in the original as closely as it can. Normally the loss (called ‘color space clipping’) is minimal, but it can make some colors not quite so vibrant as in the original or introduce color banding where the range of a particular color options isn’t sufficient to show a smooth transition from (for example) dark blue to light blue. The easiest way to see this effect is to lower your operating system’s display color quality down to medium (16 bit) or even low (8 bit). With only 256 different colors it is hard to show any smooth transitions in color. Suffice to say, using the highest color quality your system supports is a good thing (on Windows, right click on the Desktop, select “Properties” and then “Settings” to see the color quality). We’ll return to color management as it is often the number one reason that a functioning printer doesn’t produce the results you want or expect, typically because a color profile setting has been made incorrectly along the way or a double translation is taking place. If I tag this English text as German and then try to convert to French, it isn’t going to work very well. Or more subtly, if it is tagged as UK-English when it is American-English then it will largely translate ok, but may have issues with ‘color’ or ‘realize’ . Double conversions are also not unusual: where you, unawares, ask the printer to map the colors and ask your software application (Photoshop, etc) to do the same. That would be like converting English to French and then trying to further map the French (that you still think of as English) to French again. For now, it is enough to know that there are two main places where color mapping can take place between the image you see on screen and what ends up on the printed photograph: in the printer driver or in an ICC-enabled application (PhotoShop, QImage, Lightroom, etc). While my preference is to let the application perform the color management, it is easier to start with letting the printer driver do it. To read more about color management, see Canon’s “Digital Color Management Guidebook” at http://www.usa.canon.com/uploadedimages/FCK/Image/Tips_Techs/Digital%20Color%20Management%20Guidebook/5527_Color%20Management%20Guide_070625_FINAL.pdf . For more about the technical details of sRGB, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB_color_space and aRGB, see http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/AdobeRGB1998.pdf. The Image Being PrintedThe best printer in the world isn’t going to make a bad image look great on paper. Sorry. It also isn’t going to do anything for the shot that looked great in the camera’s two inch screen but wasn’t so hot when shown on a monitor screen. I’d always recommend getting to a point where you are happy with the image on-screen before trying to print. It seems that many people skip that step and go straight to print. Of course, that brings up issues on the quality of the monitor (see below), but as a rule of thumb it is best to have a good idea of what you would like to see printed before you start the process, otherwise you won’t know when you get it. Aside from “goodness” issues such as the composition, there are a number of image quality factors to be aware of: The Image Color profileIf an image isn’t tagged with a color profile, there’s a good chance that the printed colors won’t match what you expect. Extending the language metaphor introduced in the Color Management section, it would be like receiving some text and asked to translate it, without being told it is French. Without the French dictionary, you may come close to a translation, but it won’t be perfect. There are various choices for the color profile to use and many more opinions on which is the best to use. The two main candidates are sRGB and aRGB (Adobe RGB). I use sRGB if the image is destined for on-line viewing and aRGB for print. My camera is set to record in the aGRB color space because I mainly care about printed pictures. It has a wider gamut (range of colors that can be represented) than sRGB, allowing more accurate reproduction of the captured colors. Your camera should be able to toggle between the two formats, but if not, it is more important that any color profile is used than forcing it to be aRGB – in real world situations, the difference is not huge. A web search of “sRGB vs aRGB” will lead you to much more reading on the subject, with many opinions on the best way to go. Again, for now, it is not so much the issue as to what you use, but that you are aware of what color profiles do, that different devices (camera, monitor, printer) have different color capabilities, and there is translation going on to map between color spaces. How can you tell what color space an image is tagged with? Image editing or printing applications that understand color profiles (are ICC enabled) will let you query and/or change the color space. For example, in PhotoShop Elements 5.0, The Image menu allows you to switch between sRGB and aRGB which, by inference, tells you what the current encoding is:
QImage, my favored printing application, lets you ctrl-I on a thumbnail to display information about the image including the color (ICC) profile:
How big can you print?As noted above, the Canon printer is capable of stunning results, but some reality has to set in before we go too far. Printing a 13x19 photo from a camera-phone image probably isn’t going to look to great. Nor will a shot that looks a little blurry on screen suddenly take on a new crispness just because you pass it to an expensive printer. Of course, you can bend the rules with software (see section below), and some images do better with less detail than others (landscapes or those intentionally fuzzy or grainy for artistic effect), but the generally you need the following image dimensions for printing at the given sizes:
1To read this table, start at the row matching your camera’s megapixel value and use the print size columns to see what the maximum print size is for a particular ppi (see below). For example, the maximum standard size print you can reasonably get from a 1.3 megapixel camera is 6x4” at 200ppi. 2These are sample resolutions for cameras with the given megapixels. Your camera may differ slightly. You may also have a higher megapixel camera, but have cropped the image down for a better composition to a small resolution. Or perhaps are using the camera on a lower resolution than its maximum (which isn’t to be recommended unless you are desperately short on memory card space: always capture the best quality). 3 ppi is Pixels Per Inch, or how many screen pixels fit into one inch of the image. Good quality prints often start around 200ppi: that is where you have 200 pixels worth of detail for every inch of print. At this number, pixels are small enough that they are indistinguishable from one another and allow sufficiently fine grain transition between colors. As an extreme example, if you only have 10ppi, a region of blue sky that gets lighter as you move down an image only has 10 points in which to move between shades of blue (per inch). Clearly it will look much less smooth than if you have 200 points to do the same. 200ppi is your lower end of acceptable quality, but many people consider 300ppi the minimum for great prints. Others are willing to skirt with 150ppi, but tread carefully as you will start seeing a loss of detail at that level. Note that ppi and dpi are often incorrectly used interchangeably. The ‘d’ stands for dots and is used when referring to print resolution. Typically a printers dpi number is higher than the ppi value for your image because the printer is using multiple dots to make up each individual pixels in your image, thus allowing finer grain detail over the colors and therefore a smoother image. The Canon Pro 9000, for example, has a 2400 x 1200 dpi. There are software techniques you can use to ‘cheat’ the above, through a process called interpolation. That is where software analyzes a picture and apparently provides detail where there was none before. Of course, you cannot magic something out of nothing (well, for the purposes of this discussion) so really you are seeing a clever form of guess work to fill in missing detail. For example, if you a have to numbers 1 and 10 next to each other but want to stretch this out to display 4 digits, software may reasonably give you 1, 3, 7, and 10. Which may well look fine, but in reality the missing numbers were 4 and 9. The cleverness of the algorithm and how much you push it will determine how well it works. http://www.americaswonderlands.com/digital_photo_interpolation.htm has a review of products. I prefer to let the printing software (QImage) handle all image resizing as it appears to do a great job, and is automatic. Note that the above table implies that more megapixels create a better image. While there is some truth to that, many other factors out-weigh the raw numbers: quality of the lenses, sensor size, camera processing algorithms, etc. Bottom line: use the above table as a guideline to see the approximate limit for how large to print, but if you want to push the envelope it will only cost you a sheet of paper, some ink and a few minutes to test it for yourself. Image SharpnessThere is much written about image sharpness, and a quick search reveals many great papers such as: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm, http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/unsharp-mask.htm and http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/sharpness.shtml Personally, I sharpen an image such that it looks good on-screen at 100% magnification as the last step in my workflow (that is, after any color correction, etc.), but do not do any print-specific sharpening. I leave that up to Qimage which does a great job of sharpening an image to match the print size. Aspect RatioMost point and shoot cameras have a 4:3 aspect ratio. That is, the ratio of width to height is 4:3 because that was the typical computer and TV aspect ratio when such things were first thought up. It is not a measure of the physical dimensions of the image (ie not 4 inches by 3 inches), but of the height divided into the width, or vice-versa. Unfortunately, it is unusual to print a photo with a 4:3 aspect ratio, as 6x4, 7x5, 10x8, etc . are much more common. Even if you using a Digital SLR which typically creates 6x4 aspect ratio images, you still have a problem when printing 5x7, etc. So what do so? There are three basic choices: 1. Don’t worry about it and take whatever comes out of the printer. Not to be recommended as you are giving too much leeway to a machine that can’t make value judgments about what looks good. 2. Stretch the image to change the aspect ratio. Also not, normally, to be recommended, especially when people are involved (unless, like in the house of mirrors, you’d like to make yourself look thinner, or equally, to add a few pounds to Uncle Bob). See example below. 3. Crop the image. That is, remove some unneeded parts such that the resulting aspect ratio matches the print size you want. This is my typical path and is easy to do in most image editing applications. Aside: while it is good practice to fill the frame with subject matter when taking photos, if you are going to print pictures in aspect ratios different to what your camera creates it is always best to leave a little buffer around the sides of the frame for such cropping. The following image has a 4x3 aspect ratio. The red lines show a possible cropping to achieve a 6x4 aspect ratio. Note that a fairly significant portion is lost and that if we’d let the machine (or your typical photo lab) do this, you could easily have ended up with the cats head way to one side of the frame.
A 4x3 aspect ratio photo cropped to be 6x4.
Cropping the same shot as 8x10 shows that you will lose a horizontal slice rather than vertical ones.
A 4x3 aspect ratio photo cropped to be 10x8.
If you take the 4:3 and scale it disproportionally to get 6:4, you end up a taller, skinnier cat. Which may be fine if you had not see the original, but generally not to be advised.
As noted above, most image editing applications have a crop function. In Photoshop Elements 5.0, it looks like:
Select the crop toolbar item It is best to leave the original image as-is rather than replace it with the 6x4 version (or whatever you first print) as if you return later to create a 5x7, 8x10, etc. it is best to have as much image as you can to provide more flexibility with cropping to different aspect ratios.
Use of a reference ImageAchieving a good print has many moving parts so removing one variable from the equation is always a good idea when setting up your printer workflow. Using a reference image, one that is correctly tagged with a color space and is of known (high quality) is a great idea for removing a couple of the variables. That is, you’ll have a high quality image and your results won’t be biases by an uncalibrated monitor. For example, if your prints keep coming out too dark, you don’t know if the fault lies with the image itself (perhaps it is too dark), or if your monitor is set too brightly (making a dark image look brighter than it really is), or the printer configuration. By using a reference image, you can compare the print to what you see on screen and usually a description of what the image should look like. If the printer version looks right, but the on-screen version is too bright, or the colors are off, then you need to look at calibrating the monitor. If the screen version looks ok, but the print is too dark, it is something on the print side of things. It is better to ‘waste’ a few sheets of paper printing a reference image, than go through (probably) many more sheets in a trial and error attempt at getting everything just right. Also note that at this stage you are looking for correct colors, so you don’t need to print full 8x10’s (or 13x19’s!) of an image. Print smaller images to save paper. Once you have a great print of the reference image, you are assured that your printer is capable of functioning correctly and you can switch back to printing your own photos. And note that paper choice is another of the variables – you have to print your reference images on the same paper as you intend to use (although use the smaller versions rather than using the expensive 13x19 inch sheets)-- so it so best to switch back to your reference image whenever you start using a paper you haven’t used before. You may be tempted to use one of your own images as a reference on the grounds that it printed great on an old printer. If you are familiar with calibrating monitors and understand color management, that is a fine idea, but if this is your first venture into such matters, using an existing image just because it printed ok before probably isn’t the best idea. For example, your old printer may have been printing too bright, for which you compensated, consciously or not, when editing the photos for printing. Now that you are dealing with a new printer, print driver, and generally better color managed workflow, you may print that old image which was slightly too dark to compensate for your old printer. If it now prints too dark, even though it is actually an exact match for the image, you will be disappointed because it is not as bright as your old printer. Use of an independent reference image will remove that complication. A good place to pick up a reference image is at http://www.gballard.net/psd/srgbforwww.html with the image download area near the bottom:DOWNLOAD PDI Target(AdobeRGB)ONLY.zip (5MB) for PC.
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then the desired aspect ratio 
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finally drag an area around the section of photo you want to keep. The lighter
area will always be at the chosen aspect ratio. Hit the check mark to confirm
and you will have an image with the right aspect ratio to print.|
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My favorite of Canon’s photo paper is the “Photo Paper Pro”. I use it for all wall mounted shots, when I want the best quality this printer can give me. Especially when you are using the large 13x19” sheets to create larger prints: the results are outstanding. It is more expensive than the other Canon papers, but well worth it.
For regular prints, I’ll typically use Photo Paper Plus Glossy. It also gives great results, and is similar to what you might expect to get from a typical photo printing lab.
When printing for photo albums, I’ll often use the Canon Semi-gloss paper as it works well displayed under page protectors used in albums. As an alternative, I’m switching to the Matte paper more frequently. For those used to glossy, or even semi-gloss (which photo-labs have been known to call Matte), the switch to matte pictures may be a hard one. Canon’s matte paper doesn’t feel too special, with a weight not much above regular laser-paper (it seems). However, I’d suggest giving it a try -- ensure you print onto the lighter of the two sides rather than the slightly yellower back-side which is otherwise unmarked, and that you select the Matte paper when printing (see below). Why give up the nice glossy look? Lack of fingerprints for one thing – matter paper is much less likely to show smudges. Likewise, glare will be less due to the lack of shine. And thirdly, you’ll be in the company of many professional photographs who display on matte in galleries who appreciate the level of quality it affords.
While I’d recommend staying with Canon papers to start with, at least until you get the color management aspects of printing down, there are certainly any excellent 3rd party papers available. For a selection, please see http://www.canonpro9000.com.
Inks
The Canon PIXMA Pro9000 uses ChromaLife100 dye-based inks. Eight of them:
· Photo-Magenta (CLI-8PM)
· Photo-Cyan (CLI-8PC)
· Magenta (CLI-8M)
· Cyan (CLI-8C)
· Yellow (CLI-8Y)
· Photo-Black (CLI-8Bk)
· Red (CLI-8R)
· Green (CLI-8G)
The above order shows the approximate replacement order when printing a range of photographic images. Of course, if you mainly print red English post-boxes, your mileage may vary. The difference in ink usage is initially surprising, with the Photo- colors used many times faster than red and Green. As such, while it is good to have a spare tank for each of the colors, there’s little need to stock-pile the bottom colors; keep an extra PM/PC instead.
When to replace inks? I have leant to trust the Canon warning messages. When it says that a particular ink tank is running low, it is not time to panic yet, you still have a few 8x10’s worth left (again, depending on the color range in your images, if a solid magenta shot, you will use the PM/M tanks up faster). When it says the tank is empty, that is the time to replace it. I haven’t lost any prints from following this rule – unlike previous printers where I couldn’t rely on the “empty” indication as that was typically just too late to be useful and I often lost the last print due to color issues. Then I’d have to second guess when to replace the inks somewhere between the running-low and empty pop-ups. Not with the Canon: wait until the “ink tank is empty”, replace it immediately, and you should be good.
Using 3rd Party Inks
With a retail price of $14.25 for each CLI-PC, etc., you will soon discover that it is not cheap to keep replacing ink cartridges. You may be tempted to use 3rd party replacements or even fill up your existing cartridges yourself or at a retail location. While buying ink in bulk and doing it yourself is definitely the cheapest path, I’d suggest caution, at least initially. Ink is definitely a key variable in achieving great prints, and if you are using non-Canon supplies it is like introducing a slightly different dialect to the language translation issue (ie color space mapping). It may be spot on the same, but if your prints are slightly off, you won’t know if it is your image, your processing of the image, color space mapping issues, or the ink creating the problem.
With previous printers, I’ve also re-used cartridges one too many times and something wears out with them degrading print quality, forcing a purchase of a new cartridge. Which may still keep me ahead financially, but it introduces a level of frustration and stress into the printing process that just isn’t worth a few dollars.
If buying new cartridges each time, the difference between Canon and 3rd parties isn’t that significant. For example, Amazon has CLI-PC for $12.17 vs 3rd party prices around $9.99 (although they can be discounted further). There are also deals to be had to bring the cost per cartridge down further. For a review of the latest pricing, bundle deals and 3rd party options, please see http://www.canonpro9000.com.
The Printing Application (Photoshop, Qimage, Paint Shop Pro, etc)
Which application to use for printing falls largely to personal choice. That is, assuming you are using a big-name application; notably one that is ICC enabled, in that it understands color management then the choice is what you are most familiar with. Advocates will claim better results and/or an easy interface in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro X2, Qimage, Lightroom, Easy-PhotoPrint Pro (supplied with the printer), etc. Some people just use Windows (or Mac) built in print capabilities.
Bottom line is that so long as the application is ICC-enabled, ie understand color spaces for both display and printing, you should be good. I’d shy away from using Windows/Mac native features and go with a specific application tailored to working with images, simply because I believe they provide more control over the image quality.
Printer Configuration -- Letting the printer control colors
For this section, I’ll assume you are printing from Photoshop Elements v5.0, merely to simplify the language and provide some concrete examples. All big-name photo viewing/editing applications will offer similar controls, but you may have to hunt for the options. The net effect is to have the application pass through the photo as-is and let the printer do the color mapping. If you are using software that allows better control over color management, the opposite will be true – you want the application to control the colors and have the printer driver just pass through the colors as-is. For more on that, see below in “Printer Configuration -- Letting the application control colors” that describes how to print via Qimage (which is what I typically use).
Please note that the following description won’t cover all possible options provided on the print dialogs. It is assumed the most will take their default values and the intent is to only show which settings require some action, or are dependent on the paper choice, etc.
From Photoshop Elements, select the image you want to print, then from the File menu, select “Print…”. You should get something like the following (without the red blobs all over it!):
Things to look for:
1. Select the “Show More Options” check box to open up the bottom section of the dialog.
2. The Printer Profile should say “Printer Color Management”. That is “the printer knows best, I’ll let it manage the color”.
Photoshop Elements will warn you if the image you are trying to print doesn’t have the resolution (read: internal detail) for the size of print you are asking for. You will get something like:
This isn’t a show stopper, but is something to be cautious of. See the section titled “The Image Being Printed” for recommended image resolution.
It is also important to ensure that the print size you select (4x6, 5x7, etc) matches the aspect ratio of your image. See the section on “The image being printer” if not.
Now we need to tell the printer how it should deal with the image via the print driver dialogs. Select the “Printer…” button and then select the Canon Pro9000 Printer if not already shown in the Name area. The printer name may differ depending on what you called it when doing the initial install. Select Properties to get the following:
At this point we have left Photoshop Elements and are talking directly with the Canon printer, so if you are not using Photoshop, it doesn’t matter you will set get the same dialog as above. The areas to set are marked in red:
1. Media type (which normally means what paper you are using). The names shown refer to Canon papers. That is, the print driver will select settings based on Canon’s paper offerings. In the case shown above, “Canon’s Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss”. If you have another manufacturers brand of semi-gloss paper, it may produce satisfactory results with this setting, but it would be better to use a color profile specific to the paper you are using. See the section on allowing the application to control color management for more details.
2. Print Quality does as its name implies. However, I have not seen a significant difference between High and Standard and will typically stay with Standard for album shots, only switching to “High” for wall-mounted photos when I am using Canon’s Photo-paper Pro that is one of my favorite papers and provides exceptional print quality.
3. Color/Intensity. When letting the printer control color management this should be left on “Auto”. More on manual when the application controls color management.
The second tab, Page Setup, deals in paper size, orientation, etc.:
The two key settings here are paper size and borderless printing. Both are fairly self explanatory. I tend to leave the borderless printing option checked such that if I am printing on a 4x6 inch paper, and have a 4x6 inch photo to print than that’s what I will get. Ie no borders. This is especially true when I am printing multiple photos on the same sheet of paper (which Qimage does very well) and I can maximize paper used (eg three 4x6’s on a 11x8.5 legal sheet). But some people prefer a white border around shots, so the choice is yours.
Before printing, it is best to peak in the third tab, Effects, to ensure that nothing is selected:
My preference is to never use the printer driver for such effects. Do all of your photo manipulation in a photo editor and leave the printer to just do the printing. For example, while Canon’s “Vivid Photo” option does a reasonable job of boosting up colors, why take the risk? Use a photo editor to boost the color saturation to get it as you want it to look, then print as-is such that you know what to expect. The more you let the print driver ‘mess’ with the photo, the less control you have over whether the final print matches your expectations.
Side note, if you have wondered why on-line or high-street photo lab results differ from what you were expecting; it is often the case that they have the equivalent of the “Vivid” option set in their process unless you specifically ask for it to be disabled. Many casual snapshot takers prefer the (over)saturated look with bright colors, so the labs are happy to oblige on the premise that if you know what want, you’ll know enough to have them disable that option and print as-is. Of course, other factors may be at play such as not using a calibrated monitor when editing the photos and the quality of the photo labs equipment. Even if the photo-lab does a perfect job on the color front (with correctly calibrated equipment) the result won’t match what you saw on your incorrectly calibrated monitor and it is easy to place the blame for that at the labs door. See the section below on monitor calibration.
But why talk about photo labs when you have a great printer? If you have followed the above steps, have loaded paper, then hit the print button and stand back for your print.
Printer Configuration -- Letting the application control colors
This is my preferred way of printing using Qimage (http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/) as the application. Aside from being a long-time happy customer, I am not in any way affiliated with ddisoftware who sell Qimage.
The difference between this approach and letting the printer control colors is largely to do with the control it provides you. The printer driver is somewhat of a black box designed to take a few inputs but then, by magic, produce the desired colors. Which is great if it works, but not so good if you aren’t getting the output you want; especially when using non-Canon papers (which clearly Canon would prefer you to use). Much like my recommendation to avoid printer options for manipulating the image (e.g. vivid shots, or to reduce noise) and do those functions before printing in an image editor where they are more suited; then color-space mapping should also be done before we get to the printer. ICC-enabled image editors can do this, but for similar reasons of specialization, I prefer to use a tool specific to printing. I’ll assume Qimage below, but also show the same options in Photoshop Elements.
Qimage has excellent documentation, so I won’t that, and will focus on the print specific options. As such, it is assumed you have picked the photo(s) to print and on the bottom right hand side of Qimage you an area something like:
We are going to let Qimage control colors, so we need to set the right profile in the Prtr ICC input field. Select the down arrow to the right of Prtr ICC to get:
To change the printer/paper color profile, select “Choose new profile…” to see
There are a couple of things to note. Firstly that the monitor profile is enabled. I use SpyderExpress to calibrate my monitors (see section below on monitor calibration). This allows Qimage to correctly display the images when previewing what to print. The second and most important field is the printer profile which determines the printer and being used. Sadly the filenames are hard to decipher their meaning such as CNB7UDA0.ICM. Thankfully, when you select the “…” to the right of the printer profile option to choose a new one, you get a slightly more meaningful list of options:
However, even this is somewhat confusing. While it is clear which printer most of these refer to, Canon uses GL1, etc. naming for some of their different paper types. These can be mapped to paper types with:
|
Code |
Description |
Quality Setting |
|
MP1 |
Matte Photo Paper |
1 |
|
PR1 |
Photo Paper Pro |
1 |
|
PR2 |
Photo Paper Pro |
2 |
|
PR3 |
Photo Paper Pro |