Martin,
as a new person to wide format printing and a total non epson user ever but a happy ipf5000 owner i have a couple of comments.
my work flow as a casual photographer who sells a few prints does not involve printing from PS so i can't directly comment on the plug-in issues but your issues seem to be more generic and not really plugin related.
Although for me the plugin failed to install on MS Vista using remote desktop so i gave up, will have to go back and have another go.
I personally use Qimage for all my printing tasks and have profiled all my paper stock with PFP.
Comments on your points inline below....
Hello.
I'm using the Canon iPf5000 - slowly to print images and beginning to make profiles using PrintfixPRO,problems are beginning to appear in the software supplied by Cannon.
Using imagePrograph Photoshop plug-in problems are.
1]The types of paper described in supplied print profiles are of limited use when choosing to use the cassete why this should happen is incredibaly shortsighted and lousy writting of software by Canon,it's near impossible to print a gloss type paper through cassete,most of the time the photoshop plug-in sends you to manual or paper-roll for paper insertion to printer,the same with other paper choices from supplied profiles.This has to be rectified by Canon otherwise the printer will not sell to the public.This problem rears its head yet again when using Photoshop and Print Management why is beyond belief!!!
The only paper type that seems to be not supported in the cassette is Gloss paper, i can see this will be a pain and i have yet to find a work around.
Just about everything else uses the MK ink anyway and it's just a matter of selecting the closest cassette paper type when feeding from it.
Experiments are starting to show which media types lay down more or less ink, i have some canvas that i actually use plain paper HQ setting with.
the media quide is a good starting point but i too wish it was more complete and gave indications of ink laydown for each type.
2]Often the printer will print the previous image when using imagePrograf unless you cancel that image before printing the current image.
Certainly not my experience with qimage, this sounds like a process step that needs to be completed that's not obvious, this is typical of Canon's instructions if it's missing.
3]Each time one powers up the printer it does a head cleaning cycle is this really neccessary?
Certainly NOT my experience and my printer will be on for days at a time with no printing and has been off for days as well, i have seen it do two head cleans both were quick, one at turn on and one after coming out of sleep mode. twice out of multiple cycles seems fair.
4]The most trying problem is when one tries to put paper into tray [top loader !] it works one time in five a problem that was evident back at the factory to any of
the technicians developing this printer.
Again not my experience, the trick is to ensure that the left hand guide is accurately positioned to the width of the media, this aids in keeping everything straight. iv'e suffer maybe 1 in 20 misfeeds and all due to rushing the feed. I am getting better though and managed to feed a number of 17" wide canvas sheets that were quite flexible without any feed problems last night.
These noted problems are extreme,for Canon to send a printer to market aimed at the proffesional printer is stupid and word travels fast about a printers failings,instead of its attributesv
but for all of these problems I will carry on using my Canon iPF5000.The colour prints I'm producing cannot be eqalled by any other inkjet printer in this class on the market today the colour reproduction is fantastic and detail is becoming more pronounced as I develope tricks to tease increasingly better prints out of this printer.Creating ones own paper profiles is the direction one should take with this printer unlike when using an Epson printer where many artists use existing profiles and then play with color management tools.Lazy push button injet art!!!!! for feeble galleries.
Searching of old posts on DPR show similar comments from new epson users, all printers seem to have little quirks.
People using these printers generally would be professionals and i would expect professionals to correctly colour profile the printer for their paper stock. no doubt the major papers will end up with generic profiles for the printer but the serious user should and will tweak anyway, so what's the issue with having to generate some profiles.
Like epson the canon will output good quality on their own brand paper with their profiles....mmmm not much difference there.
occasionally in qimage i forget to set the correct profile for the print and send a default sRGB profile, funny thing is that the actual output to friends i have shown these prints to is how nice they look, not "oh look at the slightly wrong colours". To me this says that the printer does a great job all on its own to convert a standard sRGB profile to the nominated paper type specified.
One question.
What experiance have other users of this printer had using Setting 1 to 5 and what influence do these settings have when creating paper profiles?
Me.
I'm a painter,printmaker and animater living in London U.K using a Powermac G5 Quad 6mb of ram,pair of viewsonic screens an old Epson 1290 printer using Lyson Fotonic ink in refillable cartridges and my wonderful new CanoniPF5000printer.Software mainly Photoshop CS2 plus some attachments and Maya 7 which is amazing to print rendered images from much softer and detailed than Photoshop.The Canon picks out very delicate changes in colour and tone gradation when printing from Maya 7 rendered images.Animated films are edited using Final Cut Pro 5 but that is another story I'm here for the ink jet printing knowledge passed on by individuals with far more experiance than me.
Thanks.
Martin Mitchell
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I would also like to work out the 1-5 setting and i may get time to play this weekend, very remiss of Canon to not better document this.
Having bought this printer without the Epson/HP user experience i had no real expectation of usability.
I like the setting of paper type and size from the front panel, but i have turned of the mismatch warning as the printer is not in the same room as my workstation.
Otherwise i have found it simple and easy to use and get along with.