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Author Topic: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100  (Read 12927 times)

huguito

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Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« on: October 04, 2013, 08:01:57 pm »

Just received my Canon Pro 100 last night.
The few first prints that this beast spitted on my desk where just spot on, nothing short of amazing for not have custom profiles and a ton of ink and paper wasted testing.

Now, since I can't help myself from trying to fix what's not broken;

When I print with my 9600, I choose photoshop to manage the colors, the proper profile for the ink/media I am using, and the option of "no color adjustment" on the advanced panel of the printer driver.

When printing on the Canon I don't see anywhere  a choice of turning off any color adjustment.
I just choose the paper, the print quality and the size, and all is good, it spits perfection every time.
Is it off by default?
Where is the switch on and off in case I want to mess with?

IS THIS PRINTER SMARTER THAN ME ??

Hugo
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leuallen

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2013, 09:36:51 pm »

I ran into the same problem. I installed from the supplied disk. There is a newer version of the driver on Canon's website. I installed that and it has the option to let printer manage color.

Larry
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MHMG

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2013, 12:08:03 am »


Is it off by default?
Where is the switch on and off in case I want to mess with?

IS THIS PRINTER SMARTER THAN ME ??

Hugo

If you choose "Photoshop manages color" in the "photoshop print settings" menu, PS will force a no color adjust pathway on the Pro-100 driver, so under the "color matching" menu in the Canon driver, every option will be greyed out. That's effectively a "no color adjust" override in the Canon driver. Then, you also have to choose the correct "printer profile" and rendering intent in the color management section of the "Photoshop print settings" menu which appears every time you attempt to print out of PS. I"m relating my experience on a Mac OS, but I suspect the behavior is similar on a Windows machine.

The Pixma Pro-100 is a sweet little printer with amazing initial image quality output. Enjoy! I'm currently working on some lightfastness and humidity resistance studies that will tell us how best to care for the amazing prints coming from this printer.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
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huguito

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2013, 05:46:19 pm »

Thanks very much.
I think that during installation my system did checked for updated drivers, so I asume my drivers are as current as can be.

One more amazing thing about this printer is that after initial fill and priming, and about 20 prints in letter size and 13x19 the inks still show full.
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rgs

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2013, 10:43:44 pm »

Thanks very much.
I think that during installation my system did checked for updated drivers, so I asume my drivers are as current as can be.

One more amazing thing about this printer is that after initial fill and priming, and about 20 prints in letter size and 13x19 the inks still show full.

So did mine. I have now begun to see movement in the grey tanks but not the color ones.
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Jeff Magidson

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2013, 11:52:02 pm »

The Pixma Pro-100 is a sweet little printer with amazing initial image quality output. Enjoy! I'm currently working on some lightfastness and humidity resistance studies that will tell us how best to care for the amazing prints coming from this printer.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com


Mark: How is the metamerism with the Pro 100 dye inks compared to the Epson & Canon pigment inks? Any thoughts about the Pro 100's B&W abilities?

Thanks,

~ Jeff

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~ Jeff Magidson
Custom Archival Printing
http://artslidesboston.com

rgs

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #6 on: October 06, 2013, 03:50:39 pm »

Metamerism and gloss differential are problems associated particularly with pigment ink. I have had several Canon dye printers and now the PRO 100. I have never seen any metamerism of gloss differential.
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MHMG

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2013, 06:31:02 pm »

Right, no gloss differential or bronzing with dye-based inkjet media, but color constancy (the correct term rather than metamerism) under different lighting can still be an issue with dye based systems as well as pigmented inks. In general, the flatter the reflectance spectra when trying to make neutral and near neutral colors, the less color constancy issues will be present in the finished prints. Hence, the move to the "3K" photo grey ink sets (first in widespread use with the Epson Ultrachrome K3 ink technology) brought the annoying color constancy problems under much better control. In this regard, I would expect the Pro-100 with its 3 levels of photo grey inks will objectively outperform the Epson 1430 Claria dye-based printer and most dry lab mini lab printers which typically make the neutral and near neutral "equivalent" colors totally out of the CMY inks (the black channel is reserved exclusively for the maximum black print densities).

I haven't done any instrumented evaluations of the color constancy characteristics on the Pro-100 yet, but just "walking some B&W prints around" into different lighting conditions including tungsten, cool daylight, soft white fluorescent, etc., the Pro-100 B&W prints do not take on any objectionable hue characteristics from what I've observed to date. They tend to stay in a range of visual appearance that is entirely appropriate to the warm or cool color temperature of the illuminants, especially considering that all the Canon OEM RC papers for this printer do have some OBA content present.  I'm also really quite impressed with the Pro-100 prints' initial image quality, especially the image microstructure which is amazingly "continuous tone".  I'm pretty near-sighted, and when I take off my glasses to examine the prints up really really close, I just don't see any noticeable dot structure. Very impressive and as close as I've seen to analog darkroom printing (noting that some of the Piezography 4-7 shades of "gray" systems do this as well). Totally outperforming my Canon iPF8300 on dot pattern but that is understandable. Nobody tries to make 4x6 print on a wide format Canon as far as I know :), but if they try, the Pro-1, Pro-10, and Pro-100s will clearly do better.

One last interesting observation about the Pro-100. When you choose "print as black & white" the driver will make an RGB desaturation move (probably using a "preserve luminosity" algorithm), but the printer is still printing under full color management workflow with the Canon ICC profiles "under the hood". I found this out because the supplied Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II paper profile is not so good. If you've hear people complaining on various forums about brown tints to their neutral B&W prints on the Pro-100, I bet they are using the Glossy II media setting. The neutral tint B&W conversions with this setting are notably warm (brown toned), and one gets the identical output when printing as neutral RGB triplets though the full color workflow. Changing to the Pro Platinum, Pro Luster, or Paper Plus Semi-gloss media setting produces much better neutral output. My conclusion: The photo grey inks are being exploited entirely by gray component replacement (GCR) color management methods. There is no different B&W screening and color mixing mode to the Pro-100 like there is with Epson ABW mode. That said, the results are so nice that I don't think a different B&W mode is really necessary on the Pro-100.

best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

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Jeff Magidson

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2013, 01:04:51 pm »

Thanks for your impressions, Mark.

The last dye ink printer I used was the Epson 1280, it had very poor "color constancy". Prints from the 1280 looked completely different under various light sources. However, I did like the way the dye inks went down/integrated on RC & semi gloss papers, hence my interest in the Pro 100.

~ Jeff

http://artslidesboston.com



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~ Jeff Magidson
Custom Archival Printing
http://artslidesboston.com

Deepsouth

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2013, 10:11:11 pm »

how does this compare with the Pixma Pro 9500 series with pigment inks? I had a Canon S9000 dye printer before the 9500 and although the 9500 prints are superior, the 9500 is much less WYSIWYG (remember that?) that the S9000 was and is overall more finicky in every respect.
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MHMG

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #10 on: October 11, 2013, 08:38:27 am »

how does this compare with the Pixma Pro 9500 series with pigment inks? I had a Canon S9000 dye printer before the 9500 and although the 9500 prints are superior, the 9500 is much less WYSIWYG (remember that?) that the S9000 was and is overall more finicky in every respect.

It compares exactly to the S9000 (dye-based) but with greatly improved grayscale linearity when you need it and probably better longevity due to the reformulated black dye in the Chromalife 100+ dye set. I haven't fade tested any Chromalife 100+ systems yet, but Canon will undoubtedly have had to fix the serious black dye fade-to-red problem of the previous chromalife 100 generation inks in order to offer the 3 level black/gray inks in the Pro-1oo in good conscience.

Your observations about the 9500 (pigment printer) versus the S9000 (dye based printer) are precisely the reasons why dye-based printers still have a place in the inkjet photo market, especially for photographers trying to capture the traditional "photo finish" look on glossy/luster type RC papers.

kind regards,
Mark McCormick-Goodhart
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: October 11, 2013, 09:36:44 am by MHMG »
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Deepsouth

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Re: Question about printing with the Pixma Pro 100
« Reply #11 on: October 15, 2013, 02:31:51 pm »

Thank you Mark. I have been contemplating ditching the 9500 and looking at a Pro 100. Honsetly, I print very few 13 x 19 color images anymore, mainly greeting cards, and the ocassional Excel or PowerPoint in 13 x 19. I need to do some A/B comparisons but right now the printer is a low pri, until it runs out of ink again. A full set of 9500 ink is about USD115.
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