I've been printing with a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 printer for quite a while and recently noticed my greens looking really muddy. More yellow than green. Has anyone else had a similar problem. I do notice that when I turn on the gamut setting in the print driver almost all of the greens turn gray to signal an out of gamut problem. Is this just a characteristic of this particular printer? I do have a calibrated monitor by the way and have printed to other printers without the problem. I have cleaned the printer nozzles several times and have also tried the same image on another identical Canon printer with the same results. Any ideas? Thanks!
Posted by Dan Borzynski on April 21, 2009 at 2:58 PM
I am a bit unclear on the printing on other printers. Have you tried to print the same recently worked image on two different printers? What was the result? If you are seeing the same issue across multiple printers, then the problem lies in the computer somewhere, not the printer.
So what could the problem be? There are a couple of immediate sources of problems.
In addition to cleaning the nozzles, have you done a printer test? Most of the better printers allow you to do a color test. It is possible that even after cleaning, the nozzles are still clogged. The print test should discover this.
First, just how out of gamut are the greens? Is it a nature shot, or a manmade green. In the latter case, there are definitely colors out there that don't reproduce well. It is unlikely that you found them often enough to ask. Nature greens should be fine, with a few rare exceptions.
Are other colors being affected?
If you back into your files and print an image with similar greens, is there still a color problem?
You mention that the monitor is calibrated. Is that profile actually being picked up by the monitor? And is the calibration tool working fine? (This is very unlikely to be the source of the problem.)
Have you made any system changes? This includes but is not restricted to a new computer, upgraded Photoshop, upgrading to Vista, a new monitor, anything.
What are your printer settings? Check that PS manages color, the printer does no color management, the correct paper choice and the correct paper profile and check in both PS and in the Windows printer panel (if you are running Windows).
Posted by Paul DeCesare on April 21, 2009 at 3:28 PM
Bill, you weren't expecting a quick easy answer by any chance, were you?
I'll be interested in the outcome. I have the same printer still new in the box, haven't set it up yet, but I'm gathering data such as this for when I start using it.
Posted by Larry Puckett on April 21, 2009 at 8:09 PM
I just installed mine a week ago and got a very good print right out of the box. Had lots for green moss in the photos which printed very faithfully. I take it you had not seen this muddy green shift previously? Like Paul I'll be interested in your resolution of this--Larry
Posted by Bill Stice on April 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM
Dan, thanks for your detailed analysis and questions. Sorry for not including more information. I've attached a copy of the image in question. It is a nature image. As far as answers to your questions I'll attempt to answer them as best I can.
First let me say that I have a lot of experience printing on all the Epson medium and large format printers from the 2200 series up to the 9000 series. I am brand new to the Canon printer however and this is the first time I have printed extensively with it. I print images as a part of my job so I print hundreds of copies a year and have worn out three Epson photo printers. I liked some of the output I saw from the Canon 9000 and particularly like the additional color range of the dye printer as compared to the pigment ink printers. I know there is a difference in longevity of the dye versus pigment inks but am prepared to accept that difference.
My monitor is calibrated using Spyder 2PRO 2.2 and I even recalibrated it as a part of this test. The calibration software is being loaded and I believe is working correctly. I did do a printer color test and it appears fine according to Canon's documentation.
The greens are way out of gamut as are some of the other colors but most of the colors are fine. I've tried adjusting the white balance in both Photoshop CS4 using Lab Color with Curves and have also used white balance in Lightroom 2.3 as well and the colors look normal on the monitor. I can print some images that look great from the printer and almost perfectly match the monitor image including even some greens. That is what makes me think that this particular group of images giving me trouble are perhaps out of the printer's gamut.
The test I set up is as follows: I printed the image on a Pixma Pro 9000 at work and at home. I have a personal printer that is identical to the one at work. I tried printing the image from Photoshop CS3, CS4, and Lightroom 2.3 both at home and at work. My laptop at home is running identical calibration software as at work. My system at work has some updates to the Canon printer drivers and Photoshop CS4 that my system at home does not have but the differences in appearance of the photo when printed on the two systems are minimal even with the differences in software updates. I do have paper profiles from Canon, have selected those in the print driver, disabled printer color management in the print driver and have Photoshop doing the color management. I also installed an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer, printed to it, compared the two prints and the colors are much closer to what shows on the monitor than with the Canon. The Epson print appears very close to the monitor image. This is another reason that I thought the colors might be out of gamut on the Canon printer. I have also done test prints changing all of the settings one at a time and in different combinations using Lightroom and Photoshop to see if a particular sequence would perform better and haven't had any luck. I documented all the changes as I tested but created a custom print profile of the original settings so I could return to them for comparison. I have five or six images in this sequence so I have tried more than one image thinking it might be an individual corrupted image but they all show the same appearance. By the way the images were made with a Nikon D300 with latest firmware update, Nikon 200mm AFD Micro lens, shot as uncompressed Raw files and processed using Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.3.
I hope that gives you enough details. Thanks for attempting to help me out.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on April 22, 2009 at 1:57 PM
Bill, I was afraid you were going to give me the answer you did. I recognized your name from a lot of posts over the years and was hoping that maybe I would hit on something that would make you go DOH! It looks like you have already hit the main points of where to start looking for an issue. The fact that the image is printable on the Epsons but not on the Canons does sound like a gamut issue on the Canons, but my experience is Epson only.
Well, I think the image you posted be within the colorspace range of the Canon. If it isn't, I'd be surprised. The color is a bit saturated but I think is should be printable.
Are you using the Canon papers to match the Canon profiles? If you are using a Canon profile with an Epson paper, that might be the issue. Also, what happens if you switch papers? That is, if your primary paper is a glossy, how does it look on matte paper?
I am pretty much out of ideas at the current moment. Unless someone has another idea, my two remaining suggestions would be the following:
Is there someone with that printer who would be willing to make a test print for Bill, even as a 4x6? I'd like to separate the image from Bill's workflow to further isolate the problem.
Trying asking the question over at Naturescapes.net with the information you gave.
Dan, I did try both Canon and Epson papers but actually haven't tried the different gloss paper. I'll give that a go. I really appreciate all you comments and thanks for trying to help me. I'm going to continue to test and see if it might something simple. It has me baffled at the moment. Thanks again!
Posted by David Bostedo on April 22, 2009 at 3:02 PM
Bill - One other thing : have you looked at the soft proofing and gamut warnings in CS4 with the various Canon paper profiles? I've found they vary a bit in how good they are, and maybe PS can help figure that out?
It could also be as simple as a profile quality difference - maybe the Epson's is simply better than the Canon's, in which case a custom profile could really help.
Posted by Mark Stahlke on April 22, 2009 at 4:56 PM
Dumb question of the day: Are the ink tanks installed in the right places?
Mark, thanks for your questions and it certainly isn't dumb. I did check that as well as changing out every single cartridge and checking again. They are all correct as marked and new cartridges didn't make any difference. Thanks for your help!
Posted by Dan Borzynski on April 22, 2009 at 7:50 PM
While waiting for dinner to cook and some images to download from a memory card, I took a look at the problem again. Some internet research didn't turn up anything useful, other than Canon's archive page for this printer not functioning. You may want to check it in a day or so for any driver updates.
I also took the liberty of downloading your image and printing it here. First, I checked the out of gamut warning in PS. Pretty much everything in green was greyed out. Impressive - I don't thing I have ever seen it this well covered before.
I printed it on an Espon 4000, pigment inks, matte paper. The green which came out was fairly intense, even for a matte paper. It also was not quite right, a bit yellow. Part of that may well have been because they file was pretty small and not intended to be printed, but I think this is beginning to confirm that the colors are out of gamut for the 9900, The dye inks are usually better than pigments in this respect, so I really don't trust this diagnosis.
Dan, thanks tremendously for going to such lengths to help me. I am going to continue to test and document and see if I can figure it out definitively. I'm more curious than anything else at this point. By the way the image is a little over saturated. The original isn't but when I converted it to SRGB for posting the saturation went up quite a bit and I didn't take the time to adjust it.
Larry, I did contact Canon technical support through the local professional rep and after they looked at it the only suggestion was to use Canon's print program which in my opinion is not a solution. I want to be able to print from Photoshop or Lightroom. I have tested the same image on an Epson printer and it is also out of gamut on that printer but not as bad. I'm totally convinced that the greens and yellows are just out of gamut on this image and there isn't much I can do. I have printed lots of other greens on the printer and they look fine. I have just turned the gamut warning on and watch it closely when I get ready to print. I don't have anything else to try and Canon wasn't able to help me much.
Discussion
13 repliesSo what could the problem be? There are a couple of immediate sources of problems.
In addition to cleaning the nozzles, have you done a printer test? Most of the better printers allow you to do a color test. It is possible that even after cleaning, the nozzles are still clogged. The print test should discover this.
First, just how out of gamut are the greens? Is it a nature shot, or a manmade green. In the latter case, there are definitely colors out there that don't reproduce well. It is unlikely that you found them often enough to ask. Nature greens should be fine, with a few rare exceptions.
Are other colors being affected?
If you back into your files and print an image with similar greens, is there still a color problem?
You mention that the monitor is calibrated. Is that profile actually being picked up by the monitor? And is the calibration tool working fine? (This is very unlikely to be the source of the problem.)
Have you made any system changes? This includes but is not restricted to a new computer, upgraded Photoshop, upgrading to Vista, a new monitor, anything.
What are your printer settings? Check that PS manages color, the printer does no color management, the correct paper choice and the correct paper profile and check in both PS and in the Windows printer panel (if you are running Windows).
I'll be interested in the outcome. I have the same printer still new in the box, haven't set it up yet, but I'm gathering data such as this for when I start using it.
First let me say that I have a lot of experience printing on all the Epson medium and large format printers from the 2200 series up to the 9000 series. I am brand new to the Canon printer however and this is the first time I have printed extensively with it. I print images as a part of my job so I print hundreds of copies a year and have worn out three Epson photo printers. I liked some of the output I saw from the Canon 9000 and particularly like the additional color range of the dye printer as compared to the pigment ink printers. I know there is a difference in longevity of the dye versus pigment inks but am prepared to accept that difference.
My monitor is calibrated using Spyder 2PRO 2.2 and I even recalibrated it as a part of this test. The calibration software is being loaded and I believe is working correctly. I did do a printer color test and it appears fine according to Canon's documentation.
The greens are way out of gamut as are some of the other colors but most of the colors are fine. I've tried adjusting the white balance in both Photoshop CS4 using Lab Color with Curves and have also used white balance in Lightroom 2.3 as well and the colors look normal on the monitor. I can print some images that look great from the printer and almost perfectly match the monitor image including even some greens. That is what makes me think that this particular group of images giving me trouble are perhaps out of the printer's gamut.
The test I set up is as follows: I printed the image on a Pixma Pro 9000 at work and at home. I have a personal printer that is identical to the one at work. I tried printing the image from Photoshop CS3, CS4, and Lightroom 2.3 both at home and at work. My laptop at home is running identical calibration software as at work. My system at work has some updates to the Canon printer drivers and Photoshop CS4 that my system at home does not have but the differences in appearance of the photo when printed on the two systems are minimal even with the differences in software updates. I do have paper profiles from Canon, have selected those in the print driver, disabled printer color management in the print driver and have Photoshop doing the color management. I also installed an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer, printed to it, compared the two prints and the colors are much closer to what shows on the monitor than with the Canon. The Epson print appears very close to the monitor image. This is another reason that I thought the colors might be out of gamut on the Canon printer. I have also done test prints changing all of the settings one at a time and in different combinations using Lightroom and Photoshop to see if a particular sequence would perform better and haven't had any luck. I documented all the changes as I tested but created a custom print profile of the original settings so I could return to them for comparison. I have five or six images in this sequence so I have tried more than one image thinking it might be an individual corrupted image but they all show the same appearance. By the way the images were made with a Nikon D300 with latest firmware update, Nikon 200mm AFD Micro lens, shot as uncompressed Raw files and processed using Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.3.
I hope that gives you enough details. Thanks for attempting to help me out.
Well, I think the image you posted be within the colorspace range of the Canon. If it isn't, I'd be surprised. The color is a bit saturated but I think is should be printable.
Are you using the Canon papers to match the Canon profiles? If you are using a Canon profile with an Epson paper, that might be the issue. Also, what happens if you switch papers? That is, if your primary paper is a glossy, how does it look on matte paper?
I am pretty much out of ideas at the current moment. Unless someone has another idea, my two remaining suggestions would be the following:
Is there someone with that printer who would be willing to make a test print for Bill, even as a 4x6? I'd like to separate the image from Bill's workflow to further isolate the problem.
Trying asking the question over at Naturescapes.net with the information you gave.
It could also be as simple as a profile quality difference - maybe the Epson's is simply better than the Canon's, in which case a custom profile could really help.
If, say, cyan and photo cyan were reversed...
I also took the liberty of downloading your image and printing it here. First, I checked the out of gamut warning in PS. Pretty much everything in green was greyed out. Impressive - I don't thing I have ever seen it this well covered before.
I printed it on an Espon 4000, pigment inks, matte paper. The green which came out was fairly intense, even for a matte paper. It also was not quite right, a bit yellow. Part of that may well have been because they file was pretty small and not intended to be printed, but I think this is beginning to confirm that the colors are out of gamut for the 9900, The dye inks are usually better than pigments in this respect, so I really don't trust this diagnosis.
Nice image, by the way.
Bill--did you ever figure this one out? Interested Canon owners are waiting to hear your results--Larry