Colour quality with inkjet printer (Canon).

January 7, 2009 7:52 PM

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to improve the colour quality on a Canon MP-series printer? This is printing from Photoshop/Illustrator CS (both CS and CS3) and Mac (Panther and Leopard).

The two specific models that I've tried are the MP-500 and MP-600.

Other colours appear to be fine but red is more rust coloured. I've tried using coloursync and tweaking in Bridge to no avail.

Is this a common issue with Canon or inkjet printers? Is it simply because it is a lower-end printer model?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

posted by purephase to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I've always found photoshop and illustrator's output is rubbish on non-postscript printers. I have found however, if you save the illustrator file out as a PDF and then open it in preview and print from that, the quality is much better.

Might be worth a try.
posted by derbs at 2:24 AM on January 8

Derbs pretty-much nails it. Illustrator, especially, depends on talking to a Postscript-savvy output source in order to get correct color. This eliminates all consumer-grade inkjets. Inkjets, in general, are brain-dead about color management and accuracy. Add to that is that inkjet color is highly affected by the quality anf finish of the paper you use.

As Derbs suggests, you might want to try converting the art to PDF and printing the PDF. But, I wouldn't hold my breath or expect a miracle. Your reds might print more accurately, but you might blow-up the blues. You never know.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:55 AM on January 8

The only method that I found to work well was to print a lot of copies of a photo, tweaking the color correction settings in the print dialog until it looked approximately correct. But I wasn't paying for either ink or paper, so I could afford to burn through a lot of trials, and even with that the final images still looked like the blue was off. Plus, printing different pictures meant playing with the color balance again to optimize it for that specific photo.

In the end I didn't much care, because it cost me nothing, and the shots I was printing are essentially placeholders in my picture frames until I get around to sending the photos off to Shutterfly or the like for a real, color-accurate print.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:55 AM on January 8

This is what I do:

1. Set your image profile to Adobe RGB 1998
2. do your color editing in PS
3. Select Print with Preview if in CS2. Select Print if in CS3.
4. *new dialog box pops open* Select your printer.
5. Select Color Management (click drop down if it says Output)
5. Select Document (Adobe RGB 1998)
6. For color handling select "Photoshop manages colors" be sure to disable your color management in the printer's dialog box that will pop open later.
7.Printer profile - select the icc profile for your paper type -- you'll will have had to load this previously.
8. For rendering intent pick "Perceptual"
9. Hit Print
10. *new dialog box pops open* expand if it is not already expanded. Change "layout" to "color mangagement".
11. Click "off- no color adjustment"
12. Now print.
posted by i_love_squirrels at 12:00 PM on January 8