Pixma Pro-100 ink and paper question

For those of you with this printer, can you tell me what your most used ink(s) are? It always seems that one or two colors are always used at a much faster rate than the others, no matter what you seem to print.

I have a newborn that I will need to print a bunch of photos for as time goes on and want to make sure I have backups of the most popular colors.

A couple more questions;
1) does everyone use genuine Canon inks or has anyone tried refilling their cartridges either by themselves with one of the ink kits, or have you taken them anywhere for a refill?

2) What papers do you all use? For my initial order I picked up some Canon paper, but the Lustre paper and metallic paper that I have had Adorama use for prints are what I am shooting for. What brand is recommended?

Thanks

For papers, Canon Pro Luster is a good choice. Red River Ultra Pro Satin is also good. Most of the other Canon papers are good but I don't care for semi-gloss. Canson's RC papers are very good as is their canvas. Finding fine art papers is a little trickier - many are just flat and dull looking but some good ones can be found.

I only use Canon ink. Others make worry me and I my profiles would have to be changed. I think my grays (especially the light gray) are the most used inks and I don't print B&W. The PRO 100 must use a good deal of gray to fine tune colors.

I'm going to need to learn how to set up profiles.

I set the printer up tonight and printed a half dozen sample photos. Every single one came out too dark. I am not sure how the photo being printed is so much darker than I am seeing on screen when I have sent photos to Adorama to be printed without color correction and they came back perfect. I even have the printer setting to +30 brightness and I'm increasing exposure in LR to get the photos lighter.

I must say that the printer is a beast, very quiet and fast. Still trying to figure out how a "back tray" is actually the one on top and the manual feed tray is the one in the back. lol

mikeinctown wrote in post #17110579
I'm going to need to learn how to set up profiles.

I set the printer up tonight and printed a half dozen sample photos. Every single one came out too dark. I am not sure how the photo being printed is so much darker than I am seeing on screen when I have sent photos to Adorama to be printed without color correction and they came back perfect. I even have the printer setting to +30 brightness and I'm increasing exposure in LR to get the photos lighter.

Google is your friend. Some internet research will yield many resources on digital printing. Don't neglect to look at Canon's site. They have many resources available.

First you need to make sure your monitor is color balanced. You might be able to find a reasonable profile for the monitor on the internet. Otherwise you will need to get some type of profiling device - the cheapest is probably the Spyder.

If you prints are too dark, you monitor is probably to bright. You can just turn it down but, again, profiling is the best bet.

Printer profiles for both Canon and many third party papers can be downloaded from Canon here.

Don't think it is the monitor as I have had prints made through Adorama twice and have taken photos on SD cards to other places local many times and they have all come out as expected. It seems to be the printer just printing too dark.

The Canon paper is already loaded in the drivers and I have already selected the appropriate paper I was using. There is one setting which I did not change in which you could either select a light, standard, or dark color profile. I'm going to switch to light and give it a shot, but when the preview comes up, the light profile looks completely washed out on the screen.

mikeinctown wrote in post #17110917
Don't think it is the monitor as I have had prints made through Adorama twice and have taken photos on SD cards to other places local many times and they have all come out as expected. It seems to be the printer just printing too dark.

The Canon paper is already loaded in the drivers and I have already selected the appropriate paper I was using. There is one setting which I did not change in which you could either select a light, standard, or dark color profile. I'm going to switch to light and give it a shot, but when the preview comes up, the light profile looks completely washed out on the screen.

The automation in those machines may be correcting a file that is too bright. Turn you monitor down and see what happens.

If you are printing in LR or PS, be sure you have turned on letting LR of PS do the color management and have turned color management off in the printer driver controls.

I almost never touch those lighter/darker controls in the driver. I print with LR doing color management. Sometimes (especially with Red River paper) I lighten in LR's printer module but never in the printer driver controls.

I agree with rgs. The printer can do an excellent job. My prints match the monitor astonishingly well.

BUT, make sure the monitor is set up right. There are some web sites that let you do a rudimentary brightness check by looking at gray scales.

I also agree: my first reaction to getting prints 'outside' was some automated gamma being applied.

Hang in there...

rick

So you guys are saying that even when telling the company to not do any corrections that they are doing corrections?

I'll look into the color management profiles in LR and on the printer. Thanks for the suggestion. This is the first time I am printing from Lightroom however. In the past all my prints have come from Canon DPP, then saving as the high quality JPEG then printing the JPEG. The photos all look the same, but I am wondering if the two programs are what is causing the difference.

I also noticed that if I want borderless prints that I need to open the plug in for the printer in LR as the print function in LR adds a border, and even telling it to print borderless keeps a small 1/8" border around the print.

Don't worry about saving as jpeg. DPP is a good RAW processor but so is LR and it's also non-destructive so there is no need to use DPP or JPEG in LR. Just get the RAW to look like you want then go to the print module and select (or set up your own) your print type.

In the print control panel look under the "print Job" section. Under "color management" find "profile" and choose your paper. If it's not in the list, make sure the profile is installed on the computer then choose other and browse for your profile. Under "intent" I choose perceptual but relative is also good. If you want adjust density or contrast a bit check "print adjustment" then make your changes.

Now you need to turn off the printer's color management. Click "printer" then make sure your PRO 100 is selected. Click "properties" which will take your to your printer driver controls. Click on the "main" tab then in the "color/intensity" section select "manual" then click "set" then click the "matching" tab then choose "none". Now click "OK" and make your print. It takes a lot longer to explain the step by step than to actually do it and LR will save your settings so you will just need to check to make sure everything is still set in the future.

As to the borderless printing - don't do it unless you have to. The edges of the print loose a little quality and ink gets on the inside of the printer. If you must have borderless, print with borders and then trim borderless. However, borders give an elegant look and leave an area to safely handle the print. Until the automated machines showed up in the 70s, all prints had borders.

Thanks rgs for you help. I went in and made the changes. I even went back through the monitor and color calibration screens. I turned down the brightness significantly and adjusted the contrast slightly. That said, I made a few more test prints and they appear exactly the same once printed. On my screen grass appears vivid and bright and reds pop and yet when printed everything looks like the photo was taken at dusk. What really strikes me as odd is that on my last print, I went and increased exposure to .40 and once the printer spit it out I compared the print to two I made last night and they are all identical. It defies logic.

I'm going to have a bunch of stuff to practice with this weekend. Hopefully I'll find something I need in the Canon help pages.

Call canon, too. They can help you. This doesn't fit with my experience with the PRO 100.

OMG I am such a bonehead. So I have some very bright LED lights in the room where I have the computer and printer. They are warm white LED bulbs. I couldn't figure out why even applying lighter settings still made the prints look so dark. I took them into the other room to toss them on a table and as I walked by a window the colors suddenly popped. The grass was vivid green, the reds were bright, the skin tones looked perfect. The sunlight made them look as they should.

Now I'm not sure how this will work if they are in a frame hanging in a hallway, but it seems the color temperature of the lights in the room were what was getting me frustrated.