Inkjet color shift - what did I miss?

I've recently moved from Windows to the Mac, and am experiencing an issue with color shifts between what I'm seeing on my Apple Cinema Display and what gets printed by my Canon S9000 inkjet.

I have calibrated the display by using the Colorvision Spyder.

I process my EOS-1D MkII raw files by using Phase One's Capture One, tagging the developed TIFF files as Wide Gamut RGB [which is how Capture One is set to output them].

I preserve profiles when I open the files in Photoshop and they look fine. And I have printed the PDI test image and it looks pretty accurate against what I see on my monitor.

And yet, I have an image of a tree . . . the bark is a very neutral grey color as measured by the eyedropper sampler in Photoshop. But when I print this image on my S9000, it has a very bluish cast.

I have tried using various profiles for the printer and nothing seems to change this.

I could understand it if the PDI test image showed a similar cast, but it does not.

I even tried taking the RAW image into Photoshop via CS2's RAW converter, but I get the same result - image looks the way I think it should on the display, but comes out with the blue cast when printed.

What am I missing here? Any suggestions on troubleshooting this issue would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Mark J.

Hello Mark,
(Caveat: I've no specific experience with your printer.) Two ideas come to my drowsy and turkey-stuffed mind. First, you indicated that you have tried "various profiles for the printer" but are you sure that you're using a profile that's been developed specifically for your printer ink and paper combination?

Second, are you ensuring that the printer is not doing it's own color management? For example, the Epson driver features an option to disable color management. This is a requisite option when using a color profile with your print job. I wonder if the Canon driver features a similar option. Strong color casting, especially magenta or greens, is evidence of missing this option when using an Epson printer.

Good luck!

Paper or color management?

Ken Tanaka said:

Hello Mark,
(Caveat: I've no specific experience with your printer.) Two ideas come to my drowsy and turkey-stuffed mind. First, you indicated that you have tried "various profiles for the printer" but are you sure that you're using a profile that's been developed specifically for your printer ink and paper combination?

Second, are you ensuring that the printer is not doing it's own color management? For example, the Epson driver features an option to disable color management. This is a requisite option when using a color profile with your print job. I wonder if the Canon driver features a similar option. Strong color casting, especially magenta or greens, is evidence of missing this option when using an Epson printer.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Ken,

Thanks for your reply. I have tried both settings in Photoshop CS2's "Print with preview" options: (1) having PS manage the color and using a profile called "BJ Color Printer Profile 2000" [which I think came in as part of the printer driver install], and (2) letting the printer do the color management.

In either case, after I select "Print" after choosing from the "Print with preview" options, I have the chance to select the "Quality and Media" from the print driver dialog. And I am choosing settings that exactly match the Canon paper I am using.

Anyway, what baffles me the most at this point is why the PDI test image prints OK, but the image from my camera shows the color shift, even when I use identical print options for both.

I just don't get how the PDI image looks about the same on the monitor and the printed output, while the camera image looks right on the monitor, but blue in print.

How is that possible?!??

:-0

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mark J.

Hi Mark,

There's a very useful article about Canon printer profiles here

It would appear that's it's best to avoid the "BJ Color Printer Profile 2000" profile.

Failing all else, I would turn a suspicious eye at your monitor profile.

Regards,

Stuart

Hi Mark,
Although I like Ken don't have experience with this particular printer, I have and use a Canon i965 ink jet and IIRC, "BJ Color Printer Profile 2000", which came with the printer driver, is a generic profile - not good for photo printing.
This profile is intended for printing on plane paper and color you get with it is bad match to the original color.

Best regards
Notko

Thanks for the additional comments!

Notko and Stuart -

Thanks for the additional comments.

I've also tried another Canon S9000 profile with the same results.

I still don't see how a bad printer profile [or a bad monitor profile for that matter] could lead to a situation where the PDI test image looks fine on the monitor and prints well and another photo looks good but prints poorly.

I am away from my printer for the weekend, but when I get back to it, I am going to try and combine elements from the two images, print, and see what the result is.

Thanks again for the ideas!

Regards,

Mark

I have a Canon i960 and even using the correct profile for the paper (Canon or Red River) I tend to get a color cast, which soft proofing often even shows me though I haven't yet been able to get rid of it reliably. Canon Photo Paper Pro (PR1) is a very white (aka blue) paper and seems to be among the worst. Imagine my surprise when I printed a grayscale image and got a magenta cast.

I believe the S9000 uses the same inkset with Red and Green inks added. Dye inks, good gamut. No light or photo black, not such good B&W prints.

Why one image would print fine and another not I don't know. I wouldn't think the printer driver would need to understand the colorspace when you use PS color mgmt. I use a Mac also and set up several different presets for different papers using PS color mgmt.

In Print with Preview, here are my settings:
Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors
Printer Profile: Canon i960 PR1
Rendering Intent: Perceptual (still fighting with this, can't get this or Rel Col to work right)

Then in the OS X printer driver you select "Color Correction: None" on the Color Options page. You'll also need to select the appropriate Media Type on the Quality & Media page. You might also check the Special Effects page and make sure nothing's selected there.

I'm out of ideas if this doesn't help.

Aaron Strasburg said:

In Print with Preview, here are my settings:
Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors
Printer Profile: Canon i960 PR1
Rendering Intent: Perceptual (still fighting with this, can't get this or Rel Col to work right)

Then in the OS X printer driver you select "Color Correction: None" on the Color Options page. You'll also need to select the appropriate Media Type on the Quality & Media page. You might also check the Special Effects page and make sure nothing's selected there.

I'm out of ideas if this doesn't help.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Aaron - I'll confirm my settings when I get back to the printer tomorrow and see what happens.

Regards,

Mark

Mark,

If you still have not solved your colour mismatch/printing problems have a look at the Canon ICC Profile Guide and the following forum discussion at:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=181439&mode=linear#post181439

My on-going Canon printing problems were solved after working through the issues there and downloading the only Canon documentation on the use their ICC profiles (a link for this is also found at the above forum post.

Alan Cole

Looks like a print head issue . . .

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

I am now seeing a failure of the nozzle check pattern for yellow ink - the check pattern is pretty hard to see in yellow, so I probably missed that earlier, and issues with the laydown of yellow ink would account for the cyanotic appearance of some of my prints I think.

It still seems odd that prints of some test images looked pretty good, but maybe I am dealing with a gradual deterioration that just shows up more severely in some images than others.

I have ordered a new print head and in the meantime will attempt to clean the existing head outside the printer and see if I can get it unclogged.

Regards,

Mark J.

Hi Mark,

It might be you are possibly not using it regularly enough or that the air is dry. I believe you can have the Canon printer print out a page every day. There's software (PC only) for Epson printers, but I don't know if it has been applied to Canon as well. Maybe it's already an option in the Canon manual.

Asher

Inkjet color shift - problem resolved

Just to provide some closure on this issue - I installed a new print head and ran a nozzle check and alignment, then printed some test images.

My conclusion is that a partially clogged print head [yellow and magenta both had imperfect output] was to blame for the cyanotic appearance of my printed images, and that installation of a new print head has resolved this issue.

Thanks again to all who offered suggestions.

Regards,

Mark J.