Anybody do a print profile on a 3rd party ink and was happy?

[bobkeenan]

I have a canon mx680. I use Costco's Kirkland paper, and Uni-kit ink. I knew my image colors were a little off. Santa bought me a spyder3 print printer profiler. Long story short. My uni-kit ink has a collapsed gamut giving me a reddish hue to my photos. The canon inks works great but $$$$$.

So has an one found a 3rd party ink that does not clog, lasts a fair amount of time, has a comparable gamut to the canon inks.

Bob Keenan

 

[pharmacist]

Yes, hobbicolors UW-8 works great and has even a larger gamut than original Canon ink and is fairly fade resistant. Cheap refill ink will give you this problem. Also Image Specialist ink is a good alternative and will give you similar results when profiled.

 

[on30trainman]

I use Costco Kirkland Glossy paper, Image Specialist dye based ink (Canon ip4500, ip4200) and profile using Profile Prism, and have gotten good profiles with resultant very good and accurate color prints. The prints match well with my Eye1 Display2 calibrated Dell 2209WA monitor.

Steve W.

 

[qwertydude]

I use stratitec ink and costco paper, using profile prism I only got 2-4 red x's on average on the test print page when calibrating. In fact with canon oem inks I usually got about anywhere from 3-6 red x's. Print life was comparable as I did a long drawn 6 month sunlight fading test between kodak, meritline cheapy paper, and canon paper between canon ink and stratitec ink. I posted it quite a while ago, I'd have to look for it again but stratitec works fine and their pigment black clogs less than canon pigment black.

 

[Grandad35]

......Santa bought me a spyder3 print printer profiler.....

So has an one found a 3rd party ink that does not clog, lasts a fair amount of time, has a comparable gamut to the canon inks.

Bob Keenan

A few questions:
1. Is your monitor calibrated?
2. How many color swatches did you use in the targets used to generate your profile? More swatches are obviously better.
3. Did you do a nozzle check just before printing the targets to make sure that the printer was working properly?
4. Did you turn off all color management when printing the targets? It is easy to have an incorrect setting at this stage that corrupts the process.
5. If you recently switched ink (e.g. from Canon to Uni-kit), did you print enough to make sure that the previous ink was completely purged before printing the targets?
6. Did you let the targets dry for 24 hours before measuring them (there can be subtle changes in the colors until the ink completely dries)?
7. Is the red color cast present in the lighter colors? If it is only present in the saturated colors, it is possible that these colors are "out of gamut" for either your monitor or printer.
8. What software are you using to print? Not all printing packages are properly color managed and may not use your profile correctly. A good example is Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint, which won't use non-Canon profiles. Photoshop and Qimage are two programs that ARE color managed.
9. What "Rendering Intent" are you using to print?

You might want to look at this post to help with the settings.

In general, the "one ink for all printers" solution isn't optimal. To give you an idea of the complexity involved in matching the colors, look at this thread.

Likewise, fade resistance is a complicated subject. I am not aware of any 3rd party inks that match Canon's ink for fade resistance - see this link for reference.

 

[bobkeenan]

My answers are found below in the quote. Note that I have been sending the color data and pictures of samples/ proofs to Spyder. They have been very helpful.

......Santa bought me a spyder3 print printer profiler.....

So has an one found a 3rd party ink that does not clog, lasts a fair amount of time, has a comparable gamut to the canon inks.

Bob Keenan

A few questions:
1. Is your monitor calibrated? Yes, with spyder3 elite
2. How many color swatches did you use in the targets used to generate your profile? More swatches are obviously better. 225 to start then tried the 729
3. Did you do a nozzle check just before printing the targets to make sure that the printer was working properly? Yes
4. Did you turn off all color management when printing the targets? It is easy to have an incorrect setting at this stage that corrupts the process. Yes
5. If you recently switched ink (e.g. from Canon to Uni-kit), did you print enough to make sure that the previous ink was completely purged before printing the targets? Yes
6. Did you let the targets dry for 24 hours before measuring them (there can be subtle changes in the colors until the ink completely dries)? No.. Tried 15 min and then 3 hours. Saw no difference. Maybe 24 would be different.
7. Is the red color cast present in the lighter colors? If it is only present in the saturated colors, it is possible that these colors are "out of gamut" for either your monitor or printer. A little in the light area but mostly in the darker areas.
8. What software are you using to print? Printing proofs from Spyder3 Print. Not all printing packages are properly color managed and may not use your profile correctly. A good example is Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint, which won't use non-Canon profiles. Photoshop and Qimage are two programs that ARE color managed.
9. What "Rendering Intent" are you using to print? Saturation (Recommended by Spyder)

You might want to look at this post to help with the settings.

In general, the "one ink for all printers" solution isn't optimal. To give you an idea of the complexity involved in matching the colors, look at this thread.

Likewise, fade resistance is a complicated subject. I am not aware of any 3rd party inks that match Canon's ink for fade resistance - see this link for reference.

 

[Grandad35]

What "Rendering Intent" are you using to print? Saturation (Recommended by Spyder)

Everything looks good except for the rendering intent. Note the description of "Saturation" in this link. I have never seen it recommended for printing photos - most sources recommend perceptual or relative colorimetric for photos. In his description of Saturation, Fraser states "Saturation just tries to produce vivid colors, without concerning itself with accuracy...." This setting MAY be your problem. I can't imagine why Datacolor recommends Saturation.

If 3 hours drying time didn't make a difference, then 24 hours probably won't either (the color change effect is similar to a decaying exponential).

If you have Photoshop, try printing through it. If not (and you have a PC), you can download a free trial version of Qimage to see how your photos will look once you are set up.

Good luck.

 

[leo8088]

GIMP is an open source (GNU) free software originally written for Linux. It has been ported to Windows and it has a version that has the look and feel of Photoshop. It is 100% free to use and keep. I tried it before and it did work like Photoshop. It is the only professional level photo editing software that is truly free.

 

[ghwellsjr]

How do you get it? Can you give us a link to download it?

 

[IanYY]

How do you get it? Can you give us a link to download it?

Gimp version 2.6.8 ... http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

I have used Gimp for several years and am currently running it on Windows 7 64-bit. Works fine except for one significant problem (in my opinion) - printer support - some printer settings cannot be set by Gimp's "File / Printer / Preferences". For instance, you can't set the Duplex and Borderless options, and can't select certain paper types/sizes (more precisely, you can set them but Gimp immediately forgets the settings). The solution to this problem is to change the default printer settings in Control Panel, and then change the defaults back again when finished with Gimp.

It's a nuisance, but a small price to pay for otherwise high quality free software.

Apparently this printer problem is unsolvable (according to the Gimp developers) because Gimp is an open-source program and printer drivers generally are not open-source.

Ian