Banding on Pixma Pro-1

[esmith132]

Hi, I"m seeking assistance for troubleshooting banding that appears in a print with having a large dark shadow area. I've not noticed this before today and thought I would consult the forum's expertise before proceeding. A scanned of the print that exhibits the issue and a Nozzle Check print are attached. The print is on Canson Baryta Photographique paper (semi-gloss).

Printer is a Canon Pro-1 that is a about 7 years old. Print head was replace about 1 yr ago. It is lightly used for printing images. Monthly nozzle checks. OEM inks and cartridges.

Thank you for any suggestions or follow-up questions.

 

[The Hat]

Thank you for any suggestions or follow-up questions.

I would hazard a guess and say it’s because you’re not using the printer enough and it needs more exercise, it could also be the wrong media setting for that Canson Baryta paper.

But what is noticeable in your nozzle print is the CO is not present whatsoever, you may need to replace the cart for a new full one and then run a deep clean which will also help your prints to look better..

 

[esmith132]

Thank you for your suggestions.

I decided to exercise the printer with a different paper (and media type). Using Ilford Galerie Prestige Smooth Gloss produce a print with the identical banding in the continuous dark tones. When I tried a different image having a near-continuous blue tone (i.e., sky), the print exhibits faint banding in the dark blue tones and and an uneven transition from dark to light blue (see attached image of scanned print).

Is this still a hardware issue (i.e., printhead needing exercise)? I'm wondering if there might be a software issue. P.S. I'm printing a RAW file from Lightroom using 16-bit output and standard print sharpening.

 

[The Hat]

I'm wondering if there might be a software issue. P.S. I'm printing a RAW file from Lightroom using 16-bit output and standard print sharpening.

What about the missing CO output, and did you run a deep clean cycle and then another nozzle check to see if it came back...

Raw files won’t print because they need to be converted first to another recognised format for the printer and you can not print in 16 bit either, try a tiff file in 8 bit and then compare the difference, this may in fact be your problem..

 

[esmith132]

I took the liberty to reload the Canon driver SW (Mac OS). That change appeared to address the poor printed quality of the image with a blue gradient (boat).

Ran a Group 3 (CO) deep clean. Yes, the CO part of the test print appears to be a bit more conspicuous as compared to the initial test print. A decreasing cartridge level confirms that CO is being consumed.

Next I printed the original image (boy fishing) on the original paper (Canson Baryta) and two additional papers (Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss and Moab Juniper Baryta) paying attention to designate the correct ICC Profile and Media-Type. The banding issue is still evident on the Canson paper but not on the other two papers. So, this confirms that the issue appears to lays somewhere with the paper and media-type selection (as originally hypothesized)?

 

[Artur5]

Hopefully, it’s a software related issue with this paper and your printer is OK.

Anyway, don’t rely on the accuracy of ink levels reported by the driver, specially if some nozzles are clogged. If you perform a deep clean. the printer takes for granted that a given amount of ink is consumed in the cleaning, whether if CO is actually being ejected or not, The driver counts theoretical droplets, it knows nothing about possible clogs.