Canon i9900 on Cartridge World inks

[copaesthetic]

Mac OSX 10.4
ViewSonic VX710 (monitor color profile set to VX710)
Canon i9900 (current driver)
Adobe CS2 Photoshop & Illustrator (CMYK - PANTONE Process Uncoated)

* printing PDFs from Adobe Acrobat 7.0

Adobe Color Settings: Color Management Off
Working Spaces
RGB: Monitor RGB - VX710
CMYK: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
Gray: Gray Gamma 2.2

** regular plain white 24lb white paper used


My colors are out of whack!

At first I thought that this had to do with the monitor colors being out of sync with my printer, but I'm starting to realize that this is an ink issue, possibly a paper issue as well. I had used up all my OEM inks on my Canon and so about a month ago I got all 8 refilled at the local Cartridge World (CW). Lately I have been printed heavily colored materials and have noticed that they are printing out noticeably darker, saturated and less vibrant. What really caught my attention was when I printed out what was supposed to be a DEEP PURPLE LOGO that came out NAVY BLUE!

I've attached a scan of a sample of CMYK and RGB swatches so that you could get an idea of what I am talking about. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y159/devisi0n/testcolors2.jpg I thought I had pinpointed it to being a bad magenta cartridge, so I went back to CW and they replaced both the regular and photo magentas for me. Notice how dark the magenta swatch is in comparison and how it lacks vibrancy. I returned home and ran a few more test sheets and nothing had changed.



Hopefully somebody could help me figure out what is going wrong here, thanks!

 

[pharmacist]

Hi,

One question: did you have a appropriate profile for the Cartridgeworld refilled cartridges on the paper used ? If not: this can resolve your problme (almost) entirely......

Here in Belgium you can get this for 5,-/profile (VAT inclued) for a simple profile and this is enough for most people

 

[copaesthetic]

No I do not, I just have the default profiles that my Canon comes with. I actually tried messing with the profiles by setting my Canon printer to the MP1 profile (Matte Paper - 1 being the lowest quality) which I had to set by using the ColorSync application on my Mac. But I noticed it had no made any difference.

I don't think neither Canon, CW nor OfficeMax (paper) offer such a custom profile.

 

[Grandad35]

Adobe Color Settings: Color Management Off
Working Spaces
RGB: Monitor RGB - VX710
CMYK: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
Gray: Gray Gamma 2.2

What really caught my attention was when I printed out what was supposed to be a DEEP PURPLE LOGO that came out NAVY BLUE!

If you want to print accurate colors, you need to set up your system for color management. I have attached a copy of my Photoshop color setup:


Comments:
*AFAIK, there is no way to turn off Color Management in Photoshop. You can turn color management off in your printers driver, but the colors will then be really unpredictable.
*The RGB working space should be sRGB, aRGB, Apple RGB, ColorMatch RGB or even Bruce RGB, never your monitors profile. The monitor profile does contain a color space, but it isnt useful as a working color space.
*It is very difficult to judge color from a scanned image because a) Most scanners arent calibrated and b) most scanning packages automatically adjust the brightness/contrast/color balance.

It is important to realize that a monitor cannot display all of the colors that your eyes can see, and that a printer also cannot print all of the colors that your eyes can see. Further, the range of colors that each device can generate (their color gamuts) have some colors that overlap, but they also have colors that cant be generated on the other device. This is especially the case with green and blue. The attached image shows a screen shot of your starting colors and what they look like after soft-proofing with an i9900 profile for OEM ink and PPPro paper. Therefore, you would probably see a similar problem with OEM inks, as the printer cannot print the color that you are looking for.


Note that the screenshot captured the color numbers after they passed through the monitor profile. For this reason, the absolute colors on the preceeding image aren't exactly the same as they appeared on my monitor, but the relative changes in color between the two images are still valid.

For more information, read:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/color_management.htm
http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html

 

[copaesthetic]

I've configured all my Adobe apps to your specifications, but I am still getting the same results.

 

[copaesthetic]

UPDATE - I just received cartridges of G&G Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow from Inkgrabbers and it appears as though there is no difference.

BTW here is the hex of the purple that I am trying to re-produce 412F8B
Let me if you see a big discrepancy between what you print and what you see on screen.

 

[pharmacist]

HI copaestheic,

Could you tell me the printer profile you have used to print your deep purple colour ? The paper selection (Photo Paper Pro, Glossy Photo paper Plus etc.....), the print quality etc so I can have the same testing environment as you do.

I will print 2 patterns: one with my personal Hobbicolors UW-8 profile and one with your settings..... Later on I will put the scanned image on this board.

 

[copaesthetic]

Everything is at default.
All the Adobe applications are set to North American General Purpose 2 color settings.
The printer color profile is set to BJ Color Printer Profile 2000.

And the rest of the media parameters http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y159/devisi0n/printersettings.jpg

Thanks pharmacist.

 

[pharmacist]

One thing: you are using plain paper, but printing media is set to photo......Never use normal paper if your printer is told to print on photopaper as in the case as you do. Colours will be completely different.

Just disable Adobe's own color management and use the printer's own print profile set to normal paper and printing quality to high. Try this and tell me if this works for you.

 

[Tin Ho]

Photoshop is not just a photo printing application. It is complicated to set it up correctly. To troubleshoot the problem try to use a photo printing software that does not do color management. You will not run into double profiling, one by the printing application and one more by the printer driver. I have an old Kodak digital camera. It uses a software from Kodak. You can down load it free. It does not do color management. This software will help you identify if your problem is from a wrong color management set up in the Photoshop. It is a software for my Kodak digital camera but it is really more than just for my camera. It is a photo printing program and is free. Here is the Kodak software: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/downloads/dln_ekn006609.jhtml?pq-path=683/4149