Diagnosing color problems on a Pro9500

[mikling]

A customer contacted me and said he was having problems with color after refilling his Pro9500.
Let's go through this exercise and from this you will develop what you SHOULD do to help yourself down the road should any problems occur.
First some pictures of the problem color problem. It is the ubiquitous Fuji pattern as well as a nozzle check and test print image.
Apparently he tried everything and all kinds of profiles and could not get the color correct.

From this exercise you will learn a key thing about what the nozzle check reveals other than just whether you have a clog or not.

The submitted images.

Next. what a proper set of colors should look like. Now the images are taken with different capturing devices and will illustrate a different vividness because of different capture processing but the essential thing to look for are the REALTIVE BRIGHTNESS AND VIVACITY within the same image.

CORRECT SHADES

So I want to see the experienced refillers comment on what likely happened. I deal with this issue all the time.

 

[mikling]

Hints::::::Now when you look at the nozzle check, look closely at the right side and the left side and what can you conclude. This also applies to the Pro-100 and Pro-10 and Pro-1 as well. Now look at the relative colors between PC and C and PM and M. Gray and Black also needs to be looked as well.

In the graduated test image picture you also learn what happens in the lighter shades of grey which is primarily composite on the 9500.

You will learn a LOT here. Trust me.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

He used C and M instead of PC and PM. I'm not sure what's wrong with GY, but perhaps the wrong ink has been used there as well?? There may be something funny about black too. I don't know what the solid bars are supposed to be.

 

[PeterBJ]

I agree with ThrillaMozilla. C and M were used instead of PC and PM. Maybe PC and PM were also used instead of C and M, it is hard to see from the first nozzle check. The small vertical bars should be a neutral grey or nearly so. The blue column in the first RGBCMYK test print also suggest something wrong with cyan and magenta. Blue is made from cyan + magenta.

I once salvaged a Canon i965. This printer uses 6 dye ink cartridges BCI-6 C PC M PM Y BK. I did not have any PC and PM refill ink, so for a test I used C and M instead of PC and PM. Here is the nozzle check. Notice the same too strong PC and PM nozzle check stripes compared to the C and M stripes:

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm afraid this printhead is reaching the end of its useful life, RGCM all have lost quite some saturation, these nozzles are more frequently used than the light colors except on photo paper.

 

[The Hat]

Maybe your client was going colour crazy, but it’s possible that he mixed up the Black the Cyan and Magenta colours, there are two colours for each Black, Cyan and Magenta, giving a total of 6 individual colours.

I’ve done that myself with the Magenta by putting PM in that cart by mistake, but it only happened the once, I now marry bottle and cart together before reset/refilling commence,
it’s the only way to avoid confusion...

 

[martin0reg]

- vertical bars at GY are greenish, at R are reddish.
- C and M should be as saturated (at least) as LC and LM.
- and there is a wrong "step to darker" in B on the testprint page, don't know why..

I have no 9xxx canon, only smaller canon.. but there is something similar that happens to me sometimes:
- a sort of "weak" color bars, without any stripes. Could be misunderstood as a good nozzle check because all nozzle rows seem to work... but they don't ...
In a nozzle check from epson you see every single nozzle, while a check from canon doesn't show each nozzle but the state of the whole nozzle row, I think.
Possibly because there's a "surplus" of nozzles in thermal heads, to replace the ones which are burnt out, until there are no more "substitutes" and stripes will appear...
...but this is just my speculation...

 

[mikling]

I think everyone nailed it pretty much. An important thing for everyone once they have their printer settled in with the right colors is to print a good nozzle check and the graduated pattern and STORE it away. Any time any color issue crops up a color comparison on the nozzle check can reveal a lot. The graduated pattern is also important in this regard as well.
Those gray bars tells a lot about the resultant composite grays.

Now suppose someone tried correcting this image with an ICC profile with the wrong inks in the tanks thinking it was a color profile problem. How would that work out with a custom profile?

Another Hint. Look at how the graduated colors essentially swell up and down when the incorrect ink is used...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Epson can spit mutliple droplet sizes from one nozzle, Canon cannot , they have separate nozzle rows for the same ink for different droplet sizes - like 1pl, 2pl and 7pl . So in theory the 1pl nozzle could overprint a missing 2pl droplet, that's what the driver probably does anyway when tuning color tones and mixing smaller and bigger droplets in one pixel.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the red and green nozzle check fields are as weak as the C and M areas, but R and G are not exchanged with light colors and should show more color saturation which makes me suspicious.