TR8560 duplex printing

[LonerMatt]

Hey all,

I recently purchased a TR8560 - to make artist books at home without busting the bank.

When I print single sided I select 'grayscale' and get an image that looks lovely. When I print duplex, even though I select 'grayscale' I get an image that is not grayscale - in fact it's the exact same tone that I would get if I printed a black and white page without ticking 'grayscale'.

I've used four different papers and noticed the same thing in each.

So, my question is: can I get duplex printing to print in the same tone as grayscale printing?

Is it time to get a paper profile? Mess with separation levels in the program I used (inDesign) or just take the good with the bad and print what's there?

Also, has anyone replaced all the colour inks with black and grey? if so what happens?

 

[PeterBJ]

I think all Canon printers that can do auto duplex printing behave in this manner. The purpose is to reduce "see-through" of what is printed on the other side of the paper.

You could try to select double sided photo paper as printing medium. When printing on photo paper the printer uses no pigment black ink, only dye inks. Maybe this will work?

Another but cumbersome solution would be to do the duplex printing manually: First print the odd pages single sided with greyscale selected, and then print the even pages single sided with the greyscale selected. You might get "see through" if you use normal copier paper, so a more heavy and high quality paper might be needed.

I don't know much about profiling, so I cannot tell if that will work.

Years ago mikling from Precision Colors offered a B/W inkset for Canon printers. With this inkset you printed the photo with normal settings for colour and the result was a B/W print with correct tones. The CMY inks were replaced with grey inks of varying strength. Yellow is perceived as a light colour so it is replaced by a light grey. Cyan is darker and is replaced by a darker grey. I think magenta is even darker and might be replaced by a darker grey or black. But creating a such inkset from photo black and grey inks and a suitable diluent is no simple task. A lot of testing and measurements will be needed. You might find some recipes for such inksets if you search the web.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Canon is switching from the pigment black ink to the photo black dye ink when duplexing. Canon explained a reason long time ago - since the page gets turned over transport rollers get into contact with the printed surface , and the pigmented black has a higher risk of pigment transfer to the rollers than dye inks, and when you do frequent duplexing you may see gray roller traces after a while of usage. So manual duplexing as described above would be the only work around. When you print with the normal paper setting onto photo paper you directly can see how easy those black pigments can be wiped off, they may stick somewhat better to a normal paper surface but still some may jump onto the rollers... Epson uses apparently a somewhat different pigment black in their workforce printers without this effect, Epson users are not facing this issue.
Printing B/W without a color cast is a separate subject, you either select the B/W option with normal paper, but this delivers you a printout which looks somewhat coarse, the pigment ink nozzles print with rather large droplets - for speed reasons - to get enough ink coverage in one print pass, using the CMY dye inks give you smaller droplets and gray areas look smoother.
Getting a neutral gray with colored inks is not easy, you need to adjust the color mix to the color temperature of the viewing conditions, profiling can help and improve it, or better even the use of a dedicated inkset in place of the regular color cartridges as described by @PeterBJ above. And if you do refill you'll see that the pigment blacks of different suppliers deliver you different blacks - some with a more brownish tone than others, and not all with the same black level. Since B/W printing is not so easy there are lots of articles on the internet and dedicated forums . It depends on you what your requirements are , how critical you view imperfections, color casts etc

 

[LonerMatt]

I bought a cheapish printer wanting to dip my toes in and knowing there would be compromises, so I'm definitely accepting of that situation in general. Ideally I wanted: not so expensive, A3 duplexing - and those two were (more or less) exclusive. So, for the moment, I'm A4 duplexing on the cheap to see if this is something I'd like to continue.

Manual duplexing isn't really doable - as I'm printing home made books/zines manual duplexing hundreds of times is pretty below average, and probably worse than just a cooler toned image. Really that's the difference: there's blue in the B/W image for the duplex. If I could reduce the blue a bit that would make it more neutral, I think. But if it's a massive hassle, I'll avoid that and make the best of what I have.

I'd love a dedicated ink set, but I doubt that's in the cards right now, though if there are any handy articles or ready made solutions I'd definitely be open to this.

I appreciate your candid advice and answers fellas - please keep giving any advice or ideas if anything comes to mind.

 

[stratman]

Unless things have changed with Canon printers:

• Auto Duplexing with Paper Type set to Plain Paper will use Pigment Black ink for text but will use the Dye-based colored ink for color text and images.
  
• Auto Duplexing with Paper Type set to any Photo Paper setting will use the Dye-based colored inks to make black text as well a everything else.
  
• Auto Duplexing with Paper Type set to Plain Paper AND Grayscale selected will use Pigment Black for everything.
• Auto Duplexing with Paper Type set to any Photo Paper setting AND Grayscale selected will use the Dye-based colored inks for everything.

Paper type setting is the key to what inks are used when Auto Duplexing whether Grayscale is selected or not.

See post #4 here.

 

[The Hat]

If I could reduce the blue a bit that would make it more neutral, I think. But if it's a massive hassle, I'll avoid that and make

@LonerMatt, unfortunately printers are not made to suite individual tastes, so you must except them as they are, but you can use the Colour/Intensity in your print driver to alter the colours in your prints.
Are you using OEM ink ?...

 

[PeterBJ]

Here is a test print and procedure to make the colour tone adjustment in the printer driver easier.

 

[LonerMatt]

Thanks guys, this is really helpful - I'll definitely get that .zip black and white test image to try and find the best colour balance for Black and White printing.

I'm assuming that when printing auto duplex, then, there's no point selecting the 'grayscale' box'?

This has been really helpful

 

[PeterBJ]

....I'm assuming that when printing auto duplex, then, there's no point selecting the 'grayscale' box'?....

That's a good question. I think you are right and that it makes no difference if greyscale is selected or not. Here is a quote from post #4 in the discussion linked to by @stratman

Note: If either 'Borderless Printing' or 'Duplex Printing' are enabled from the Page Setup tab, grayscale will be created using a combination of the color (dye) inks to prevent smearing. In addition, sometimes there is coding embedded in webpages and certain PDF files that tell the printer to print using color ink; in these instances, the printer will produce the black on the page using a combination of the color inks, even if the grayscale option is selected.

 

[LonerMatt]

Have printed out the B/W test - I think if I increase red 10-15% the cool/blue tone will be replaced by a B/W look I prefer.

Thanks for all the help, it's made a big difference.