Canon printer question

Sharkbait · Jul 13, 2004

Okay, having a bit of an issue with my canon s9000 printer. I refilled the ink cartridges on it, and now it's giving me a goofy color spectrum. Could the ink from my stratitec refill kit be THAT far off of Canon's??? :? Is there any way to calibrate the printer with the ink refills?

hobbes28 · Jul 13, 2004

I've heard that you are not ever supposed to use refills for a photo printer. I took that to heart and have never tried.

molested_cow · Jul 13, 2004

Hmmm.... that's tricky. Usually the colors shouldn't be that far off.

If you want quality print, I will always suggest the manufacturer's ink.

mrsid99 · Jul 13, 2004

Hi Shark,
Please don't take this as a snide remark but have you checked that you've got the ink tanks in the right place?
It's not a tough thing to do with six ink tanks especially with a cyan and a photo cyan and a magenta and a photo magenta.
I've a Canon S900 which is similar to yours (except yours has the wide carriage) and I know I've nearly mixed the tanks a couple of times.
If that doesn't work try running the setup procedure from scratch.
HTH.

Sharkbait · Jul 13, 2004

mrsid99 said:
Hi Shark,
Please don't take this as a snide remark but have you checked that you've got the ink tanks in the right place?
It's not a tough thing to do with six ink tanks especially with a cyan and a photo cyan and a magenta and a photo magenta.
I've a Canon S900 which is similar to yours (except yours has the wide carriage) and I know I've nearly mixed the tanks a couple of times.
If that doesn't work try running the setup procedure from scratch.
HTH.

That was the first thing I checked!! Luckily, there's a little sticker on the carriage to tell me which tank goes where. The thing seems to devour photo-cyan and photo-magenta, and all my prints are coming out with a greenish-bluish cast to them. :|

mrsid99 · Jul 13, 2004

In that case my guess is that the inks are slightly different so try running the initial setup again, you know the one where you have to run a print page and select the closest color etc.?

Sharkbait · Jul 13, 2004

mrsid99 said:
In that case my guess is that the inks are slightly different so try running the initial setup again, you know the one where you have to run a print page and select the closest color etc.?

Hmm I don't think it has a util like that. I'll have to dig around... I know I can manually control the ink concentrations, but there's no way to check it individually...

mrsid99 · Jul 13, 2004

I just checked the manual and it's the printhead alignment utility I was thinking of.
If that doesn't work then I guess it's new ink cartridges all around.

Sharkbait · Jul 14, 2004

I've been running every combination of stuff I can find, and it's definitely the printer. I printed a photo on my old lexmark, and it came out pretty close to what I see on the monitor. I printed the photo (to the s9000) from photoshop, adobe album, and windows photo printing, and all come out with the same greenish/bluish tint, so yeah, I guess I'm shuckin out the bucks for new ink. :-? That sucks!

tr0gd0o0r · Jul 14, 2004

Is it a consistent tint on every photo? If so you might be able to adjust for it in photoshop before printing. NOt an ideal solution, but it may save you some money

Sharkbait · Jul 14, 2004

That's what I was thinking, as well. The control panel for the printer driver has manual adjustments that allow the c-m-y to be changed. The tint is very pronounced blue-cyan color, so I might try dropping that down some and see what happens.

Here's an example:

Original imagefile from photoshop

Scan of the print. Printed on glossy photo paper through photoshop.

As you can see, it's quite a noticeable shift... ;-) At first I thought I had some color profile set up wrong in photoshop, but this is consistent with anything that goes through the printer. :?

Daniel · Jul 14, 2004

It kinda looks as if the other colors are not printed, only cyan and black is in the picture. Can you check the other colors?

Sharkbait · Jul 14, 2004

It's breathing at the moment...I'm running through some other settings in photoshop and it's looking better. I've got the browns back into the newest prints. Grrrr!!!

Sharkbait · Jul 14, 2004

It was the inks. I went out and got a new p-cyan and p-magenta today, and it works 1000% better! :|

mrsid99 · Jul 14, 2004

Glad you got it fixed without having to buy the whole set!
For reference, I ordered a set (all 6) of replacement ink cartridges for my S900 today and supposedly they're guaranteed to be direct replacements for the Canon's.
Well we'll see, I'll let you know how they work once I get them, at $22 for all six it's worth the gamble.