Canon and Black Inks

[zing]

I have two canon printers the pro 100 and mp610 but don't have a lot of knowledge about the one canon printer being used to print photos.

For years we've used a pixma mp610 for everything from school papers and projects to taxes. Kids have all moved out and it was not seeing much use.

I decided to use the mp610 to print my black and white 8.5 x 11 and 8 x 10 photos. The reason I'm really wanting to use a smaller printer like the mp610 for 8.5 and 8 inch photos is my frugal side. A lot of what I print are black and white photos

I don't want the color cartridges in the pro 100 going through each cycle squirting expensive color ink into a foam pad unused and wasted while I print small black and white 8 x 10s and such. So at least in my mind I see an advantage to using the smaller printer. The pro 100 will get plenty of use when I do color enlargements

Now for the inevitable questions as I decide on which ink path to take to feed the mp610 and pro 100

The canon mp 610 uses two black cartridges I understand one is pigment and one is dye. Do these canons use both black inks when black and white photos are printed ?

I'm already starting to look at potential replacements for the mp610 because of its age. I may get another year or more out of it but I want be ready to buy a new one when it kicks the bucket.

I wish I could find one that is easy to use and prints great black and white and some color too

Bill

 

[The Hat]

Hi Bill
Being frugal is a good thing that way to get to print even more photos out.

The MP 610 is a great little printer so don’t write it off just yet because there really isn’t any good replacement for it, so do what you can to keep it going for as long as possible.

It’s true that the Pro 100 will do a much better job with the B&W prints but with a bit of fiddling, trail and error the MP 610 can produce very reasonable photos too.

When it comes to printer the Pro 100 and the MP 610 are miles apart, the Pro 100 is a dedicated photo printer and the MP 610 is an all round work horse, like a jack of all trades, and it uses the pigment black ink only for text prints which might include photos on any plain paper document, but never for photos on glossy or matte photo papers..

 

[martin0reg]

First of all: B&W may be more difficult than color, if a neutral grey tone is important for you.

So I would use the one printer which makes the better B&W, depending on ink (OEM or 3rd party?) and paper and paper settings.

- both printers (like all I others) will use all color (dye) inks for printing photos, the percentage of blck is small and the results depends on how the printer is mixing C M Y K.
You could try different paper settings... a custom made (color) profile for the printer/paper certainly helps for good B&W output too... but that is another subject..
- both printers (like all canon) has a bigger black cart which is called "text black". It's pigment ink, but it's NOT for photo printing, but only for sharp deep blacks in text printing.

PS thehat was faster... the pro100 should have the better photo output... but you'll never know until you try your own paper and compare..

 

[stratman]

Concerning Pigment vs Dye Black ink usage... the following was compiled for the Canon MP830 but can be applied to your MP610:

PGI-5 Pigment Black Ink is used ONLY For:
- Plain Paper Text (monochrome and grey scale)
- Envelopes
- Transparencies
- Duplex Printing On Plain Paper
- Camera Direct Printing on Plain Paper

CLI-8 Dye-Based Color Inks are used anytime color is printed and is used exclusively for:
- All Photo Paper types (including when Duplex printing)
- High Resolution Paper
- T-shirt Transfers
- CD-R's
- All Borderless Printing, on both PhotoPaper and Plain Paper

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think it's even a little bit more complex - when you are printing B/W photos you are printing
gray tones which effectively are just a very small subset of all other colors with R=G=B, and grays are printed as such, as colors mixed from RGB in that ratio. Only blacks to 95% blacks are actually printed with the black inks, and then the driver is fading over to the use of a mix of colors. And even when you activate a grayscale option in the driver, it will do this - converting the image data into a grayscale image , and with a photo paper setting still mix the grays from the colors. If you choose grayscale on normal/copy paper only then the printer will solely use the pigment ink, and you'll see quite a coarse dithering of the grays which you won't really like. And to make it more confusing, if you use boarderless printing onto copy paper it'll switch to the dye inks, this to prevent any pigment residue build up at the position of the paper edges when slightly printing over the edges. So printing B/W on a small Canon without a color cast in the grays would only be possible with a special refill B/W ink set by which the color inks are replaced by corresponding gray inks.

 

[zing]

Thank you !! This site has real experts and I appreciate that in a huge way. These replies have given me a lot of good information to work with and think about and think about some more

I'm putting a lot of time and effort into this and it does mean a lot to have real bona fide experts that will help !

My friends think I'm nuts to spend this kind of time on " something that could be put on a flash drive and taken to the drugstore for prints"

Well O-K so now they finally know the truth about me

They just don't get "it"

Thank you !!

Bill