Horrible photo colours from iP5200 and other printers under W8 64 bit

[PeterBJ]

I recently bought a new desktop computer at an Aldi sale. It is the Medion P5220D also known as MD8816. It is running Windows 8 64 bit. Some specs: Intel core i5 3550P CPU, 4 GB 1600MHz RAM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 650 Graphics card, and 2 TB HD. Not a gamer PC but a family/multimedia PC above average. Much faster than my old Vista computer. After I installed the freeware "Classic Shell" I had the start button back, and I started to install soft- and hardware.

For some Canon printers the install was plug and play with Windows update supplying the drivers, other printers needed a driver from Canon website. After that the printers worked, I tested by printing nozzle checks and the Windows printer page. I then downloaded the CD label print from Canon website, after install it gave the error message: "no such printer found", but the download and install of a printer add on module to the Windows Update supplied driver solved the problem, and the CD label print worked.

Now to the bad thing:

Using my iP5200 I then tried printing my favourite test picture "PrinterEvaluationImage" from Windows by right-clicking and select print. I used the same IS inks and Sihl Paper and the same settings as with my older XP, Vista and 7 computers. With the old computers the picture prints beautifully, very hard to tell from a picture printed on Canon OEM paper with Canon OEM inks. But with the new Win 8 computer the picture was dull with too low saturation, but it wasn't too light, it was like some of the colour had been replaced by grey. Greyscale showed no noticeable colour cast. Tweaking the printer settings was a step in the right direction but it wasn't sufficient.

When I click print, a window with printer settings show up. For a second it shows correct colours, then it changes to the more greyish picture. I have compared printer and colour management settings for my new computer and my Windows 7 laptop. The settings appear to be the same default settings, so does anybody know what I should do to solve the problem?

Here are links to the test picture used and instructions for use: Edit:- (See Below)http://outbackprint.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html and http://outbackprint.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html . The test image is a 40.2 MB .tif file

Edit: The links to the test picture and the instructions are no longer active, but they can be found using the Wayback machine. Here is the test image: https://web.archive.org/web/2015031...ckphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html and here is the instruction: https://web.archive.org/web/2015031...ckphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html

I haven't tested all my printers yet, but the results are similar for the iP4000.

I haven't got my old HP scanner installed on the new computer yet, I don't know if it is possible, but if scans are needed I can use an older computer for the scan.

Medion also supplies Windows 7 drivers for the computer, so in worst case I can install a Windows 7 32 bit version, but having to buy a new Windows ruins the 33% rebate bargain.

I have now got the scanner working with the new computer so here is a picture consisting of two crops from the "PrinterEvaluationImage" . The top part is printed using Windows 7 32 bit, the bottom part is printed using Windows 8 64 bit. The scanned image is not quite colour true, but the top part is close to what the image should look like, and the bottom part fairly well shows the much more dull pictures printed using Windows 8.

 

[The Hat]

Hi PeterBJ
You have one hell of a driver conflict there and there are no easy ways around it.

The age of the printer is the problem here, there are just no drivers been made anymore for a lot of the older printers these days.

Virtual windows is not such a good idea to run in win 8 either so another way would be to try run a duel boot operating system, win 8 64 / win 7 32.

The only other thing you could try is to locate a win 7 64 bit driver for the iP5200 and mutually install that in win 8
if it will let you of course, it may not like unsigned drivers.

Which software App are you trying to print from ?

 

[PeterBJ]

The software I am printing from is Windows, no special program. My OS language is Danish, so I don't know the English term, but it could be something like "Windows picture viewer". I think the virtualialisation is only available in the top versions of the OS, not in my version, which I think is Home Premium.

I also have a pixma 3600. I don't remember how I installed that, but I have just tested it and it has the same horrible colours. I have just downloaded a driver specifically for Win 8 64 bit, so I am going to try that driver and report back.

Dual boot might be an option, so I can compare, if it is successful, I can reformat the HD to get rid of this OS which I am beginning to think is the worst ever by Microsoft! Running hardware correctly is an important task for every OS.

The Metro UI might be smart with a portable device with a small touch screen, but is horrible for use with traditional screen, keyboard and mouse. Luckily there exists applications, that can bring back the start button and start menu.

Do you have any idea if it is the Windows 8 that is causing the problems or it is the 64 bit, so a 64 bit Windows 7 would also cause problems?

 

[The Hat]

I would hazard a guess but maybe the print App doesnt support one or more of your imbedded picture formats, expert I am not when it comes to printing decent photos.

When I print the odd picture in Paint Shop Pro (Very old) it sometime makes a proper mess of the picture because it has some colour variations in it that are not supported with-in the App that are available in the newer Photo Shop.

I havent tried win 8 yet myself but what Ive heard from the experts is that it is a great O/S despite not having the traditional start/shut down buttons in it, I couldnt get my head around Win 95 myself at first but in time my Neanderthal ways were coach out of me.

The problem I reckon is down to Canon not bothering to produce up to date drivers
but then they cant be expect to support all of their printers indefinitely.

I think the real clash is between the 32 and 64 bit drivers solve that one and youll be a winner, I am currently running both Vista and Win 7 64 bit O/S with all my Canon printers successfully..

 

[PeterBJ]

The problem I reckon is down to Canon not bothering to produce up to date drivers
but then they cant be expect to support all of their printers indefinitely.

I think this is the explanation. Here are lists of OS compatibility for some Canon printers, all my Canon printers are supported by Windows 7 both 32 and 64 bit: http://www.canon.dk/Images/New - Windows 7 InkjetandBubblejet Printers_tcm81-1076290.pdf ,but for Windows 8 only the newer iP2700 and iP3600 which are my least valuable Canon printers are supported: http://www.canon.dk/Images/Windows 8 Inkjet Printers and All in Ones_tcm81-1073647.pdf

If the old but very valuable printers can't be killed remotely by firmware upgrades, then you can pull the plug by stopping support for new OS's effectively degrading the printers to plain paper only office printers!

I am going to do some experiments with the Windows 7 64 bit drivers run in compatibility mode for Win7/64. If unsuccessful, I think I will be installing Windows 7 instead.

 

[websnail]

For some reason my antenna are twitching at profiles... Has some default loaded or is one in use that's wrong?

 

[PeterBJ]

I am not using any custom profiles, the setting with the Pixma 5200 is Photo Paper Pro and Quality = Automatic. The paper is the popular Sihl and the dye inks are IS. With Windows XP, Vista and 7 all 32 bit this setting works very well, when I just right-click a picture in a folder and choose print, without any tweaking of the printers colour settings. Doing the same in Windows 8 produces very bad results, at least with .tif files. I have tried to compare all settings I could find regarding printers in a Windows 7 32 bit laptop and the Windows 8 64 bit desktop, and I haven't been able to find any differences.

But I think The Hat is getting close here:

..I would hazard a guess but maybe the print App doesnt support one or more of your imbedded picture formats...

I found and downloaded the Fujifilm test picture used by The Hat in this thread: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=8927 . This test picture is a 931 kB .jpg file, the other test picture is 40 MB .tif. Strangely enough, the Fujifilm test picture seems to be OK or need only a little bit of tweaking. The printout is close to what I see on my uncalibrated but reasonably good HP monitor, so it seems there is a problem with printing .tif files in Windows 8. Maybe I can find a freeware program to handle .tif files?

 

[websnail]

Sorry, not meaning custom profiles... In Windows 7 and presumably 8 there's an option to choose colour profiles for hardware to it's possible the incorrect one is set.

If it's just one image file format though, yeah I'd go with The Hat's guess.

As for file viewers, plenty of those if seems.

 

[The Hat]

Here is another idea that I came up with for you to try out.

Are you using the Win 8 Photo App to print from because if you are then you problems will be many but if you use Windows photo viewer then that will work better for you with fewer problems.

Just right click on the photo you wish to open and select Open with and you will get a much better print ok..

 

[PeterBJ]

websnail wrote:

Sorry, not meaning custom profiles... In Windows 7 and presumably 8 there's an option to choose colour profiles for hardware to it's possible the incorrect one is set.

If it's just one image file format though, yeah I'd go with The Hat's guess.

This is a subject I know very little about, could you please give me a hint about where to look and what to look for? JPG files print fine, my iP5200 behaves normally when printing these. I haven't tested other file formats yet, but it seems Windows 8 has a problem with TIFF files. Could I be so lucky that it is just some setting that needs changing?

The Hat Wrote:

Here is another idea that I came up with for you to try out.

Are you using the Win 8 Photo App to print from because if you are then you problems will be many
but if you use Windows photo viewer then that will work better for you with fewer problems.

Just right click on the photo you wish to open and select Open with and you will get a much better print ok..

Now I understand, I'm not using one of the "Apps" from the Metro UI, I'm using the Windows Photo Viewer, from the Desktop UI, which I thought was called Windows Picture Viewer. I right-click and choose "Print". You get the same result just by right-clicking a picture file in a folder and choose "Print".

The "apps" might be smart on a small portable device, but are a nuisance on a traditional screen, as they run in a full screen window, they cannot be resized, so you can only run one app at a time, turning Windows into "Window". The only way to stop the app I found was ALT-F4, which you don't have without a keyboard. I bought a booklet about Windows 8 to learn more, but I think I will stick with the desktop environment, which looks similar to Windows 2000, after the addition of a start button. Rumours will know that the coming Windows 8.1 update will include the start button. I think that would be a very wise decision. If it is not included I can recommend the freeware "Classic Shell" that brings back the start button and start menu, as we know it from previous Windows versions. It also allows to boot directly to the desktop environment. Metro UI is not lost, you change to it by holding SHIFT while clicking the new start button. To change back to the desktop just press one of the Windows keys.

I think half of the users hate Windows 8, the rest love it. I guess I am too old to love this OS, but I might learn to accept it.