8.5x11 photo in 45 seconds on i9900

[ghwellsjr]

I have been running some benchmarks on how long it takes for my new i9900 to print when specifying different 8.5 by 11 inch papers and different qualities of print, looking for the fastest printout. (I am using the ArcSoft PhotoStudio that came with my Canon camera and specifying bordered prints.) The fastest printout that looks good is obtained by printing on plain paper with the Standard quality; 45 seconds from clicking the print button until the paper is ejected. I decided to see what it would look like on photo paper, realizing that since the i9900 has only dye inks, I wouldn't get into trouble like I would with my other printers that would switch to pigment black for plain paper. I used the same settings as I previously did for the plain paper printout, but the printout took over two minutes.

That was when I discovered that this printer knows what kind of paper you put in it, at least as far as distinguishing between plain paper and Epson Glossy Photo Paper. For those of you who have this printer, you know that there is a little black "Dolly", for lack of a better term, located in the lower right corner of the sheet feeder. For those of you who don't have an i9900, here is a picture of the sheet feeder area of the printer:

And here is a closeup of the dolly:

Apparently, this dolly has some kind of illumination and sensor that measures the reflectivity of the paper.

So, not wanting to be outsmarted by this printer, I put a sheet of photo paper in the sheet feeder and held a sheet of plain paper in front of it so that the dolly would see the plain paper. Sure enough, the printer sucked up the photo paper and printed a beautiful photo in 45 seconds, just like it did on the plain paper originally. The photo is slightly lighter than all the other prints I made on the photo paper but certainly just as acceptable.

The reason why this printer is so fast is that it has a very large print head, three times larger than most other Canon printers, 5/8 inch instead of 3/16 inch. When printing Standard quality on plain paper, the printer advances the paper 5/16 inch between each scan of the print head. This results in two passes of the print head over each area of the paper. There is also a single-pass mode that advances the paper 5/8 inch but it is unacceptably light.

Throughout all of my testing, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing the Print Advisor does is dim out some of the selections in the Print Quality, set the Grayscale, set the Print Type under the Manual Color Adjustment, and set the Media Type. In other words, High Print Quality works exactly the same, no matter which photo paper you select. The Print Quality has mainly to do with how far the paper advances on each scan of the print head.

Thanks, Canon, for crippling our printers (but we have a work-around).

 

[WhiteDog]

Yes this can drive you nuts, especially when trying to cure banding or uneven ink flow problems. I first found this setting when inserting a sheet of plain in front of glossy and telling the i9900 to print two copies. The prints are different! To disable paper detection go to printer properties/maintenance/custom settings/identify paper type and uncheck the box. Except in offices I can see no use for this utility. I agree that printing photos with "plain paper" setting, even on glossy, is fast and of surprisingly high quality, though not continuous tone. The question is now, does this sensor have only two responses (glossy/plain) or is there a range of them. Somebody should get five paper types stacked up and order 5 copies on plain paper to see what happens. If I do this, I will post back here.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Thanks a million, WhiteDog, for pointing out the setting to turn this feature off. How did you learn about it? I had trouble being able to uncheck it until a figured out that you have to get there from the Printers folder and not from the pulldown menu on an application.

As far as your question about the different photo papers, I'm thinking if the answer is that it only distinguishes between photo and plain, you could determine this by unchecking "Identify paper type" and seeing if manually selecting different paper types produces different results. I had previously concluded that this was the case, but that was before I realized the printer was outsmarting me, and so my test was invalid.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I have characterized the various print modes for the Canon i9900. The three main factors determining print time are the number of passes of the print head, whether the head prints in both directions or only in one direction, and whether the printer takes extra time doing the last half inch of the page. All these tests were done printing a bordered photo on 8.5x11 (letter) size paper. The print head normally takes about 0.7 seconds to scan across the page while printing and 0.4 seconds when not printing but modes 5 and 4 for plain paper have a super fast print mode of 0.5 seconds. All of the photo printouts look identical. Exceptions are noted for other paper types. The Print Quality numbers are from the Custom Set.

The times listed are from when the paper first starts to move until it is ejected. There are a few more seconds (average 4 to 8) added to the first page printed that is dependent on the speed of the computer and the state of the printer, but the listed times are how long each page takes when printing multiple pages. If your computer is slower than a couple GHz, the times may also increase. I did not include the envelope type because it prints the same as plain paper.

An asterisk signifies which Print Quality the Print Advisor selects for each paper type.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print Quality:
5               4               3               2               1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plain Paper:
5               Draft           Standard                        1*
1-pass          1-pass          2-pass                          8-pass
Bi-directional  Bi-directional  Uni-directional                 Bi-directional
0:08.5          0:11.4          0:39.9                          1:44
Very faint      Faint           Slightly faint                  Best on plain
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo Paper Pro:
                                                High*           1
                                                4-pass          8-pass
                                                Bi-directional  Bi-directional
                                                1:08            2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo Paper Plus Glossy:
                Draft                                           High*
                3-pass                                          8-pass
                Bi-directional                                  Bi-directional
                0:53.0                                          2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matte Photo Paper:
                                Standard*                       High
                                4-pass                          8-pass
                                Uni-directional                 Bi-directional
                                1:39                            2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glossy Photo Paper:
                Draft                                           High*
                4-pass                                          8-pass
                Bi-directional                                  Bi-directional
                1:08                                            2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
High Resolution Paper:
                                3               Standard*       High
                                4-pass          4-pass          8-pass
                                Bi-directional  Uni-directional Bi-directional
                                1:08            1:39            2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T-Shirt Transfer:
                                Standard*
                                8-pass
                                Bi-directional
                                2:09
                                Dark (mirror image)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transparency:
                Draft           Standard*
                4-pass          8-pass
                Bi-directional  Bi-directional
                1:08            2:09
                Dark            Extremely dark
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Photo Paper:
                                Standard*
                                8-pass
                                Bi-directional
                                2:09
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This boils down to this list of print times:

0:08.5  1-pass  Bi-directional  (plain paper)
0:11.4  1-pass  Bi-directional  (plain paper-slower due to multiple passes at end of page)
0:39.9  2-pass  Uni-directional (plain paper)
0:53.0  3-pass  Bi-directional  (any photo paper)
1:08    4-pass  Bi-directional  (any photo paper)
1:39    4-pass  Uni-directional (any photo paper)
2:09    8-pass  Bi-directional  (any photo paper)
1:44	8-pass  Bi-directional  (plain paper-faster since no slowdown at end of page)

You will note that paper type for the photo papers has no bearing on the print times. In fact, all the photo printouts look identical whether they are 3, 4, or 8 passes and whether they are Uni- or Bi-directional.

So if you want the best looking photo printouts in the shortest time on any type of photo paper, select Photo Paper Plus Glossy no matter what type of photo paper you are using and select draft as the Print Quality. Remember, it will take a few seconds longer than 53 seconds for a single printout, probably still under a minute.

The best photo printout on plain paper is obtained with Print Quality 1 for plain paper. Selecting a photo paper type when printing on plain paper not only takes longer, the printout is noticeably inferior.

By way of comparison, I measured how long it took to do a borderless print on plain paper in the Standard (3) print quality. It took 51.6 seconds compared to 39.9 for the bordered print.

I used ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5 to run these tests.

 

[Grandad35]

ghwellsjr,

Thanks for documenting the printing speeds for the i9900.

I sometimes use Ilford Classic Pearl (with a swellable coating), and Ilford's documentation recommends using "Glossy Photo Paper". I always suspected that this was because it printed more slowly so that the ink had more time to be absorbed into the swellable layer. I just repeated your test using my Ilford settings on Ilford paper and my Kirkland settings (PPPro) on Kirkland paper. The results were identical times, just as you found. However, I remember (at some time in the past) watching the printer switch from bidirectional printing to unidirectional printing on ICP in areas where the ink coverage was heavy - I suspect that this was to allow more time for the ink to be absorbed. I do not remember seeing this happen with the PPPro settings (using an "instant dry" nanoporous coating).

Changing the paper type not only affects the printing speed - it also selects the default icc profile used by the printing software. This can be partially offset if your printing software allows you to independently select the profile appropriate for the paper. I say "partially" because each profile is specific to the ink, paper and driver settings used to print the targets. Even if the ink and paper are the same, changing the driver's settings can affect your colors. This probably isn't a concern for most people, but I thought that I would mention it for those who have calibrated their system.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Grandad35, I do not understand profiles and I don't think I have ever used them but I thought you had to check "Enable ICM" in the Manual Color Adjustment to make them work. I never saw any difference in the look of the printout for any of the photo papers. The exceptions are noted for Plain Paper, T-Shirt Transfer, and Transparency.

My point is that if you just change the print quality so that the print time changes, you still get the exact same looking printout. I believe that the print quality has to do with the way the head overlaps the deposition of ink so that you cannot see the seams of the printing or the imperfections in the aiming of the nozzles. The more passes, the more these potentials for errors in the printing are averaged out.

Is this what you have observed with your profiles or under any other conditions? In other words, if you change just the print quality so that the print time changes, does the printout look any different?

Also, can you demonstrate any case where the printer changes from uni-directional to bi-directional within the same photo? I know this can happen with a document that contains both a photo printing in uni-directional mode and text printing in bi-directional mode but we are talking here about a single photo on a single sheet of paper.

 

[AlienSteve]

ICM is for 3rd party profiles. The stock drivers come with OEM profiles that are specific to the paper.

Mostly I've not noticed huge color shifts on my Canons. However, on an Epson R200 I found that when using Kodak Glossy Photo, with the Epson driver set to Epson Glossy paper, everything was shifted to green. When I changed the driver to Epson High Gloss Photo paper, everything looks beautiful.

 

[WhiteDog]

Has anyone tried changing the "ink drying wait time" control? The only control the printer would have over the "ink dry time" would be the amount of ink dispensed, as far as I can see. It is under maintenance/custom settings in the printer setup

 

[Grandad35]

ghwellsjr,

I ran a few additional tests on my i9900. I started with a grayscale gradient (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/img/files/4x6Grad.jpg) on a 4x6 print on 4x6 paper. The first part of the print proceeded normally, advancing the same small increment with each pass of the print head. About 1/2 way through the print it started doing some unidirectional printing, then even some cases where the paper only advanced every third pass. This seemed strange, since the heaviest ink had already been laid down. I then inverted the gradient so that the heaviest ink coverage was printed last, and the results were identical. My guess is that the printer was slowing down to allow the ink to "dry" before the paper was ejected - just as suggested by WhiteDog. The results were the same for both PPPro and GPP paper settings.

Just for fun, I created a 1/2" wide x 6" long gradient (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/img/files/OneHalfx6Grad.jpg) and repeated the test. The first part now printed very quickly using 6-8 short bidirectional passes, then a single unidirectional pass. The last part of the print now moved the paper in very small increments (1/16 instead of 1/8?) with a lot of unidirectional printing - far different than the 4" wide sample.

This link covers the settings used with profiles (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=625#p625). Enabling "ICM" tells the printer to use the printer profile selected in "Properties/Color Management", allowing you to specify a profile when printing with a non-color aware program. Do not check this option unless you are also specify the proper profile in the driver. Note that you can't even get to this option when "Color Adjustment" is set to "Auto". In "Auto", the driver selects the proper profile for the paper type and print quality that was already specified.

If two papers are similar, using the wrong profile might not cause much of a color shift. Some papers use different technologies for the ink reception layer and can take on color casts when the same ink is applied, as AlienSteve noted.

I have never played with the quality settings, as I always use the same (highest) settings used to generate the profile. I understand what you have found and why you are able to get a faster printout using this method, but:
1. As you have already stated, more passes gives more averaging. If there is a single blocked nozzle with a single pass, the missing nozzle will be seen. With 4 overlapping passes, it will be far less obvious; with 8 passes, it will be even less obvious. This is why a few clogged nozzles don't usually cause a banding problem until the bottom of the print, where the paper is stationary for several passes.
2. Canon claims "Up to 4800 x 2400 dpi resolution" for this printer. Since the native resolution for this printer is only 600 "Pixels per inch", Canon is claiming up to 8 dots per pixel (corresponding to 8 overlaid passes?), leading us to suspect that the paper advance isn't an exact number of pixels, but has a small offset so that the dots from each successive pass are not laid down directly over a previous set of dots. This would seem to mean that the maximum resolution is reduced to 2400 dpi for 4 passes, and 1200 dpi for 2 passes. I don't know if our eyes can pick up the differences between 1200, 2400 and 4800 dpi, but 4800 sure sounds better.

If you can't see the difference in the print quality with fewer overlapping passes, I see no reason why you shouldn't use it.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Has anyone tried changing the "ink drying wait time" control? The only control the printer would have over the "ink dry time" would be the amount of ink dispensed, as far as I can see. It is under maintenance/custom settings in the printer setup

This setting controls how long the printer waits between pages of printout and has nothing to do with how the page is printed. Short is no wait, Long is a 20-second wait, and in between is a 10-second wait.