Canon Pixma ip5000 ---> Help Needed!

[Zedlum]

OK... I admit it... My Pixma has beaten me

I seem to have two (possibly related?) issues -->

1. Photos are way too yellow.

2. General print is a little feint.

I have done all of the print head cleaning suggestions that I have found, the print head test pattern prints fine but does seem to lack a little ink. I have loaded the latest drivers from Canon after that I got one test page that printed darker and closer to my friends results from a Canon printer but that was all, now its back to normal i.e slightly light. I have downloaded printer purge pages and oddly they seem to print fine with plenty of colour laid down. I have come to believe that its not a physical issue with the printer but rather some arcane setting that I have inadvertently messed up.

As for the yellow photo issue, well they are proper yellow, not "hey I'm a photo expert and I can see a yellow hue" yellow, anyone can see it plain as day. I have tried altering almost every setting I can find and nothing really seems to impact the photo quality that much. Manually turning down the yellow does not even seem to yield much in the way of change, and when it does all the other colours are off balance. The colour balance in general line work seems fine but again slightly feint.

Some history --> I was running Win 2K when I got the printer and it was brilliant! Then at around the same time I got a new PC, moved to windows XP and bought some bulk ink. This was when the issues started, post XP. My first reaction was to complain to the ink supplier (I am using refilled Canon carts) . He was surprised and sent me a full set of original Canon carts (new, I opened them!) to test the printer, they preformed exactly the same as the refilled Canon carts. Since then I have tried everything I can think of but to no avail. I mainly print line and type so its not been a huge problem but I would dearly like to be able to print photos on the odd occasion and get some greater colour intensity when doing things like printing CD's.

Could this be a printer "profiling" issue? I read about that briefly last night but have not idea where to start with that! I'm not sure I understand why it should need to be "profiled", after all if I installed the latest Canon drivers for XP should they not be close to "tuned" correctly or whatever it is that control colour?

Anywhooo! Anyone got any clues? or do I chuck the old girl out when my bulk ink runs dry?

Thanks in advance...
Z

 

[alexandereci]

If I get this right, your printer prints wonderfully in Win2K, but does not in WinXP? From your post, it seems like the ink isn't the problem if the printer has the problem with both original and 3rd-party inks. It also seems that you've played with the intensity setting a bit... have you tried printing on the BEST settings? Maybe it's a paper problem?

 

[Zedlum]

Hi Alex,

The yellow issue is the same across all the papers and print qualities I have tried from plain bond to glossy photo paper, high to standard quality. Yes I have played with the intensity settings on a one off basis to see what effect they have but I have not really had a satisfying result so I keep going back to the default.

Yes it did print well under Win 2K but two things changed at once when I went to XP, i.e the change to XP and the new ink. I have not gone back to Win 2K to verify that this is still the case, my machine is a software development machine and way to complex a set-up to reload Win 2K just to check a printer, I'd rather shell out for new printer than lose the time that would take.

I have also done alignment checks etc etc...

I'm guessing its a software/control issue but I'm not sure, I guess it could easily be some subtle damage to the print head but I don't really understand enough about how they work to know.

 

[jflan]

To refresh drivers I would completely uninstall the old drivers and then reinstall new drivers following Canon's procedure (applying power and communications when prompted, etc.)
Verify that the new drivers are being used and not the old driver or a generic.
Use new, genuine carts or high quality refills that are known to be good for the trouble-shooting process.

 

[Zedlum]

The drivers where uninstalled the new ones reinstalled as downloaded from Canons web site yesterday.

As stated before I have tested with brand new Canon carts and they deliver identical results to the refilled carts

Sample of original v print, scanned print standard print quality on bond so ignore the quality but it gives an idea of the yellowing.

 

[msmart]

What application(s) and colorspace(s) are you using to print?

 

[Zedlum]

That print is using Photoshop, the printers settings and the colour profile from the shot itself (I assume that comes from the Panasonic camera .jpg?) I have lots of choices printing from Photoshop but none seem to help much and I don't really understand what I am doing with all the options. However its the same printing from MS's Photo Wizard, Picasa seems to differ but I have not delved into that yet.

I don't really get colour spaces yet Is it possible some default colour space has been altered somehow? Could this be an OS thing?

 

[ghwellsjr]

You say you have a friend with a Canon printer--probably not an iP5000--but could you take your printer to his computer, install the driver and see how it works there and take his printer and install the driver on your computer to see how his works on yours. This would be especially helpful if your friend has Win 2K but you still may learn something even if it's not.

 

[Zedlum]

I also seem to use very little photo black ink, however I don't print many photo's (so makes sense? no?) because of the photo printing issue. FWIW...

 

[Zedlum]

You say you have a friend with a Canon printer--probably not an iP5000--but could you take your printer to his computer, install the driver and see how it works there and take his printer and install the driver on your computer to see how his works on yours. This would be especially helpful if your friend has Win 2K but you still may learn something even if it's not.

I'd love love to and its a great idea except that they live about a 1000 klm away. I just happened to be visiting them last week and noticed the difference in the quality of his line prints. He runs XP and a Pixma 4300, unfortunately I don't know anyone close with one I can swap easily.

Cheers
Z