Green tint with hobbicolors

[jonalava]

After I tried the virgin cartridges from Hobbicolors (which ARE GREAT!) and read all the great comments about hobbicolors ink on this forum, I decided to try their ink. I don't know if it is only me, but I get a strong green cast on my IP3000. And nozzle check shows that everything is fine with the print head. When I switch back to MIS ink, everything is fine. Am I the only one that think hobbicolors is not as accurate as others in terms of color? Comments and experiences are welcome...

 

[Osage]

To jonalava,

Without exactly specifying how this switch to and away from MIS, to hobbicolors, and then back to MIS was done, I still have to wonder if the conclusion is accurate.

The adverse experience with hobbicolors could have been caused by a magenta or yellow cartridge that was not feeding correctly.---and its also remotely possible you could have accidently received a bottle of photomagenta instead of magenta.

But to properly test the hypothesis that the magenta cartridge is not feeding correctly one would have to replace that hobbicolor magenta cartridge with another known good cartridge also filled with hobbicolors ink---while changing no other variables.--and so on to isolate other possibilities.

Without systematic and valid testing I do wonder if your per say blaming the ink color balance is valid.---but since MIS comes back with no color casts I am guessing your conclusion of no printhead problems is valid.

So hopefully you can post details of your troubleshooting--and hopefully the cause can be isolated. Or you may be correct--there is a green cast that should concern us all. You also might wish to report the problem to hobbicolors--they may have some suggestions. And by posting on these forum others more experienced than I may have other ideas--or they may post similar results.

 

[on30trainman]

jonalava,
An interesting result you have. I have been using Hobbicolor inks in my ip4000, think the ip3000 uses the same four colors - C,Y,M and B as the ip4000 but without pigment Black, and do not see any green cast as you say you are getting. The Hobbicolor Cyan is not quite as intense as the Canon OEM Cyan - prints with a lot of blue sky are not quite as blue. Initially I thought the Hobbicolor C was too light, but have come to like it better as I have been using it.
It does sound like you are having a feed problem with one cartridge. Did you do the nozzle check right after you installed the Hobbicolor inks? If so, some of the original ink may have still been in the printhead when you did the nozzle check. Do the nozzle check after you print a few photos.
Osage's recommendation to swap cartridges to isolate the problem is a good one. Try increasing the Cyan value in the print driver setup to +10 or so and see if that makes any difference.
If the problem continues, could you post a scan of two photos - one using the inks that give good results and the second with Hobbicolor inks showing the green cast. Then us Hobbicolor users can see exactly what you are talking about and compare to our results.

Steve W.

 

[Osage]

To on30trainman,

Just to clarify---the canon ip3000 is similar to the ip4000 and ip5000---but the ip3000 lacks the BCI-6 photoblack cartridge but does have the BCI-3ebk pigmented black text cartridge.

 

[DRoss]

Hobbiecolor with my I9900 also has a green cast, but with ProfilePrisim and now PrintFix Pro profiles the prints are way better than Canon Ink and stock profiles.

 

[on30trainman]

Wow - I did a Google search on PrintFix Pro. Really $500-600 to get profile making HW & SW? For the amount of printing I do I can accept much less. Some fiddling with the print driver settings is good enough for me. I can see it for a professional printer, but not me. Profile Prism is a lot less ($79) - but does it do a good job? Those with experience let me know how good and how easy. Think it needs a good quality scanner, which is something I sorely need. I need to do some more reading up on it. Is an icc/icm file generated? At that price I might be tempted.

Steve W.

 

[jonalava]

Thanks to all for your inputs! I would have really like the Hobbicolors ink to work. To answer a few questions, I did several nozzle check, and even after a lot of prints, it still seems flawless:

My scanner is pretty bad but you get the idea.

Unfortunately, I don't think I got PM instead of M as the ink looks pretty dark in the cartridge and when using a swab on a piece of paper. Here is the picture of the cartridge (bubbles were not in the cartridge, they just appeared after moving it a bit to fast):

These are some examples of pictures printed with MIS and HC:

I know, those scans are sooooo bad... After looking at them, I don't think HC is that bad. But the actual prints don't look like this. The green cast is pretty visible on the prints. You may also think that the HC prints look better than MIS but the actual image is way closer to the MIS result than HC.

I also realize how a color profile would probably solve this problem, but I don't have the money to invest in such a device. The easiest way for me is to go back to MIS. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE the HC ink to work for me.

Because my IP3000 uses CMY to produce black in pictures, grayscale is also pretty green with HC ink, when it is more neutral with MIS. Those tests were made using the AUTO setting in the printer driver. I know it is always better to set it to MANUAL-NONE when using 3rd party ink, but when done, the green cast becomes worst. Also, increasing magenta in the printer driver only increase the skintones and others areas of the picture while leaving a general green cast to the image.

I will also do more tests soon following the recommendations of Osage to properly isolate the problem.

Again, any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks to all of you!

 

[hpnetserver]

What photo paper did you print on? What medium type did you select to print? Apparently MIS and HC inks are different. One may be greener than the other on the particular paper with the particular setup. I printed a few photos today and some of the photos are portraits. If there is a green tint it would have been obvious. I showed one of the portraits to my wife and asked her opinion about it. Her reply was too reddish. I thought she might say too green but it wasn't the case. Well, my printer is an ip8500 which is probably very different from ip3000. But I highly suspect it may be just a personal taste issue or a combination of ink, paper and setup issue.

I printed on at least two different photo papers. The result show enough differences visually. Not only some colors are printed differently, overall density are different as well. One of the paper I printed on is from Ink Works. The other is a HP Premium Glossy. The HP Premium Glossy appraently is better. What this tells is the paper you use could make a significant difference in the print. That's the reason why pros want specific profile for the paper they use. HC ink is a little toward warm side. That may be another reason that makes your print a little greenish.

Another possibility is you may have gotten a bad package of ink from Hobbicolors. Don't rule that out if you really have no other explaination. Did you contact Dave at Hobbicolors to see if he has any suggestions for you?

 

[fotofreek]

interesting that your ip8500 prints a little too red on skin tones. My i960 leans toward the reds on skin tones on some people - both with MIS and with Canon OEM inks.

 

[hpnetserver]

It was probably my wife's subjective opinion. The skin tone looked too yellow to me. It's really funny we completely disagree with each other.