Green tint with hobbicolors

[jonalava]

hpnetserver,

Thanks for your help. Paper used is Kirkland photo paper pro and setting in the printer driver is Photo Paper Pro (this is the only paper type that allows FINE quality setting on my IP3000). I guess you are right. This is probably a question of personal taste. I would have love the HC ink to perform in a similar way to Canon OEM or MIS. I may just not be someone who prefer the colors of the HC ink.

You mentionned that skintones looked yellow on your IP8500. It does exactly the same on my IP3000 while leaving a general green cast to the rest of the picture. Maybe the yellow is the faulty color in that case...

I will follow your recommendation and contact Dave about it. Maybe he knows something I don't. If he can't help, I guess I will just go back to MIS.

By the way, does anyone knows how HC and MIS compare in terms of longevity and resistance to fading?

Thanks again!

 

[hpnetserver]

Jonalava, I almost never use Pro Photopaper setup for my Kirkland photopaper. I have heard that it is not the one to use for non Canon photo paper. In fact I have found other settings produce better prints for Kirkland. If the printer does not let you to set to FINE then you probably should not set to FINE. I use either Glossy Photopaper or even plain paper setup to print photos. Your printer has pigmented ink so you can not use plain paper mode to print on glossy photopaper.

I felt the skin tone a little yellowish only on that particular protrait. Other photos do not lean toward yellow. And yellowish and greenish are really two different things. If you get a greenish tint your Magenta is lacking. Lack of Magenta is the same as too much Yellow and Cyan. If there is too much yellow it should be just too yellow, or not enough Magenta and Cyan. It won't make your print greenish. It has to be not enough Magenta to make it greenish.

 

[panos]

According to the service manual for the MP750, the 4800x1200 resolution can only be achieved with paper set on Photo Paper Pro. I use Canon's photo paper Plus Glossy and the prints made in Photo Paper Pro setting are much better than Photo Paper Plus Glossy setting, even though the second is considered the "right" choice for this kind of paper...

 

[on30trainman]

Interestingly I downloaded a bunch of profiles for various glossy papers from the Ilford site (supposedly the maker of Costco 8.5" X 11" paper) for both my ip4000 and ip6000D. There are pdf files along with each profile telling how to setup the printer. In the case of the ip4000 they say to set the paper type to Photo Paper Plus Glossy in 2 profiles and Other Photo Paper in the third. For the ip6000D they state use Photo Paper Pro in all three cases. The three paper types are the same in each case. I am not sure which Ilford paper type the Kirkland Glossy is closest to - anyone know? All profiles are using Canon OEM inks, but I have been using them with Hobbicolor inks with OK results. I tried the ip6000D profiles with different paper settings for comparison and the Photo Paper Pro setting seemed to give the best results. I most always set the qualty to 2 rather than 1 - printing at the 1 setting takes such a long time and the quality doesn't seem any or much better to my untrained eye.
I am planning to purchase Profile Prism in the next few weeks. Just got a new Canon LiDE 60 scanner over the weekend - the LiDE series was recommended to me by the tech support for PP. Want to learn to use it before getting PP. Anyways two of my grandkids are coming in a few days for about a ten day visit. Don't think I will have much time to be playing on the computer for awhile.
Anyone here have experience with Profile Prism, good or bad?

Steve W.

 

[Osage]

To jonalava,

Even if your scanner is not the best---and maybe distorts things, even my old eyes sure noted that the MIS red just looked much better in the fruit picture. And for that matter the blueberries looked better also with MIS ink. So I now doubly suspect a poorly feeding magenta cartridge.--or a problem with the magenta ink. In the beach scene, the hobbicolors looked faded---with a reduced color gamit--with the palm frond in the foreground looking very different. Another thing I noted with your scans. The pits in the strawberries were not as pronounced in the hobbicolors scans.
Maybe an artifact of the scanner---but it puzzles me because it does not seem to
fit any theory my mind can come up with.

But another easy troubleshooting step might be to leave all the hobbicolor cartridges in except substitute the MIS magenta---print some to purge the printhead
of old ink----and then replicate the fruit photo using the same settings.---if the fruit picture prints with both the better red in the strawberries and the better blue in the blueberries---you may have well isolated it to the magenta ink or cartridge.

Then if a known good cartridge is then filled with hobbicolors magenta and replaces
the MIS magenta------and if the better blues and reds stay, you have isolated it to one poorly feeding magenta cartridge. If not, suspect the magenta ink.

Another wierd possibility occirs to me---hibbicolors recently introduced inks blended for the chipped Canons---could you have gotten a magenta ink bottle intended for those printers?

 

[jonalava]

I did some other tests and printed this with

Hobbicolors

and

MIS

The difference is clear.

I tried to change only the magenta cartridge to MIS while leaving HC Cyan and Yellow, but there was almost no difference.

So I contacted Dave about this and I am waiting for his answer.

Big thanks to Osage and hpnetserver, you will both surely guide me into my next tests.

I will post soon about Dave's reply.

Thanks!

 

[hpnetserver]

Well, you swapped magenta and it made no difference. Did you try to swap cyan and yellow? You can find out quickly which one is causing the difference. Your MIS print looks too blue. The black on the HC print looks washed out., both look problematic to me. I don't see a green tint on the HC print. It's definitely not green. Try to sawp cartridges. It will quickly tell you what is going on. Ip3000 prints black by spraying all CMY ink. if you swaped magenta and it made no difference then the magenta ink is not the color causing the problem. Magenta is respoible for green. You do not have a green problem. Your problem is either in cyan or in yellow.

 

[hpnetserver]

If you get a greenish tint you are not getting enough magenta, or you are getting too much yellow and cyan. The chance yellow and cyan to output too much at the same time is low. It must be the magenta that is lacking. But you have swapped magenta and it made no difference. It really doesn't make sense. Are you sure the HC print looks greenish? Think about it. The chance of both headlights of your car blind out at the same time is nearly zero. But one of them blinds out is more likely. Both of your MIS and HC prints don't look right. It could be your scanner that is not getting all the colors right.

 

[jonalava]

I know, the scans are pretty bad. The actual prints don't really look like this. The MIS is more neutral with correct blues (not as seen in the scan) and the HC definitely has a green-yellow cast. I already contacted Dave and he asked for the file to do some tests. He will probably get back to me soon.

The more I do tests about this problem, the less sense it makes.

Anyway, I will wait for Dave's answer.

Thanks for your help!

 

[neilslade]

I just finished testing 7 different aftermarket inks and will be posting the results soon-

The best color matching in general on PREFILLED carts was using G&G ink-- now, having said this, MIS produces slightly better results and is more neutral, providing you are using the bulk ink.

Canon inks avoid the green tinge- but then, you have to decide if its worth 4 times as much to do this. In general, I have not found a need to do this, and MIS and G&G fill my needs perfectly well for non-archival printing and the results have been excellent.

The main difference is in mid-neutral gray tones, and the infamous greenish tint can be seen. When printing black and white only, this can be eliminated by adjusting the cyan content-- and the problem solved. HOWEVER, you can't do this when printing colors so easily, because this will wreck the general color balance, but its not an issue unless you have a lot of neutral gray in the print to begin with.

One can experiement by adding a bit of magenta in the color profiles to help counter balance this.

Now- the big lesson I learned in my recent printing tests was this-- there is enormous color variations in after market inks-- and MOST OF THEM SUCK. Again, I have only found two to be acceptable, MIS for bulk ink (no pre-filled) and G&G.

These two inks are nearly indistiguishable from Canon in general-- other brands-- I cannot say this is the case, and it does not suprise me that Hobbicolors presents a bad color balance problem, although I have not tested it.

I have had G&G prints hanging on my walls for years, unframed, in bright rooms, and no fading is noticable, so unless you really need long term prints I think the lightfastness issue of G&G as alerted by Wilhem is greatly overblown. For my use, its been fine, no issues. MIS is reported better in lightfasteness. Canon is the best, no argument from me.

But the differences are minor between these three in terms of practical use-- please check out my pages for details and upcoming test results
http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/inkjetstuff.html

More to come...