How to get black hair black on color photos on Canon ip 3300

[ltsang]

I bought this ip3300 a month ago and had to refill all 4 cartridges, it works find so far until I noticed an 8x10 picture,
it is a portrait of a Chinese movie star. Her hair is black on the monitor, yet when I print it out, her hair turns dark
blueish. I think the printer only uses the 3 color cartridge on photo printing (the paper setting was 'gross photo' ).
when I was using the OEM cartridges, I did not notice such thing happen, the color is accurate and black is black.
My first suspect will be the ink I used to refill. All print nozzles are clear from the nozzle check pattern. I used bulk
ink to refill. Anybody get any ideas?

 

[mikling]

If your nozzle check is perfect, then the other possibility is that your iP3300 inks do not match Canon colors closely enough. On the 4 color printers like the iP3300, black is created by mixing the three colors. If any or all three of the other colors are lighter than what the original inks were, you'll get colors that are off.
You have three choices to correct this. Play with the color adjustments to try and print the shade you think is too light ( this can be tricky), obtain a custom printer profile that readjusts for the colors ( this is only good for this ink and paper combination and it'll cost money for this service), or try some better inks that are more closely matched.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Even if you get the color balance right, the blacks you can get with 3 photo colors are noticeably lighter than when you also have a dye black ink cartridge. I only recommend this kind of printer for people who only print on plain paper where the dye black ink cartridge is never used anyway.

 

[ltsang]

Thanks Mikling for the information, I agree with your idea that the ink I used to refill my bci8 cartridges does not match with the original Canon ink. My friend who has a photo studio also says the ink I used is not 'accurate'.
I think I'll try other brands of inks and I'll let you know the result. Wish I could upload the original photo and my printout so you can have an idea of what happened, can you tell me how to post the jpeg images to this post?

 

[ghwellsjr]

There is an upload link near the top of this page. It's very easy to do.

 

[pharmacist]

I would recommend to use Hobbicolor ink, since I used this ink in my Canon IX4000 printer (similar as the 3300, since it uses also 3 colours C/M/Y for photoprinting without photo black). The simulated black with this ink is really incredible deep black and with the right type of photo paper you can hardly see any difference with the same picture printed on a C/M/Y/K printer and even with a printout from a 6-colour CcMmYK printer.

 

[ltsang]

hi mikling, just to show you what I get after switched the yellow cartridge to another ink, it is not perfect but there is changes the right way.
I'll try other ink as well


the first one is the original, the middle one is before I change the yellow, the third one is after tried another yellow ink . The hair color seems a bit darker. Sorry the images are too small, I try somethings else next time.

 

[ltsang]

Thank you hpnetserver, you might be right, when I do a nozzle check, I find that the yellow band is very weak,
the canon only show the nozzle grid pattern for the black, not like the hp's, so I will next clean the yellow
screen above the printhead, if it doesn't work, I still got an original canon yellow cartridge, put that on and
will let you know whether that fixes the problem. When you mentioned about this restricted sponge, do you
mean the round sponge in the cartridge where ink flows to the print head. And how do you clean that?

 

[Grandad35]

Itsang,

The images that you posted are really too small to tell if there is any banding (usually associated with clogging), but the simplest explanation for what you are seeing is that the ink that you are using to refill doesn't match OEM ink. Whose bulk ink are you using? Is it specifically designed for Canon printers, or is it generic ink?

It is difficult to say anything about the color of a scanned image unless your scanner is profiled. There is also the problem that many scanning packages automatically "correct" the lighting, making any color comparisions invalid. The two images on the right both appear to have almost no color on her face - do the printed images look this light?

 

[ltsang]

Dear Mr. Grandad,
sorry for the small pictures I uploaded, it's my first time you know. I'll do it again tomorrow
and I will use a set of new original canon cli-8 which I borrowed from my friend who bought the same printer.
The original picture is 138k and I see no banding on my printout, only as you say her face lost a lot of color
if you compared with the original and her hair was blue.
The ink I used to print the middle picture is a bulk dye ink I used on my BCI6s, I bought it locally,
the supplier ordered it from the States but would not tell me the supplier's name. Trade secret I guess. The one on the right is printed from a new G&G compatible, I switched the chip. Hair looks a bit better but still bluish, and the face needs more flesh color. I only switched the yellow cartridge so far.
I used an hp3180 to scan the printed photos, yes, the color on her face is light. I did tried to clear the
print head by compressed air but not much difference. I don't think I have a clogged head since I only bought
the printer 2 weeks ago and printed about 50 8x10 picture so far. Had to refill 3 times already.