Just purchased a Canon MP620B. Photo question.

[Rock Slide]

Bought a brand new Canon MP620 all in one printer for only $65. Question though, what setting within the printer do I need to play around with to get my photos to print darker. As it is right out of the box, the photos print great...they're just a tad too washed out compared to those photos I print on my Epson R300 printer. I've tried multiple settings, just can't seem to get the correct one. These canon photos just don't seem to have that "pop" compared to those photos my Epson R300 printer produces.

Other than that, this canon printer works great for what I need it for.

 

[qwertydude]

Usually too light photos can be attributed to the Image Optimizer Pro setting it's in the effects tab of the printer properties screen. I'd turn that off since it radically affects the output of the printer. Also if you want to darken it manually go to the main tab and set Color/Intensity to manual and click set and move the Intensity slider to the right.

 

[Rock Slide]

Thanks. The Image Optimizer was Off. However, the color intensity was set to auto, so I changed it to manual and made it a tad darker. I had not seen that option before, so I'll play around with it and see if that helps. Thanks!

Question about borderless printing. As default, the printer is cropping my photos automatically when I attempt to print borderless prints. It cuts off an 1/8th - 1/4th of an inch of my photos. To correct this, what should I have my "amount of extension" set to? Move the arrow to the far left or far right? I want my photos to print just as they look when I took them w/ my camera.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I believe you want to move the arrow to the left to get less cropping but the problem is that the aspect ratio of any normal paper size is not the same as the aspect ratio of most cameras so it will not be possible to have your photos print borderless just as they look on your camera. If you print a bordered print on different size papers, you will see that the top and bottom borders are not the same size as the left and right borders which will illustrate to you if you increase the size until one pair of borders disappears, you will still have a border for the other pair.

If you really want borderless prints that look just like they do in your camera, you can print them with borders on a larger size paper than you want and then cut the paper yourself, right on the borders of the photos. You will end up with non-standard size photos but there is no other way around this.

 

[fotofreek]

I print lots of borderless 4x6 photos on my i960. I crop in photoshop elements to 4x6 and move the arrow to the left just one space before the left side of the slider. This works perfectly on my printer, but some printers don't have a paper feed is very accurate in aligning the paper as it prints. Some printers will leave one edge with a thin white border with that setting. You need to play with it with your printer to find the best setting. A friend with an ip4000 wrote that he had difficulty reducing the size change as his printer routinely left a white border at one edge with this size print. For borderless prints the printer does have to expand the size of the print somewhat, and this will essentially recrop the picture.

Many digital cameras have a setting for the aspect ratio, and I could set that to 2:3 if I knew that all the pix would be printed 4x6. My tendency is to shoot slightly less tight and expect to crop depending on what size/ratio print I want to create. Obviously, you will have a different ratio for the usual available borderless sizes - 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, and 8.5x11. For all the years that I worked with film SLR's and a Rollei 6x6 all cropping was done in my darkroom and the projected image had to be slightly larger than the paper to print a borderless print without cutting the borders off later.

 

[Rock Slide]

Ok, thanks guys. I'll play around w/ that setting and see how close I can get to true borderless prints.

I have an Epson R300 photo printer that I've had for years that I still use quite a bit. In default mode, it auto cropped all my photos by at least an 1/8 of an inch if not more. Once I corrected its expansion setting, it printed borderless prints just as they looked on my digital camera. Boy was I pleased about that!

Hoping I can do the same w/ this new canon printer, so I'll try moving that arrow to the far left and then back it off as need be. I'll see how close I can get.