Pro9000 MKII Octoink refill red tint problems

[.cotton]

Dear Nifty-stuff community,

A pleasure to be making my first post, you appear to have a great community here.

I have tried to do a search but haven't found anything related (may be me being inept)

So the problem, I recently purchased the Pro9000 refill kit from Octoink following recommendations from the boards here. So far so good, I used the 'german method'? to refill my OEM cartridges and all went swimmingly well.

However, I can't help but notice that when I print, everything has a reddish hue, quite an obvious one. when printing in greyscale this is not an issue. I tested this by finding one of those comparison test print images online somewhere. The test print had a greyscale bar along the top, just as I had suspected, the middle blocks came up as shades of red as opposed to grey.

Any idea what is going on and how I would go about solving this issue? I need the printer in good operation, soon as I have portfolio work to submit for my masters.

Also, please explain in simple terms as I am quite new to all of this.

Look forward to hearing from someone soon.

Thanks in advance,

.

 

[jtoolman]

Not at all familiar with Octoinks but switching to 3rd party from OEM will often introduce a color shift. The only solution is to create of have someone create a custon profile for your paper and your new inks.

There a few ink providers that will custom blend their ink set for a particular printer model that will nearly match OEM ink output. That way you can basically print using the ICC profiles for the original OEM ink or use your standard print settings ( if you are letting the printer handle color ) without too much of a miss match.

Mikling, owner of Precision Colors here on this forum provides a very closely matched ink set. There are others as well but I can only speak for the ones I've tried in the US.

 

[.cotton]

Many thanks J,

Octoink is Image Specialist ink repackaged for the UK I believe. Chose them as I had read that they are closest to the OEMs out of the box.

I have tested the inks on variety of papers and all have displayed the same issue.

So what is involved in creating a custom profile? Is there a straightforward, simple tutorial somewhere?

I am hoping to print on a variety of papers, many of which will not be standard printer paper.

 

[jtoolman]

Unfortunately you will need hardware such as X-rite Colormunki ( around $400 ) or have custom ICCs made by someone . These services are available on line. You'd likely be asked to printout several test prints containing many color patches. These would be printed using the paper you want profiles for. You would pick the closest paper type and resolution on your printing driver as you would when you are normally printing, with one exeption. You TURN OFF all color management within the driver. These prints would then be scanned by the profiling device to produce your custom ICC profile.

Once you have that profile installed in your machine you would continue to NOT use color management on your printer driver but let your photo application, such as Photoshop handle your color management, but then you would chose your newly created ICC profile within your Photoshop printer DIALOGE box. That profile will then control your color output.

OR,,,,,,,,, you could spend a lot of time adjusting your color sliders within your printer driver until you achieve a result that is acceptable to you. Then you could save your settings for future use.

 

[.cotton]

Thank you for the detailed response.

This is sounding expensive. I will have to resort to playing with the colour management myself, as suggested. Would there be a guide anywhere to doing this? I can not find any colour management options in the canon drivers.

 

[The Hat]

Thank you for the detailed response.

This is sounding expensive. I will have to resort to playing with the colour management myself, as suggested. Would there be a guide anywhere to doing this? I can not find any colour management options in the canon drivers.

When you introduce a new ink into OEM cartridges it takes two to three refills to completely switch over
to using the new ink without any influence from the original Canon ink.

To get a complete balance to your colours youll need to replace all of the inks together and not one by one
so if its that crucial to you then a purge of all your cartridges is required with no expense incurred.

Its a common enough mistake to make when using CYMK,
change just one of the set and the whole colour spectrum can change.

The ink Companies never have the same CYMK colours exactly, they will vary when used with another ink from a different manufacturer
and you should avoid mixing them together if you care about correct colour matching with no exceptions.

The green and red inks in your 9000 however are not subject to that rule as they are just spot colours
and not part of the CYMK spectrum but still may cause some colour change.

You can alter the individual colours yourself to correct the magenta hue
then save that profile for use with that particular paper each time you use it.
Happy Printing..

 

[websnail]

Very late responding to this as I've been in accounts, tax return and toddler tantrum "heaven" lately...

I think I've responded to this query in a ticket recently but most of the points above cover things more comprehensively than I think I did... The profiling side of things is available but I suspect the colour shift is more likely one of a couple of things.

1. The mix of OEM and IS inks combining, which, with almost any ink is going to cause some offset in various ways

2. The refilling itself may have resulted in ink flow being less than 100% with various potential causes such as air, foam, slight overflow into the vent, etc... all having potential effects... If you can identify a particular cartridge as flowing less than perfectly it's worth considering flushing and refilling, or re-priming things (eg: [German method] Reinserting needle, then dribbling ink out of the needle as you withdraw to re-establish the ink flow between spongeless and sponged tank parts).


As noted above by The Hat, flushing out the old inks tends to have the longest term "start over" effect and, when done properly, removes the old ink from the equation, flushes out any dried/old ink deposits and just refreshes the sponge, etc... It's not something I'd necessarily do as a first port of call but I'd definitely try to determine if flow issues are the cause rather than spending 15 - 20 on a third party profile.


As for adjusting for colour values manually, you can adjust these in the printer preferences:
> Main
> Color/Intensity > "Set..."
... adjust away

This may be different for the 9000mkII but doubtless someone with that model can be mode specific on that front.

 

[.cotton]

Thank you Hat,

The ink tanks were all empty prior to refilling, however, they were not purged (still contained ink in the sponge). Your comments make sense as the red hue appears to be becoming more evident the more I print.

I am astonished to have seen so much advocacy for compatible inks without fair warning of the time and cost implications.

When printing with OEM inks, I found that different qualities were achieved between one paper and the next, however, I could always rely on the colours to come out as predicted, within reason.

If I were to purchase a hardware solution, as suggested by J, what would be the cheapest product to get the job done properly?

Also, do you know of any simple guides to colour management by eye?

Thanks in advance,

Dot

 

[.cotton]

Hi Websnail,

Thank you for your reply, we must have been typing at the same time.

How can I determine if I am suffering from flow issues or not? The prints are not patchy in any way.

Dot

 

[The Hat]

Hi Websnail,

Thank you for your reply, we must have been typing at the same time.

How can I determine if I am suffering from flow issues or not? The prints are not patchy in any way.

Dot

Just because you have magenta hue in your photos
doesnt mean you have a flow problem with your magenta cartridge the opposite in fact.

Instead I would be looking at the cyan and yellow for any problems,
have you printed a nozzle check to see if they are working correctly.

When printing with OEM inks, I found that different qualities were achieved between one paper and the next,
however, I could always rely on the colours to come out as predicted, within reason.

Thats because you were using all OEM inks at that time and before you started mixing them
and different paper types often give different results.

If I were to purchase a hardware solution, as suggested by J, what would be the cheapest product to get the job done properly?

Until you are only using all Image specialists inks a software solution will have no benefit whatsoever.

Also, do you know of any simple guides to colour management by eye?

If you go into your printing Preferences / Main / Color/Intensity / Manual Set button
in there you will find color Adjustment that you can set for all of you personal preferences.
But dont forget to name and save them, otherwise they will be lost..