Suggestion for good printer

[coldlshower]

I have been using Caonon inkjet printers (ip4000, ip6000, i9900). I usully open images in Photoshop CS5 and prints (on Costco's Kirkland photo papers).
Colors of prints form all ofl these printers are out of whack. Red color is more like pinky, white color becomes bluish green, brown color becomes more purplish. I now want to get a printer which produces colors to some degrees close to the image seen on Photoshop. Please advise me. TIA.

 

[lowepg]

I'm certainly not a refilling pro - but I *have* logged a lot of photoshop hours and have wrested with color management:

What you're describing sounds a lot more like a monitor color calibration issue than a printing issue. What kind of monitor are you using?

here's a link for a quick read on color calibration...

http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM

To add even more excitement, if you are using a TN panel, which have become all the rage since they are so big and cheap- you will find the color can change just by looking at a different angle....

After you get THAT figured out, you can attack the other half of the color mgmt game- printer calibration- though that SHOULD be more straightforward and can be handled with proper profiles.

I eventually went nuts trying to get it all perfect- and ended up with an IPS monitor (brilliant!) and still needed a calibration tool to get it spot-on. I ended up getting a ColorMunki- so I could profile the monitor and printer.

 

[coldlshower]

One of my monitor is Dell S2409w and the other one is Samsung (with the similar size). Color management (fromWindows 7) was kperforemd.
To my naked eyes, color of monitor is the same as I see the picture from my Nikon camera. So I really doubt that the monitor is the problem.
The problem could be color management of Canon printer. I have no idea how to do color management. That is the problem. It's a pain.

 

[The Hat]

coldlshower
I have noticed that you are using CS5 so I reckon that is the source of your problem.
Not that there is anything wrong with CS5 but its not sitting well with the Canon drivers,
you should make sure that print management is set to printer and not CS.

You could let the Canon printer take the lead so to speak and just tweak its settings
on the particular paper your using and that should help a lot.

I moved up from an earlier version of CS to CS4 and I had problems adjusting to it and
I heard that CS5 is even more fussier and professional to use so again
just alter Hue, Saturation, and Brightness in you pics for now and
try doing some small sample printouts till you get the quality you expected ok.
Happy printing..

 

[coldlshower]

coldlshower
You could let the Canon printer take the lead so to speak and just tweak its settings
on the particular paper your using and that should help a lot.

Thanks for your comment. I should study how to do color managment for Canon.
BTW, how about "Enable ICM". I felt that this should be disabled becuase it is windows color manaagment.
Is that correct?

 

[The Hat]

coldlshower BTW, how about "Enable ICM". I felt that this should be disabled becuase it is windows color manaagment.
Is that correct?

No I think you should let the printer handle it and leave that setting to:- Driver Matching.
Also leave the Color/ Intensity set to Auto until you get more experienced with it ok.

 

[coldlshower]

coldlshower BTW, how about "Enable ICM". I felt that this should be disabled becuase it is windows color manaagment.
Is that correct?

No I think you should let the printer handle it and leave that setting to:- Driver Matching.
Also leave the Color/ Intensity set to Auto until you get more experienced with it ok.

For last few days, I tried both Canon printers with different variables (Photoshop Manage colors, Printer Manage colors, etc).
I am not happy the way the printer produces colors. ip6000D produced better colors than ip4000.
But I am not happy with ip6000D.

I am now tempted to try an Epson inkjet printer, hoping to beat Canon inkjet printers.
Could someone suggest me an Epson printer within $200-$500 ranges?