Using both OEM and IS ink in pro9000?

zefelder

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I am about to start using image specialist inks in my canon pro9000 instead of OEM and already have set of flushed OEM cartridges for all colors except red and green.

Now the green and red cards in the printer are almost 100% full (unsurprisingly), the black is almost empty and the rest are a bit above 50%.

Now I have to chose a strategy.
1) Be pedantic. Throw away the expensive OEM inks from the cards in the printer and refill all eight cartridges.
2) Be greedy. Refill only black and continue printing. When the next color ends, refill all other cards except the 100% full red and green. Continue printing for another year or so until red or green ends and them refill them too.

Does mixing inks like this sound like a good idea? I mean won't such mixing OEM+IS result in noticeably more significant color shift related to OEM than using purely IS inks?
 

rodbam

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I was in the same boat as you with my new pro9000 about 5 months ago & the combined wisdom here was to just fill each cartridge with IS inks as they become empty. I didn't notice any colour shifts & all my prints looked the same to me using the Canon profiles. I'm now completely on IS inks & have bought a Colormunki to make my own profiles & apart from my prints looking closer to what I see on my screen my prints seem to look much the same as when I had mixed OEM & IS inks.
You will find your red & green inks will last forever unless you start using the gloss paper settings or the Paper pro settings then you will start to see the red & green being used a lot more. I'm now using Ilfords Gallerie Smooth Pearl 13x19 papers & Ilford recommend using the Canon Photo Paper Pro setting so I'm now getting some great looking not so glossy prints & getting the full use of all 8 inks. This might also work well with other semi gloss papers too.
 

jtoolman

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All of them! LOL
I refilled all my CLI-8 before they were even empty with Image Specialists Ink and noticed no difference in any of my printing which is mostly images.
 

zefelder

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Just to confirm, I refilled CcMmY colors while the rest three are still OEM. So far it's indistinguishable from what I got using OEM inks only, except that B&W images that are currently getting a very slight green cast compared to OEM and saturated dark blues are little less saturated.

Interestingly I never got such good color accuracy using IS in ip4700 and mixing OEM+IS was almost a disaster.
 

rodbam

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Good to hear it's working for you mate. Have you tried printing the B&Ws through the Canon Ezy Print Pro plug in that installs itself into Photoshop? I seem to get excellent B&W prints by using that without any colour casts. When I let Photoshop handle the B&W printing I do get some colour casts.
 

zefelder

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I rarely print B&W (but thanks for advice, I'll try). Actually I was closely examining the prints I did before and after refilling and it was really difficult to find any difference. It's even difficult to tell whether OEM B&W has magenta cast or it's IS that has green cast: B&W printed with OEM looks better under daylight while printed with IS looks better under incandescent.
 
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