Going mad, with colour balance: Canon S9000 - (+ Qimage software)

[Michael J Davis]

System: Canon S9000 printer Windows 98SE and Qimage software.

For the past four years I have been producing magnificent prints with
Adobe Elements (1). canon S9000 and Qimage software. The colour balance
has been fine with: plain paper, Hi-res Canon Matt white, and Canon
Photo Pro gloss paper.

(If it's relevant I use a Videosonic VP201s)

Something happened ten days ago!! Since then:-

Plain paper printing has been fine - colour balance OK.

Hi-res paper has come out with a blue bias. I have now been through all
combinations that occur to me and cannot adjust the colour back to what
I had.

Can someone *please* let me know what settings they use for this
combination?

For the record:-

It is *not* faulty tanks or print head (the gamut on the prints is fine
- just unbalanced, and we get OK balance on plain paper)

I am not aware of making any changes to the settings (although I have
updated Qimage - though I'm getting the same results printing from
within Adobe Elements.)

I am going mad having set the system up correctly four years ago, I
haven't checked them since.

Thanks to anyone who can recover my sanity.

Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

 

[MCheu]

System: Canon S9000 printer Windows 98SE and Qimage software.

For the past four years I have been producing magnificent prints with
Adobe Elements (1). canon S9000 and Qimage software. The colour balance
has been fine with: plain paper, Hi-res Canon Matt white, and Canon
Photo Pro gloss paper.

(If it's relevant I use a Videosonic VP201s)

Something happened ten days ago!! Since then:-

Plain paper printing has been fine - colour balance OK.

Hi-res paper has come out with a blue bias. I have now been through all
combinations that occur to me and cannot adjust the colour back to what
I had.

Can someone *please* let me know what settings they use for this
combination?

For the record:-

It is *not* faulty tanks or print head (the gamut on the prints is fine
- just unbalanced, and we get OK balance on plain paper)

Have you visually inspected the tanks? I ask this because the S9000
is a 6 tank printer. For Canons, that usually means that it draws
from different tanks (marked PM - photo magenta, PC - photo cyan) for
Magenta and Cyan when it's set to print on certain paper types. That
means you can't assume that the inks are ok because plain paper prints
are OK. Also, a very minor contamination can screw up the colour
balance without changing the visual appearance of the ink tanks. The
only way you can really tell is to have the printer spew a test
pattern in the high res mode. Preferably something that spits out a
bar of solid cyan, magenta, and yellow. You don't need to waste a
piece of photo paper. Just tell the printer you're feeding it the
higher res paper, and it'll believe you. Here's a link to one such
test image:

http://www.inkjetcartridges.com/_color-print-test.html

That should take any colour mixing issues out of the equation. If one
of the inks is contaminated, you should notice it.

 

[Michael J Davis]

Have you visually inspected the tanks? I ask this because the S9000
is a 6 tank printer. For Canons, that usually means that it draws
from different tanks (marked PM - photo magenta, PC - photo cyan) for
Magenta and Cyan when it's set to print on certain paper types. That
means you can't assume that the inks are ok because plain paper prints
are OK. Also, a very minor contamination can screw up the colour
balance without changing the visual appearance of the ink tanks. The
only way you can really tell is to have the printer spew a test
pattern in the high res mode. Preferably something that spits out a
bar of solid cyan, magenta, and yellow. You don't need to waste a
piece of photo paper. Just tell the printer you're feeding it the
higher res paper, and it'll believe you. Here's a link to one such
test image:

http://www.inkjetcartridges.com/_color-print-test.html

That should take any colour mixing issues out of the equation. If one
of the inks is contaminated, you should notice it.

Yes thanks, I have done all that. (Changed tanks and do on) At first I
thought it was blocked nozzles, but the photo test prints I have show
brilliant yellow, reds (photomagenta and magenta) where the pure colours
are printed, but the balance on the composites is plain too blue, but
only with the Hi-res and photo paper pro settings, *not* in plain paper.

Mike
[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

 

[skypix]

Hi:
I've had this same problem exactly, it just suddenly popped up. In my
case, instead of a full color print, I get blue/green. A print test
shows box E completely not printing. Also the lower right grid of the
six long color grids is spotty or doesn't show up at all! (It varies
from test to test).

I've tried different print settings like you. Sometimes I get decent
plain paper prints, but glossy photo paper just doesn't print out the
yellow/warm spectrum at all. I've done head cleaning, and even bought
a complete new print head! Same problem.

I reinstalled the driver. Same problem.

I'm at my wits end, I'm pretty savvy with computer things having done
photo printing since Epson first came out with its first photo printer.
But this S9000 is driving me a bit batty.

I've read the other comments below but no luck so far.

 

[Michael J Davis]

Hi:
I've had this same problem exactly, it just suddenly popped up. In my
case, instead of a full color print, I get blue/green. A print test
shows box E completely not printing. Also the lower right grid of the
six long color grids is spotty or doesn't show up at all! (It varies
from test to test).

I've tried different print settings like you. Sometimes I get decent
plain paper prints, but glossy photo paper just doesn't print out the
yellow/warm spectrum at all. I've done head cleaning, and even bought
a complete new print head! Same problem.

I reinstalled the driver. Same problem.

I'm at my wits end, I'm pretty savvy with computer things having done
photo printing since Epson first came out with its first photo printer.
But this S9000 is driving me a bit batty.

I've read the other comments below but no luck so far.

Nice to know I'm not alone! ;-)

Seriously, though, I think your problem is different from mine. If you
have box E (mostly photo-magenta) not printing - then you have a blocked
head. That would most certainly account for the blue-green bias, and it
wouldn't be a driver problem I think.

Have you, can you get, any head cleaner? Take an old empty photo-magenta
cartridge and fill the packing with cleaner, - run deep clean a few
times, - indeed print some sample pages, then put the working cartridge
back in - and repeat the trials until it prints normally.

I'm sure mine is a set up driver problem, but I can't think what I
changed! (Actually I'm pretty sure I changed nothing, but something
happened!)

Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

 

[Burt]

System: Canon S9000 printer Windows 98SE and Qimage software.

For the past four years I have been producing magnificent prints with
Adobe Elements (1). canon S9000 and Qimage software. The colour balance
has been fine with: plain paper, Hi-res Canon Matt white, and Canon Photo
Pro gloss paper.

(If it's relevant I use a Videosonic VP201s)

Something happened ten days ago!! Since then:-

Plain paper printing has been fine - colour balance OK.

Hi-res paper has come out with a blue bias. I have now been through all
combinations that occur to me and cannot adjust the colour back to what I
had.

Can someone *please* let me know what settings they use for this
combination?

For the record:-

It is *not* faulty tanks or print head (the gamut on the prints is fine -
just unbalanced, and we get OK balance on plain paper)

I am not aware of making any changes to the settings (although I have
updated Qimage - though I'm getting the same results printing from within
Adobe Elements.)

I am going mad having set the system up correctly four years ago, I
haven't checked them since.

Thanks to anyone who can recover my sanity.

Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

I read recently that Canon six color printers do not use the PM and PC
colors when set to plain paper. don't know if it is true or not. The
problem you describe, suddenly printing with a blue bias, is generally
caused by lack of magenta or photo magenta. Since you are getting good
prints on the plain paper setting I would suspect photo magenta as being the
problem. The magenta carts and/or jets (M and PM) seem to be the ones that
are the most frequent offenders.

I've found that test prints work best on either a matte coated paper or
glossy photo paper. Plain paper permits the ink to spread and mask very
minor missing jets that you will see on photo papers. In addition to the
nozzle test you can download a six color purge file from MIS. If you want
to minimize ink usage you can crop the image smaller before printing it.
Look at both with some magnification. I've used a jewelers loupe which is,
I think, 8x magnification. A slight color shift can be caused by very minor
clogs.

If the carts are good, you may either have a clog, damaged printhead, poor
contact, ribbon cable fault, or failing board. If a few light cleaning
cycles and a heavy cleaning cycle didn't clear it, there's no use to keep
running the cleaning cycles. The nifty-stuff forum has a very long thread
devoted to cleaning the print head. It is the first item under the FAQ's.
If you go through the cleaning info and try the least potentially damaging
techniques, you can then post a question to see if you can get any
additional tips

You can consider purchasing a replacement printhead, but it will be quite
expensive. Your printer is four years old, and you may end up buying a new
printhead and then finding out that this wasn't the problem! The ideal
situation would be if you know someone with a printer that has the same
printhead and you can switch printheads to test the printer. Four years is
actually a pretty good run for consumer inkjet printers. There are still
some i9900's being advertised on the internet at much reduced prices and I
would consider buying one of them if my i9000 was about to die. They have
the carts that are easy to refill and there are some good aftermarket inks
available for them. The newest pixma printers have chipped carts and don't
have compatable carts available at this time. There are a few vendors with
inks formulated for the new carts and they can be refilled but you lose the
ink monitoring function and get warning messages. The link for the forum I
mentioned is:
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/

 

[Michael J Davis]

System: Canon S9000 printer Windows 98SE and Qimage software.

For the past four years I have been producing magnificent prints with
Adobe Elements (1). canon S9000 and Qimage software. The colour balance
has been fine with: plain paper, Hi-res Canon Matt white, and Canon Photo
Pro gloss paper.

(If it's relevant I use a Videosonic VP201s)

Something happened ten days ago!! Since then:-

Plain paper printing has been fine - colour balance OK.

Hi-res paper has come out with a blue bias. I have now been through all
combinations that occur to me and cannot adjust the colour back to what I
had.

Can someone *please* let me know what settings they use for this
combination?

For the record:-

It is *not* faulty tanks or print head (the gamut on the prints is fine -
just unbalanced, and we get OK balance on plain paper)

I am not aware of making any changes to the settings (although I have
updated Qimage - though I'm getting the same results printing from within
Adobe Elements.)

I am going mad having set the system up correctly four years ago, I
haven't checked them since.

Thanks to anyone who can recover my sanity.

Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

I read recently that Canon six color printers do not use the PM and PC
colors when set to plain paper. don't know if it is true or not. The
problem you describe, suddenly printing with a blue bias, is generally
caused by lack of magenta or photo magenta. Since you are getting good
prints on the plain paper setting I would suspect photo magenta as being the
problem. The magenta carts and/or jets (M and PM) seem to be the ones that
are the most frequent offenders.

Thanks - that's completely new to me! And would certainly lead me to the
wrong conclusions!

I've found that test prints work best on either a matte coated paper or
glossy photo paper. Plain paper permits the ink to spread and mask very
minor missing jets that you will see on photo papers. In addition to the
nozzle test you can download a six color purge file from MIS. If you want
to minimize ink usage you can crop the image smaller before printing it.
Look at both with some magnification. I've used a jewelers loupe which is,
I think, 8x magnification. A slight color shift can be caused by very minor
clogs.

Yes. (This ain't minor!!)

If the carts are good, you may either have a clog, damaged printhead, poor
contact, ribbon cable fault, or failing board. If a few light cleaning
cycles and a heavy cleaning cycle didn't clear it, there's no use to keep
running the cleaning cycles. The nifty-stuff forum has a very long thread
devoted to cleaning the print head. It is the first item under the FAQ's.
If you go through the cleaning info and try the least potentially damaging
techniques, you can then post a question to see if you can get any
additional tips

I shall view with interest.

You can consider purchasing a replacement printhead, but it will be quite
expensive. Your printer is four years old, and you may end up buying a new
printhead and then finding out that this wasn't the problem! The ideal
situation would be if you know someone with a printer that has the same
printhead and you can switch printheads to test the printer. Four years is
actually a pretty good run for consumer inkjet printers. There are still
some i9900's being advertised on the internet at much reduced prices and I
would consider buying one of them if my i9000 was about to die. They have
the carts that are easy to refill and there are some good aftermarket inks
available for them. The newest pixma printers have chipped carts and don't
have compatable carts available at this time. There are a few vendors with
inks formulated for the new carts and they can be refilled but you lose the
ink monitoring function and get warning messages. The link for the forum I
mentioned is:
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/

Many thanks - that's really helpful. Watch this space.... ;-)


Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><

 

[Burt]

(snip)

A slight color shift can be caused by very minor clogs.

Yes. (This ain't minor!!
(snip)

Mike

Sorry, Mike, I should have said that even a slight clog can cause a color
shift.

 

[Michael J Davis]

(snip)

A slight color shift can be caused by very minor clogs.

Sorry, Mike, I should have said that even a slight clog can cause a color
shift.

;-)

I understood. Anyway after some more drastic attempts to clean the head,
to no avail, I purchased a new one.

Of course, by then I'd b*****d up the settings, so had a minor panic
when everything turned red! But it settled down after about four A4
prints, and seems fine. Appreciate for your help - would have spent a
lot longer sorting it (indeed - had!) had you not explained the
difference between the plain paper and high quality modes.

So many thanks. - I hope it also assists Skypix.

Mike

[The reply-to address is valid for 30 days from this posting]
--
Michael J Davis
<><
Some newsgroup contributors appear to have confused
the meaning of "discussion" with "digression".
<><