MMC Loc: Brooklyn NY

I have received as a gift HP Photo Paper Premium Plus. Can I use it with my Canon Pro9000 Mark2 printer?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You can use it, but you might not get the color you expect without first making a custom ICC profile. THAT takes a lot of patience and some gear from X-Rite or DataColor.

If I were you, I'd look for someone with an HP printer and re-gift it. Or, trade for Canon paper, or trade for a third party paper for which you may download a custom profile.

I doubt HP provides any custom profiles for its papers to be used in other brands of printers...

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

As Burkphoto says, yes, you can but you’ll need an ice profile. I have done one for some HP paper and some Costco paper I got free, but as Burk said, I had to creat a profile with my Colormunki. It’s easy to do with a device like this but when you create the profile you are going to use some ink and 2 full sheets of paper minimum.

MMC Loc: Brooklyn NY

Thank you for you reply and advice.

Spiney Loc: Reading, PA

I’d try it before giving it away. My understanding is that HP paper is very archival. The reason has something to do with the way the paper swells and encapsulates the inkjet drops protecting them from the environment.

I have quite a bit of it from my HP Pro-B8190 printer that died just out of extended warranty.

I have printed to it using the closest Canon paper with very successful results.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I have some HP paper left over from my old printer. I do print on it with my Canon printers, but it turns out overly magenta in tone. I do have to set things specially for it if I want it for anything other than checking density and balance.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

A custom ICC profile would correct the magenta hue, without any special adjustments needed.

Many folks here do not understand color management. The following is directed at new users:

ICC color management is the process of making very different devices display reasonable simulations of the same colors.

Color management is performed by your operating system or software. The OS automatically converts the color values of a file to a standard "working color space" that it can use to match colors from device to device to device. For instance, a JPEG in sRGB color space is converted to the working color space, then to the monitor profile color space for viewing, then also to the printer/paper profile for printing.

***If the monitor profile is wrong, probably because the monitor is not calibrated and custom profiled, your prints will not match the monitor!

***If the printer/paper profile does not match the printer, paper, and ink combination used, probably because you don't have the right profile, or you set something incorrectly, your prints will not match the monitor!

Profiles rely on device calibration. For instance, before profiling, you calibrate a monitor (with the aid of a hardware device known as a colorimeter or spectrophotometer) to linearize the three color channel response curves for red, green, and blue output. In simpler words, at any brightness level from black to white, a calibrated monitor produces a perfect neutral gray by combining red, green, and blue light.

Once the monitor has been calibrated, profiling software measures its output with the same colorimeter, and creates a set of lookup tables that adjust the INPUT signal to the monitor to make correctly color balanced images look as close to normal as possible. "Normal" is an international standard set by the International Color Consortium, or ICC. If you work on a calibrated monitor, you can trust that prints made on a calibrated and profiled printer/paper combination will appear very, very similar. This is a remarkable feat, considering that the monitor makes white light and all other colors from red, green, and blue phosphors, and an inkjet printer makes black and all other colors from *at least* cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink (CMYK — the K is Kontrast). Some printers mix as many as a dozen different colors for finer color subtlety.

Calibration of a PRINTER works much the same way as monitor calibration. Depending upon the printer type, it may or may not require calibration before profiling. All "wet process" mini-labs and similar devices must be calibrated frequently to maintain consistent color balance. Process monitoring greatly affects this calibration, so the printer and process are considered as a system. Profiles generated when the device is "in perfect control" are therefore most useful.

With printers, once the operator knows the printer and process are linearized for a given paper, (s)he prints a set of test charts or strips that contain up to 500 or more colors. Then, a colorimeter or spectrophotometer is used to read each color patch (manually or automatically, depending upon the sophistication of the calibration and profiling kit).

With inkjet printers, there is no calibration step. They are calibrated at the factory, and any minor deviations are handled via a custom profile. You need a SEPARATE profile for each exact combination of printer model, ink set, and paper. Profile mismatches create color casts and other weird looks.

Printer manufacturers build paper profiles for their own paper types. When you install the printer driver, the manufacturer's profiles are installed as well. When you choose an OEM paper by name in the driver, the driver uses the correct profile, so long as you choose "printer manages color" in your software.

However, if you use a third-party paper, you need a profile for that paper! You can download profiles for most popular printer/ink/paper combinations directly from the paper vendor's web site. OR, you can make custom profiles for your specific sample of a given printer, with a particular off-brand ink set, and a particular paper. When you print, you select the profile in your software and choose something like, "Let Adobe Photoshop manage color."

It's pretty safe to assume that Canon, Epson, and HP do not make profiles for each others' printers to use the others' papers. In such a case, you would need a custom ICC profile.

Hopefully, this provides some insight into why your prints don't match your monitor. ESPECIALLY if you record and adjust raw files, rather than saving JPEGs at the camera, you need to work on a correctly calibrated and custom profiled monitor.

spaceylb Loc: Long Beach, N.Y.

The attached .icc file was made with a colormunki for 9000ii and the HP Premium Plus paper using OEM canon inks. I know this thread is old, but if you still have some HP paper, give it a try. Theoretically it should work...if you're using canon ink. Im curious to know...

Attached file:
(Download)