Printer Woes (Page 2): You might check into obtaining the OmniPage One software for managing your Canon Pro 1000 printer. It has some nice features that allow you to print consistently...

ejw 46 Loc: Tempe, AZ

You might check into obtaining the OmniPage One software for managing your Canon Pro 1000 printer. It has some nice features that allow you to print consistently and to do scheduled head cleans to minimize ink consumption. As was pointed out, using the printer frequently is more like doing preventative maintenance while printing your images. So planning is a necessity, but I must admit that the results from the Pro 1000 are amaziing.

kufengler Loc: Meridian, Idaho 83646

I just bought a HP Smart Tank 7xxx series printer, replacing an old HP printer I had for years. It started having issues when I switched using generic ink. I can't say for sure that was the cause since I did have the printer for quite a while.
I did like how easy the new one was to set up: pouring the ink into the tanks was easy, no mess, it also has a color and black print head that are easily replicable, connecting to wifi.
so far the printer has worked great.
I worked for hp for 32 years, not the printer division, but my wife did. HP & Canon collaborated on the engine.

charles tabb Loc: Richmond VA.

Grimaldi wrote:

A few years ago, I purchased a Canon Pro 1000 printer. Soon, it became evident that the printer was best at transferring ink from the cartridges to the maintenance container under the guise of "head cleaning" at rather noticeable expense. Finally, the paper pick-up became completely unreliable and no amount of roller cleaning would remedy that failure. In response, I gave up on that printer as an expensive lesson learned and, two years ago, bought an Epson P900. I am delighted with the performance of this machine. It has scarcely wasted a drop of ink in head cleaning and is reliable and economical. Also, it has sat unused for weeks at a time and I've had no problem with clogged jets.

An acquaintance had exactly the opposite experience. He owned an Epson P900 which was best at wasting ink. He gave up on that printer and bought a Canon Pro 1000 and is delighted with it. His does not waste ink. Additionally, I know a lady who owns a P900 and, while I don't know how much ink it uses to clean the heads, she complains consistently about ink blotting along the edges of her prints.

Finally, there is an organization that has a "print lab" containing several P900s. These are used heavily for brief periods of time and then sit idle for long periods. At least during the times they are used, there is no excessive head cleaning. It needs to be noted that this organization has established a practice of placing violin humidifiers in their printers when they are off.

My take-away from all this is that both companies have problems with quality consistency and, the performance of any given printer is a random function. My purpose in writing this post is to survey the readers of this page concerning their experience with these printers. Who among you have had problems or successes with either or both of them?

It must be noted that all these printers are located within about a 20 mile radius in a high elevation, low humidity environment. While I have purchased a violin humidifier, I do not use it because:
a. I haven't found it necessary.
b. They must be wetted and replaced every 2-3 days and my memory isn't that reliable.
c. I you turn the machine on with the humidifier in it, damage may result.
However, the use of a humidifier should alleviate any clogging problems.

A few years ago, I purchased a Canon Pro 1000 prin... (show quote)

Qiute some time ago B&H had a sale on the Canon Pro 100 and it was so low that I couldn't believe it. I love mine ans so far (Knock on wood) I haven't had the first problem with mine. B&H's sale was so good that I bought 2 and have stored 1 and use the other.

dbrugger25 Loc: Raleigh, NC

Sidwalkastronomy wrote:

I bought an Epson ET8550 and in 7 months I had 5 yes 5 machines replaced by Epson due to ink smearing all o er. I bought it to have 11x14 prints and the only way to keep ink from going all over is to print with a white border and not borderless. Each time had a ridiculously long phone sessions with just trying to wear me down.

I had an epson ET 7550 and had three of them break down mechanically and all three waisted huge amounts of ink due to smearing and necessary head cleaning. They are, by far, the worst and most unreliable printers I have ever experienced.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

dbrugger25 wrote:

I had an epson ET 7550 and had three of them break down mechanically and all three waisted huge amounts of ink due to smearing and necessary head cleaning. They are, by far, the worst and most unreliable printers I have ever experienced.

Mine was ecotank. The only positive was after I knew I was sending it back I bought a lot of genrric 11x14 paper and kept printing sunsets and other things.
When I was photographing the sun set on the Manadquan inlet junction of Atlantic Ocean I gave people 11x14 prints and they were thrilled.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The Canon Pro-100 is discontinued. The currently available replacement is the Pro 200. Both use dye ink instead of the more "professional" pigment inks. A key benefit of the dye inks is that they are far less likely to clog. That means you can leave the printer idle for long periods. You don't have to worry about regular printer use to keep it working.

The downside of the dye inks is that, in theory, they may fade a little sooner.

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

I own and use an Epson P800 and it's been steady-Eddie, no probs, I print enough where the ink cost is a thorn...but I believe worth the expense. The same cannot be said for my R3000, which had to have its feed mechanism replaced during Covid...been fine ever since, and it's the one that I use Ink Owl inks with. Not bad at all.

Morry Loc: Palm Springs, CA

Shellback wrote:

I gave up on ink photo printers - tried them all - Canon, Epson, HP, Brother, and Kodak - they're all either high maintenance and high cost or just plain garbage. I don't print enough anymore to justify a color laser so I have all my work printed by print shops and save the headaches - plus, the options they offer are awesome - I have not been disappointed yet...

Sounds a lot like my experience. I too gave up on ink jet printing. I have successfully used a Brother laser printer (paid $50. bucks a few years ago on sale and it runs flawlessly and cheap) and I send my color work to the lab. Only thing I miss is no copying available.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

A few facts about printers:

> Borderless inkjet printers generally cannot print borderless continuously. They MUST over-spray the ink past the edges of the paper to make the print borderless. That overspray gets on everything in the printer to the left and right of the print as it goes through the machine. Since ink never truly dries, it transfers to the rollers and the back sides of subsequent sheets of paper. So my recommendation is to leave a border. If you need 11x14, print it on 13x19 paper. I wouldn't print larger than 12x18 on 13x19.

Just about all the popular print sizes smaller than letter size can be made on letter size paper. Lightroom Classic and several other applications can be configured to print multi-unit combination prints, so you don't waste much paper. Get a decent paper cutter and trim your prints. It's what labs do.

> Most ink only lasts around two years, unopened. Pay attention to the expiration dates on the unopened boxes.

> Ink only lasts about six months in a printer before it begins to settle, dry out, precipitate, and cause head clogs.

> Don't buy an inkjet printer to save money. That is a FOOL'S ERRAND.

> Inkjet printers thrive when used often! This keeps the inks fresher, keeps the nozzles clear, and keeps the lubricants evenly distributed on moving parts.

> PIGMENT inks are solvents with tiny particles of pigment suspended in them. If you switch to a cheaper brand of ink than the original equipment manufacturer's branded ink, there is a possibility the solvents are incompatible. If that's the case, a precipitate will form in the ink lines or the heads, and permanently clog your printer. This is not covered under any warranty. I saw this happen in our lab, when my print supervisor convinced me to order some third party ink. The clog was nearly instantaneous when we switched to brand X. $1800 later, we had new heads and ink lines in a $5500 printer, and we went back to OEM inks.

> DYE inks are not as likely to clog as pigment inks, but they may still clog when they get old or sit in a printer for a long time.

> Dye inks last about half as long as pigment inks. They are usually rated by Wilhelm Research to last around 50 to 100 years in dark storage, and about half that long when displayed under glass in normal room light with no direct exposure to sunlight..

> Pigment inks are rated to last 75 to 400 years in dark storage and about half that long under glass in normal room light with no direct exposure to sunlight.

> BOTH types of photographic grade OEM inks are far more resistant to fade than the dyes in traditional silver halide chromogenic (wet process) photo papers.

> OFFICE printer inks (dye inks) are totally inappropriate for serious photo printing. They fade in months if left out in the light.

> If you want your prints to match your monitor image, the MONITOR must be calibrated (so it produces perfect gray at every level from black to white, when given a signal of perfect gray). Once calibrated, it must be custom PROFILED (which identifies its color capabilities to the "color engine" in your operating system or software).

> Soft proofing is a software feature that allows you to see, on a CALIBRATED and PROFILED monitor, a very close simulation of what you will get from your lab or your printer. It inserts a printer profile between the operating system's color engine and the monitor. This limits the monitor to the capability of the printer.

> If you use a wide gamut working space such as ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB, you NEED to soft proof to make final adjustments to your files before sending them to a lab or printing your own work. Labs and printers cannot reproduce all the saturation of ProPhoto RGB, and only the very best pro-grade pigment printers can come close to reproducing the full range of Adobe RGB.

> If you don't understand what ICC color management is, how it works, and why you should care, PLEASE read the white papers from DataColor, X-Rite, Calibrite, and others who sell equipment to the photo trade. You'll at least understand why your work looks weird, and at best learn how to match your monitor image to your prints to an acceptable — perhaps remarkable — degree.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

"burkphoto" Thanks for the education. That was great.

PhotoPhred Loc: Cheyney, Pa

I have 2 Canon printers, a Pixma pro 9000Mk2, and a Pixma pro 100. They both have been stellar printers. The 9000 has to be around 15yo and I got the 100 when it first was introduced. Sometimes they will sit for months without use. I had some health issues a few years ago (all better now) and the 9000 wad idle for at least one year. I turned it on, put some photo paper in it, and it worked fine. Same for the 100. I did run the utilities even though there were no messages asking me to do so. For me it's Canon.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

My Epson 8550 prints great looking photos. I agree that borderless that size is hopeless. There is a menu choice that allows you to put a small white border so you can use the right size paper. If you go up in size paper it cost more and I'm not trimming them down so far.
I never mat my wall hangers 11x14 only, so the small border gets hidden under the frame. I send my 16x20 out to a LAB BTW I don't notice this overspray on my 8.5x11 or 4x6 prints but I'll look as I don't print those sizes much.

Elias Amador

I have thrown away several printers, and yesterday my Epson ET2760 just quit: It worked fine for about 2 years, now it won't accept the refill ink no matter what I do. Today I am taking it to Staples to see if they can help, but I kinda doubt it.
Coolhanduke's comment that most printers on the market are throw-aways jibes with my experience.

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Morry wrote:

Sounds a lot like my experience. I too gave up on ink jet printing. I have successfully used a Brother laser printer (paid $50. bucks a few years ago on sale and it runs flawlessly and cheap) and I send my color work to the lab. Only thing I miss is no copying available.

For copying, I use a couple of methods - one is a Brother 720 compact scanner which works great -
The other is my phone - there are various apps for scanning or copying pretty much anything... As an example, for photo copying, I use Photomyne which works really well... Another app is Adobe Scan but I generally snap a photo of what I'm copying... Lots of choices

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

My printers have always been at the 3 in 1 photo printer level. All have been extremely disappointing for the reasons above. UNTIL I bought a Cannon Pixma 6350, which I use with pattern inks costing approx 1/3 price of Canon inks. I've had this for two years, and use it for documents in B/W as well as color printing photographs
It has never let me down, no clogging, no cleaning print heads and prints great photos, faithfully copies, and scans so easily. I am surprised that Epson and HP and Brother etc have even tried to compete. I do appreciate that it is horses for courses, but I've got prints on my walls which visitors commend and enjoy. Best 2U all, Del