Ad Terras Per Aspera

Canon has a series of products under the “Glossy Photo Paper” name, with the formula identification number of GP 401. They used to make many different types of paper under this formula, but now it seems they only make the credit card sized paper.

The paper is flawed in that it has a slightly reddish tinge, which makes pictures a tad warmer than they should be. Compared against Canon’s PR 101 Photo Paper Pro (which is an almost neutral white, very slightly on the warm side), GP 401 can be described as pink.

This pink color shifts flesh tones and anything that uses magenta ink to print out to be shifted over to the pink side as well. Unfortunately, the only way to get Canon branded credit card sized paper is to use this paper.

So, I just spent the last two hours slowly tweaking an existing ICC profile for a similar paper (Canon’s Photo Paper Plus, which isn’t nearly as red) to work correctly with this paper.

To get you close to the correct colors, set your “Media Type” to “Glossy Photo Paper”, and use the manual color adjustment dialog (click “Color Adjustment: Manual”, and click on “Set…”) to increase cyan to 35, magenta to 10, yellow to 25, and decrease intensity to -10. These alone increase the quality of output on GP 401 a lot, and make it similar to Photo Paper Pro.

Also, if you’re using Photoshop, or any similar professional printing application, disable ICM and use “Print Type” set to “None”. In Photoshop, you typically use Photoshop’s built in color management.

To use said color management, use “Print With Preview”, and select “Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors”, “Printer Profile: Canon i9900 SP1″, “Rendering Intent: Preceptual”, and turn “Black Point Compensation” on.

Now, this isn’t as good as just having an ICC profile for the GP 401, but it is about the best you’re going to get, it seems.

I’ve heard a few good things about Adorama’s ProJet Elite Inkjet Paper, a few people I know have started using it because it’s supposably very high quality archival type inkjet paper that reproduces colors great, and is cheaper than other similar brands.

In turn, they attempted to convert me to the cult of ProJet Elite, and I’ve gotten nothing but horrible results with my Canon i9900, which I reviewed not too long ago.

So far, I have tested only ProJet Elite Picture Rag Warm Tone 190gsm¹. It does reproduce colors semi-accurately, but it looks very faded, and blacks are a dark grey. Also, dark areas appear splotchy, and sometimes very light areas end up appearing bright white.

Tested vs Canon Photo Paper Pro² (glossy, but reproduces colors amazingly), ProJet Elite Picture Rag fails horribly. If you’re looking for a decent brand of thick matte paper, look elsewhere.

Please note, however, that this does not reflect on Adorama as a fine purveyor of photography goods in any way. I’ve never had problems with any of my orders with Adorama, and they often carry products cheaper than Amazon, and even carry products that Amazon doesn’t. I still recommend Adorama as a good place to shop… I just don’t recommend their paper.

_{[1]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Matte Photo Paper³, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print Type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 elite warm tone” printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[2]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Photo Paper Pro, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 PR1″ printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[3]: The Matte Photo Paper setting produces better results than Other Photo Paper and Plain Paper with ProJet Elite Picture Rag.}

Update, February 7th 2006: I’ve now tried every combination of setting the printer driver to every media type, color adjustments with ICM and print type; and I’ve also tried changing settings various settings in Photoshop (color handling, rendering intent, and black point compensation).

There is simply no way to print good results on this paper using the Canon i9990 inkjet printer. If I rated products on a 5 star scale, Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper would get 0 stars.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m now the proud owner of a Canon i9900 wide format printer, and I’d like to mention upfront that this printer rocks beyond all belief. Canon managed to do everything right with this printer, and it shows.

For a mere $350-400, you get a printer that is fast, quiet, produces great prints, good looking, and charismatic. If there is a printer you can pick up chicks with, this is that printer.

Speed: Doing borderless photos at the highest quality using Canon’s Photo Paper Pro, I get a 4×6″ in about 35 seconds, a 8×10″ in about 50 seconds, and a 13×19″ in about 3 minutes. Watching it do a 13×19″ that fast is almost like a magic trick.

Noise: Ultimately none. The specifications in the manual say 37db maximum when printing, but the only thing I hear is the clunk-clunk sound of it feeding pages into itself, and the occational swish-swish as the head goes back and forth while printing. Its quieter than any printer I’ve ever owned.

Photo Quality: I’ve been printing out 8 megapixel images from my Canon Rebel XT, and the photo quality is amazing. Compared to, say, the Kodak digital printing booth at Walmart, for roughly the same price per picture[1], I get much better quality. And, of course, it beats any consumer or prosumer photo printer I’ve owned (including two Canons and a Lexmark[2].) I haven’t found a good picture to push the envelope of this printer’s 4800×2400 DPI output, but I find text to be crisp and sharp, as if it came out of a high end laser printer.

Size and weight: Well, I won’t say the printer is small. It being a wide format printer, it has to be big enough to print 13″ wide paper, plus enough room on each side for the print head to completely clear the paper. The specifications in the manual say it weighs 21 pounds, and has a WxHxD of 23×7x13″, but that isn’t really big at all. The volume is roughly four times that of a Canon consumer printer, and they pack a lot of features in such a tiny space.

Ink usage and price: You’d expect a printer like this to chew through ink like crazy, right? Wrong. I’ve printed over 75 4×6″s, a 8×10″, a 13×19″, and two pages of a PDF so far, and according to the ink level viewer in the driver, I haven’t used much ink at all (see the screenshot to the left to see for yourself). Amazon is currently selling all the 8 seperate ink tanks for around $8 a peice, so the cost per unit of ink is lower than most professional printers, and lower than any consumer printer that uses the single all-in-one carts with the built-in print head.

Asthetic quality: I used to think all printers were ugly, and were far too ornate for their function; or on the other end of the spectrum, too boxy and plain. The Canon i9900 manages to perform well and look good doing it. As a review said (one I read before buying the printer) it looks like they “sliced a cylinder in half”, and I have to agree. Also, the coloring is a tasteful blend of black and dark silver, and the front panel only has two buttons, a light, and a USB plug for plugging a camera directly into the printer.

Other things I like about this printer is how it folds up on itself to keep dust out: the front tray folds in and up to prevent stuff entering from the front, and the paper holder in the back folds down to prevent dust and small objects from simply falling inside. I can open the front panel with the tray and paper holder closed, so replacing ink carts is a breeze.

Honestly, I’d pay even more for this printer than what Canon sells this for. Canon’s MSRP is $500, Amazon sells it for around $450, and I’d pay around $600-700 for it; its very hard to get printers that are supported by Linux that are any good.

_{[1]: Its about $0.50 per 4×6″ at the local Kodak booth, and I pay about $0.60 cents per 4×6″ in a 120 pack of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro. Photo Paper Pro is thicker, brighter, and more resistant to mishandling than Kodak’s paper in my opinion, so it’s quite worth the extra ten cents.}

_{[2]: I hate Lexmark’s consumer printers. Lexmark refuses to release Linux drivers for them, and they have threatened to sue anyone who tries to. I would normally say “boycot Lexmark”, but lets face it, Lexmark consumer printers are some of the lowest quality printers produced with some of the highest priced ink. Get a cheap Canon for a similar price, you’ll be much happier.}

Update: I’ve blogged about using Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper with my i9900, and its worth a read if you want to know how well the i9900 interacts with this brand of paper.