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Colour is a personal matter, some photographers prefer strong vibrant colours whilst others may prefer more subtle colours. As we will discover from here onwards, the Canon printer can deliver just the right amount of colour to suit your own images, or you can easily alter the values to your own taste.
I am starting this colour samples page by including two prints produced by the Canon Pixma Pro 9000, the file was not altered between prints. The first print was created using the default auto setting, for the second print I set the Photoshop plug-in, Easy-PhotoPrint Pro colour management tab, to Linear Tone ( I will cover this in greater detail on page 7).
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Canon Pro 9000 - sample of print using the Auto settings |
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Canon Pro 9000 - sample of print using the Easy-PhotoPrint Pro plug-in |
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HP B9180 |
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Epson R2400 |
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Epson R1800 |
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HP 8750 |
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Canon iP9950 |
Looking at the samples above and the actual prints in front of me, we can see a variety of colour interpretations. Any one print on its own would more than satisfy even the most demanding user. It's only when you place the prints side by side (or on top of each other in this case) that you will make a personal preference. This is something that I have noticed in the past with wet chemistry prints, show someone a photograph and the reaction is, 'I like that picture' , show them two pictures and they stop looking at the subject and start to make a preference on colour. Show three or more prints and it's amazing to see how they transform into a colour expert.
Some of the sample print colours will suit a particular image type, but for the sake of our reviews I normally look for a close colour match to the actual file and how easy it is to achieve the desired colour. I know you can alter the colours very easily within your image editing applications, but the object of the exercise has to be to reproduce as closely as possible, what you see on your screen.
The Canon Pro 9000 produced a good looking colour print using the default auto settings, but as mentioned this left Sophie's skin colour looking too red. After I altered a couple of settings the skin tone looked healthy and other colours gained richer saturation.
Hover your cursor over each image to compare with the original file, please bear in mind that the four images you see above are scans of the actual prints, and as such some of the information will have been lost in the process. The original file is an RGB image which can never be reproduced on any printer with 100% accuracy.
The Black reel is very dense and has lost some of the individual strands, but still acceptable, the Brown reel has a tasty chocolate look and the White reel keeps all the detail throughout. The Reds are much vibrant on the first Auto print, but at the expense of the skin tones, on the second print they are more controlled and look more lifelike. The Yellow reel on the second print has lost a lot of the saturation, but is still very good. The Green reel is cooler than the original file but foliage in landscape photographs looks natural. The Blue reels are very good but slightly over saturated.
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