*UPDATE* Canon Pixma Pro-1 Review Sneak Peek

[cxpcman]

You feel my pain with the ink cartridges.  ?...... If not ....you will!!!! Hehehe

I will try to play more with the paper size and see if I see something usefull . Ups I just forgot that I need a MBk cartrige to continue printing . Ups again I forgot that I need c, pc, m, pm, gy, pgy, green, blue, yellow, black, brown, red, orange, violet , transparent and bla bla bla  . It can't be that bad at least I don't need the white cartridge I got that one full of ink  hehehe

I use Mitsubishi and ilford paper . I like the mate surface of Mitsubishi and the pearl from ilford . Stay away from canon media it tend to yellow if uv rays and air hits the surface. And it loose flexibility over time . The substrate will crack if not handled carefully . I can only recommend the semigloss canvas from canon the colors are very vibrant and I have some exposed to the sun with excellent preservation over time .

I found that canon restrict the high quality printing and border less capability to the canon papers I think that way they promote the use of their mediA only . But who cares ? Just select the pro plus ultra hyper platinum semigloss paper from canon and make custom Icc profiles  for the paper you use.

I print all sizes of paper from 4x2.75 to 13 x19 . I just select the bigger size then at the photoshop preview window center the image and set the top to 0 . The only way this one works is if you deselect (paper size detection) at the custom settings in the printer driver . I'm at home so I will try to post a screenshot tomorrow.

[t.linn]

Selecting a bigger paper size than the one you are using (essentially lying to the printer driver) is not a bad solution when it is possible to do this.  But if I want to print a full bleed 13 x 19, there isn't a bigger paper size to select.  A3+ is the largest option.  So that doesn't solve my problem.

Likewise, lying to the printer driver about the media type—choosing a media type that allows custom paper sizes and/or smaller margins—is a workaround.  Unfortunately, this workaround can lead to a significant reduction in image quality.  A Canon support rep suggested that very thing.  He told me to trying choosing "Matte" as the media type instead of the art paper type Canon recommends.  He didn't think the difference would be significant.  He was wrong.  Using *the same* ICC profile, I printed a test page on Hahnemuhle photo rag with the recommended media type and then again with the "matte" media type.  The workaround produced a print with blocked up blacks and a non-neutral grayscale.  Same paper; same ICC profile.  Image quality wasn't even close.  I've attached a scan of both images for anyone who is interested in seeing the difference.  (Be sure to view it in an image editing program; not Windows Photo Viewer which clips the blacks.)

A custom profile might very well improve this situation.  Unfortunately, this requires an expensive bit of hardware I don't own; or paying someone else every time I want to use a different paper.  I did some research to determine the media type used by third party paper manufacturers who offer ICC profiles for their paper.  Every single one of them used a media type that enforced the 1.38" margin and prevented the use of custom paper sizes.  In other words, I did not find a single instance where I would not have to pay for a custom profile to avoid the restrictions imposed by Canon's driver.

As far as ink consumption, I haven't noticed anything unusual but then I haven't been able to print what I want to in the sizes I need to.  My prints have all been test prints at this point.

[cxpcman]

what i think is not Honest from canon is that they offer a printer that waste just soooo much ink...1 complete inkset in just 1 week is insane !! ...

[t.linn]

I've been meaning to ask...  How much printing did you accomplish with that inkset, cxcpman?

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I just bought a supply of 16 oz bottles of cone inks for my Epson 3880, so I'm set for quite a while.  If they offer one free with a 1DX I might get it though.

[cxpcman]

dificult to compare.. but let me see if you get the diference from my 9500 vs pro 1
if i print just black and white

MBK consumption is proportional 2 cartridges from 9500 vs 1 cartridge pro1
the problem is with the other inks the color ones ..
i use 1 cartridge of 9500 vs 3 cartridges of pro 1 thats

these numbers are aproximately i can set an acuracy of +- 20%

I've been meaning to ask...  How much printing did you accomplish with that inkset, cxcpman?

[t.linn]

I thought I would make one additional post on this subject to wrap things up.  I've decided to return my Pixma Pro-1 printer.  It really frustrates me because other than my issue with the print sizes this printer was everything I had hoped it would be: well built, easy to use, attractive.  Print quality was outstanding.  No metamerism, no bronzing, great gamut, accurate color.  I experienced no paper handling issues and, unlike cxcpman, I didn't notice any excessive ink use (though, as I've said, I didn't get to print what I wanted to print).  It is, in every other way, the printer I have been waiting for since I ran the first of many cleaning cycles on an EPSON printer a decade ago. 

Having said all that, as I look around my walls at all the prints I've made previously using a smaller HP B9180 with various papers and canvas, there is not a single print—not ONE—that I would be able to print at the same size on the Pixma Pro-1 with its crippled paper/media type functionality.  It seems to me that Canon is trying to protect me from myself, needlessly forcing me to choose between image quality and image size.  Why not just warn me that image quality might be compromised with my current driver settings and let me make my own decision?  Canon's engineers won't give me that choice so I make the only decision I can:  look for a different printer.

[Cineroo]

A custom profile might very well improve this situation.  Unfortunately, this requires an expensive bit of hardware I don't own; or paying someone else every time I want to use a different paper.  I did some research to determine the media type used by third party paper manufacturers who offer ICC profiles for their paper.  Every single one of them used a media type that enforced the 1.38" margin and prevented the use of custom paper sizes.  In other words, I did not find a single instance where I would not have to pay for a custom profile to avoid the restrictions imposed by Canon's driver.

I've just run into this problem having bought an expensive set of Hahnemuhle photo rag and museum etching papers - the fact that the maximum print size on A3+ paper is quite a bit less than a borderless A3 print is very disappointing.

Would a custom profile really solve this problem? I didn't think the profiles contained this sort of restriction, but my knowledge is very limited!  Can anyone who has profiled some fine art paper confirm?  Like t.linn, this is the printer I've been waiting for and am prepared to spend the extra £300 for a munki if it's a proper fix.

Ultimately Canon needs to remove these restrictions in their software to give us the choice.

Many thanks.

[t.linn]

At $1,000, the customer should have the ability to decide for him or herself.  When I circumvented the restriction by using an incorrect media type on both a PK and MK paper there was absolutely no issues at the edges so, in my case, they were protecting me from nothing.  All three Canon reps I spoke with seemed very sympathetic to my cause but equally resigned to the fact that this is what it is and anyone purchasing the printer had better accept this limitation.

You are correct in surmising that the print area restriction is not built into the profile.  The restriction is programmed into the media type.  However, they are related.  When you profile a paper, it is profiled using a particular media type.  If you then print with that profile but switch the media type you may experience a very noticeable reduction in print quality, as I did with the example I posted.  Every single third party paper supplier I researched used one of the restricted media types when creating profiles for their papers so switching media types to one that isn't restricted could potentially make their profiles useless.  Making custom profiles using an unrestricted media type might help but probably won't solve the problem completely.  For example, if the unrestricted media type was programmed with an ink usage setting that is too heavy for the paper being profiled, I don't know that a custom profile would compensate for this.  What it would do is correct the color cast issue that I experienced in my example.

As an aside, I know lots of people who swear by their ColorMunkis but Dry Creek Photo, a very knowledgeable source on color management, did a comprehensive review of colorimeters and spectrophotometers (http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/MonitorCalibrationHardware.html) using multiple copies of each sensor they tested.  The ColorMunki spectrophotometer (or it's i1 sibling—I can't remember but it's the same hardware) showed so much variability between different units that they couldn't recommend it at all.  At the end of 2011, X-Rite introduced a new ColorMunki (and i1) that is uniformly excellent but it is a colorimeter and can't be used to create printer profiles.  The bottom line for me was that creating *quality* custom profiles is an expensive proposition and when it's not guaranteed to solve your problem it's a hard cost to justify.

[Cineroo]

I also tried printing using the matte paper type on Hahnemuhle pro white photo rag 310gsm. The blacks were noticeably not black, and overall the image looked slightly washed out compared to the (excellent) proper paper type. I know I can't correct this with photoshop so I'm hoping to try a profiling tool soon.

In their defense, I did notice some longitudinal curling introduced by printing the full a3+ but only with a 1cm border. I've heard one of the reasons for Canon enforcing art 35 borders is to avoid head strikes due to page curling. There may be some truth to this depending on the paper, though I didn't have any visible problems with the print itself. Having said this, I also heard they did this because pro photographers surveyed said they always wanted large borders, though this feels less credible.

It seems this restriction has been in place for years, as the 9000 and 9500 (all versions) are the same. This gives me less hope that Canon can be persuaded to relax it. I really don't want to print borderless on the heavy papers, but 1-1.5cm seems ample for a mat.

[t.linn]

I agree with your sentiment about borderless printing, Cineroo.  I don't print borderless.  And despite my experiences to the contrary, I have never assumed that the mandatory margins on certain papers are unnecessary.  At the risk of repeating myself, my frustration is the inability to create a custom page size to print as large as possible within Canon's established restrictions on art and third party photo paper.  Users should be able to print as large as 13.3x20 on a 14x23 sheet—but the driver won't let you.

I find it interesting that neither EPSON nor HP users must deal with a similar restriction.  As you correctly point out, the Pixma 9000 and 9500 have had a similar restriction for years and users have been complaining about it for just as long.  Yet, while Canon has worked hard to raise the quality of printed output, they are apparently content to live with this design limitation despite the fact that their competition has been able to do better.

It is instructive to compare the Pro-1 to my five year old HP B9180 that it was intended to replace.  In terms of build and output quality, there is no comparison.  The Pro-1 is head and shoulders better.  But the Pro-1 is not necessarily the ultimate A3+ printer.  I've really come to appreciate some of the design decisions that went into HP's B9180: it's straight paper path, 1.5 mm max paper thickness, and flexible driver allowed users to print on just about any substrate that would take InkAID.  It removed the ink tanks from the print head long before Canon did on the Pro-1, and had none of the restrictions on paper size (beyond a maximum length) that one must deal with on Canon's A3+ printers.  Even six years after it was introduced, the B9180 remains the more advanced printer in many respects.  Having said all that, the Pro-1 is certainly as close as I've seen to a printer in this class that "just works" — as long as users can live with the paper size restrictions.