Help with Canon i950 inkjet printer

[cobras]

I have a year old i950 printer. It works very well except for a color problem, which I need your help. When printed on glossy photopapers, the whole picture looks reddish. Black color turns into more puple than black. When I checked ink cartridges, there was too much consumption of PM (photo magenta) ink. That is the problem. Could someone advise me how to fix the overflowing PM ink? Thanks. Cobras

[chibill]

If using off-brand or Kodak paper I'd start by trying the "matt" paper setting which puts less ink on the paper. Also, make sure the printer driver has most of the funky enhancement features turned OFF -- If you are trying to make adjustments by the seat of your pants, best to have a good starting place.

Are you using Canon paper? Don't expect great results with other papers unless you have a profile which matches that paper with your specific Canon printer - bargain or off-brand papers WON'T save you any money in the long run. (You'll waste lots of ink trying to get things looking right.)

If you don't have your monitor calibrated and the proper paper/printer profiles, trying to get a print to look like what you see on the monitor is an excerise in frustration -- you'll waste tons of ink and reams of paper not to mention time!

I went through about $100 worth of ink and paper with my Canon i9100 before I bought the Pantone Spyder 2 pro and the Pantone Printfix combination to calibrate monitor and printer. Since I'm very serious about getting good results, I figured it was worth the $400 investment. Even with those tools, it takes care to get things right.

Without some degree of calibration and the use of a program such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you're only guessing at the final results.

good luck!

Chibill