Excellent Quality Photo Prints from an Inexpensive Printer
Written: May 29 '05
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Pros: Excellent photo print quality after customizing print settings
Cons: Default print settings need tweaking for high quality photo print output
The Bottom Line: I would recommend the Canon iP3000 to anyone who's willing and able to put a little work into customizing the print driver settings for producing high-quality, inexpensive color prints.
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| pointblankart's Full Review: Canon PIXMA iP3000 InkJet Photo Printer |
Setting up the iP3000 on a PC is a snap using the included Quick Start Guide. After set-up the first thing I did was make a couple of test prints using the default settings for both standard and high quality prints. The results were on the mediocre side, so I did a little web research and found a reference to the Canon ICC Profiles Guide available here - http://homepage.mac.com/renard/ls/Canon_ICC_Profile_Guide.pdf - it gives a step-by-step method for setting up your printer to print in the Adobe RGB color space. Adobe RGB excels in rich, saturated greens and blues, so much so that you might want to back off a bit by tweaking the Canon printer driver after setting things up using the guide - the Canon printer driver allows you to save your customized settings and recall them whenever you wish with a couple of mouse clicks. Although the guide is written for users of Adobe Photoshop, there are other programs available that can utilize Adobe RGB, including later versions of Paint Shop Pro, and most all versions of Corel Photopaint.
After setting things up according to the Canon ICC Profiles Guide, I've been able to produce some beautifully saturated landscape prints on Epson Matte Heavyweight print paper, which was leftover from a misadventure with an Epson C84 printer. I use one sheet of matte heavyweight at a time via the top paper feeder when I want to make high quality photo prints, while leaving the bottom paper tray filled with standard print paper for everything else. I like the fact that I'm able to quickly flip the top access door down when I'm through photo printing - protecting the feeder, cartridges, etc. from dust. In reading other reviews of the iP3000, a common complaint has been the flimsiness of its access panels - I would agree that both the front and top access panels are not as robust as they might be, but they each perform their assigned function, and should continue to do so with a moderate amount of care in their opening and closing.
From the printing I've done, the iP3000, using Canon inks, is capable of producing vivid oranges, purples, and greens, which would indicate that Canon has developed well-balanced neutral dyes for use in its cyan, magenta and yellow ink cartridges, since any skewing to either the warm or cool side of the spectrum for any one of the three would lead to some muddiness in the secondary colors. The iP3000 uses a single pigmented black vs. the iP4000's use of the same pigmented black in addition to a dye black, which I'm sure allows the iP4000 more subtlety in grayscale images, but for color printing there doesn't appear to be much of a difference between the iP3000 and iP4000 according to the comparisons in the reviews I've read. The light-fastness rating for Canon inks is 25-30 years which I think is sufficient for producing unlimited edition prints for sale, especially when protected by U.V. filtering glazing. I suppose this sounds like I'm shilling for Canon by recommending that you only use their recommended Canon ink cartridges - that's best for my purposes, but if you're not that concerned about prints lasting 25+ years, and can tolerate the occasional slight muddiness of hue, I'm sure there are less expensive third-party cartridges of sufficient quality.
Although the iP3000 isn't an ink sipper, it's superior to the ink guzzling Epson C84 I had, and uses individual transparent cartridges so you can actually see how much ink remains in each cartridge. Overall, I'm well-pleased with my iP3000 and would recommend it to anyone who's willing and able to put a little work into customizing the print driver settings for producing high-quality, inexpensive color prints.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 65
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
pointblankart
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Reviews written: 13
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