Printers

The Pixma Pro9000 is the first of the long-awaited Canon professional A3+ desktop printers to be released locally. Featuring the proprietary FINE (Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) printhead technology, it has an eight-colour individual ink tank system that uses the latest ChromaLife100 dye inks. Canon claims prints produced with these inks on certain Canon papers will have an archival life span of 100 years, which is comparable with some pigment inks.

The print head can lay down approximately 11 million droplets per square inch. Deposited with 2-picolitre precision, these inks can deliver excellent detail reproduction and the inclusion of red and green ink cartridges allows photographers to reproduce a wider range of colours than standard CMYK ink sets. Only one black ink cartridge is provided - and it's used with all types of paper.

Design and Controls
Not unexpectedly, the Pro9000 is a big printer, with a footprint measuring 66 x 35 cm when packed. The paper in and out trays increase its depth to about 80 cm when fully extended and you need to allow at least 40 cm behind the printer when loading heavyweight paper (up to 1.2mm thick) in the front tray. For most printing there's a standard top-loading feeder with a flip-up support for large sheets of paper. An adjustable guide lets users set the width of the paper and ensure it loads correctly for printing.

Power and USB 2.0 Hi-Speed ports are located at either end of the rear panel, while the top panel lifts up to reveal the printhead and ink tanks. The front panel carries the operating controls, which consist of an on/off button, resume/cancel button, front feed button and direct print port. Two status lamps, covering power and alarm, sit left of the top two buttons. 

No memory card slots are provided for direct printing but a USB direct print port on the front panel allows a digital camera to be connected to the Pro9000. Photographers can use the camera's LCD monitor to view image files and make minor adjustments to images from amateur cameras. Professional users can adjust parameters such as colour balance, colour tone, saturation, contrast and brightness and also add shooting information to prints and the Canon-to-Canon direct connection simplifies the workflow with EOS DSLRs that have Picture Style.

Setting up the Pro9000 is very straightforward. You simply load the software (Windows and Mac disks are provided), install the print head and ink cartridges and load the paper in the auto sheet feed tray. When you connect the printer to your PC via a USB cable (not supplied) and switch the power on, the computer's OS should recognise the printer and install the drivers. You will be instructed to print two sheets of nozzle and head alignment tests before you can proceed. The only problem we encountered was due to an ink cartridge that had not been securely located in its bay (you have to push down firmly on the cartridges near the edge of the printer to lock them in).

Canon supplies a rather scanty printed "Quick Start Guide" to help you with the set-up process. A comprehensive manual is provided on the software CD. This is well laid out and clearly explains all facets of printer operation. It also includes an ample Troubleshooting section.

Workflow Management
Canon has designed its new A3+ printers to integrate with a professional workflow. The software bundle includes Easy-PhotoPrint Pro, a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 and the Digital Photo Professional (v2.1 or later) application supplied with EOS DSLR cameras.  Opening a raw image in Digital Photo Professional (DPP) allows you to adjust the image then transfer it to Photoshop. And you don't need to save raw images in TIFF/JPEG format before printing.


Some of the adjustments provided in Digital Photo Professional.

In Photoshop, you simply select File>Automate>Easy-PhotoPrint Pro and the image opens in the Easy-PhotoPrint Pro user interface. The illustrations below show how to open images and the range of adjustments available.


Opening an image in Photoshop with Easy PhotoPrint Pro.

The Easy PhotoPrint Pro user interface showing some of the adjustments provided.

To make a B&W print of a selected shot, simply click on the Color Adjustment tab and check Grayscale Photo. A dropdown menu lets you choose from neutral, cool or warm tones or make custom adjustments. You can also tweak brightness and contrast.


The Grayscale Photo options in the Colour Adjustment menu.

An interesting function in the Colour Adjustment pane is Pattern Print, which lets you print a colour ring-around with thumbnail images that have varying hues and brightness levels or a single-hue pattern with varying intensities. Adjustment parameters are shown beneath each thumbnail, making it easy to determine the correct setting for the print. The printout can be kept for reference when making additional prints.


Pattern Print settings.

You can also print directly through Photoshop - or any other image editor. However, relatively few adjustments are provided in the printer driver's menu (see below).

The Pixma Pro9000's software also includes Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint and CD-LabelPrint for Windows and Mac and Easy-WebPrint and PhotoRecord for Windows only. The printer is supplied with a full set of ink cartridges, a CD-printing tray, a power cord and 12 months warranty. By our estimates, producing a borderless A4 print would cost just under $4.50 on Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy paper, while an A3+ print on the same paper would cost around $15. 

 Performance
Canon claims Easy-PhotoPrint Pro has been designed to faithfully reproduce images captured on EOS digital cameras and we found that to be the case with a number of files from different models we've tested. The simple workflow provided by this software allowed us to make good first-time prints from most of our files. Working through Photoshop alone was less successful unless we relied on the tried-and-proven strategies of ensuring a properly-calibrated monitor and test strip printing so Canon's solution could be a time- and hassles-saver that many photographers will appreciate.

We recorded the following times for printing an A4 print with a 1.0-1.5 cm white border:
Standard quality - 1 minute and 0.05 seconds
High quality - 1 minute and 58 seconds
Fast - 46 seconds
B&W - 15 minutes and 5 seconds
Colour print quality was generally very good on Canon's Photo Paper Plus Glossy, Photo Paper Pro and Photo Paper Matte papers. Our prints were as good as the prints from Epson's similarly-priced R1800 (which uses seven inks including two blacks plus a Gloss Optimiser cartridge). They contained plenty of detail, excellent colour rendition and no sign of defects in the way the ink was deposited on the paper.

However, despite the time it took to produce them, our B&W prints from the Pro9000 lacked the full depth and vibrancy of prints from the R1800 unless the contrast was increased by 10 or more points. This is probably because the printer driver uses the black ink cartridge almost exclusively for monochrome printing, adding a touch of colour when warm or cool tones are selected. We also found range of adjustments in the driver was not as wide as those provided in Epson's Advanced B&W driver. Fine-tuning of colour settings was also not quite as easy in the Canon driver.

The capable software bundle and the easy integration of the Pixma Pro9000 printer with Photoshop CS/CS2 are a significant advantage for photo enthusiasts and busy professional photographers because of the time they can save in workflow management. They will be particularly useful for owners of Canon DSLR cameras. The easy-to-use Pattern Print function will help all photographers to conserve paper by giving them a set of reference that can be kept and used for future printing.

Printing costs are relatively high, due to the small size of the ink cartridges, Consequently we wouldn't recommend this printer for high-volume work. However, for the enthusiast who likes to make the occasional enlargement of a worthwhile shot and doesn't want to become involved in full colour workflow management, the Pixma Pro9000 is an excellent buy.

Printer type: On-demand inkjet
Resolution: 4800 x 2400 dpi
Paper sizes: A3+, A3, A4, A5, B5, B4, LDR+, LDR, Letter, Legal, Envelopes, 5 x 7 inch, 6 x 4 inch
Max. paper weight: up to 1.2mm
Ink cartridges: CLI-8C/M/Y/K/PM/PC/R/G - individual ink tanks
Ink yield: 11 x 14 inch image: CLI-8C - approx. 62, CLI-8M - approx. 53, CLI-8Y - approx. 40, CLI-8Bk - approx. 65, CLI-8PC - approx. 32, CLI-8PM - approx. 24, CLI-8G - approx. 525, CLI-8R - approx. 550
Interfaces: PC: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed; Camera Direct: Direct Print Port (PictBridge)
Power consumption: Max: 20W (printing);      Standby: 1.8W
Acoustic noise: 39dB(A) in best quality mode
Dimensions (wxhxd): 660 x 354 x 191 mm (with paper trays and other extensions closed)
Weight: Approx. 14 kg