Canon Pixma Pro9500

I was looking at the Canon Pixma Pro 9500 for around 4 months before I bought it. I'm glad I didn't go with any other brand. After having printed many photos over the years I feel the canon line has the… best of most worlds. Quality of the prints I do is unbelievable when compared to printing to my other printer (HP). The tones are closer to real life tones with the Canon and it is a fraction of the cost when compared to my other machine. I printed off pictures from my sisters wedding and had her compare them to the professionals work. She ended up buying me ink and paper to print her photos off instead of going to the professional. As long as the quality of the machine matches its print quality, I can't see myself buying any other brand of printer for a long time.

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I have had a lot of photo printers my last was an HP CIS3740. The prints were the same with just about any type of paper HP has a lot of different types of paper and I didn't notice much between there… papers and the B&W left much to be desired but I got the variety pack and I printed on there Glossy Art Paper boy the colors just popped and I used the Photoshop color profile. It was amazing the color matching the printer was right on and it has the best B&W I have ever seen the photos have so much detail even up to the 13X19 flat feed that's another thing I liked was the flat feed you can print on very thick paper stock this is my first canon and HP has lost a long time customer. The only con I have is that it goes threw ink like crazy I have only done 8 standard 8X10 and 2 13X19 and 4 of the 10 ink tanks are showing at half. But the cartage's are small and expensive 150.00 for 10 I have never paid so much for something that maybe will last the end of next week. But you know the old adage You Get What You Pay For.

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The print quality is pretty good, but it seems every single time I try to print one of the cartridges is out of ink. Add to that the fact that you can't print B&W even when one of the colors is out and it… gets annoying very fast. Also had some problems where the ink cartridge would give an error and removing it and re-inserting it sometimes fixes it. Contacted Canon and they told me to buy new ink. I have bought probably 4 or 5 sets of ink cartridges and printed only maybe 50 pages out of this thing. I also had a hard time getting any matte paper prints to look decent, they just look really flat and dull. Very disappointed in this thing...I want my old Epson back.

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I don't do product reviews too much. But I have to post a review about this printer. I just received it on Thursday evening. Today is my first chance to use it. Once you get the color management and… paper types set properly the output is exactly the same as what you see on the monitor. I use a calibrated work flow. My monitor is calibrated and I use the ICC profiles that the vendors provide. I also have the hardware and software to build my own profiles. I haven't tried that yet. I think that it would be very easy to get bad prints out of this printer if you don't understand color management. The first paper I tried out was Lumijet Photo White. I bought a box of this because it's about half the price of the Hahnemuele(sp?) paper. My first print was a senior portrait. It took me some time to get the printer settings set properly. The options are the same as my I9900 but different names. Why can't they standardize on print setting names?? I ended up wasting 2 sheets of paper before I got an amazing print. First try I had selected the wrong media type. I did this based on my i9900 experience. The lumijet paper always wants you to select Photo Paper Pro for the media setting. That never worked too well on the i9900 and I used the matte paper setting instead. The second print I used the right media type and everything looked great except the skin was a bit red. I went through the settings and found one I had missed. I had changed the color management to manual. I had forgotten to select the set button and disable the icm settings. The third print came out perfectly. Really really nice look to the colors. It definitely seems to have more depth to the color than my I9900. BTW, I don't use Photoshop to do my prints. I use a rip called Qimage to do all my prints. It works flawlessly with the printer. I guess that I will now try a print on the Hahnemuelle paper. The only thing that annoys me on the printer is the front loading process. I have tried to follow the manual and I have yet to get the front loader light to come on. Does anyone know where there might be a video or a tutorial on using the front loader? I would have given it 5 stars if I could have figured out the front loading procedure. I also think that the documentation for this printer is much better than what came with the I9900. I have been using that printer for over 3 years now. I have printed a lot of photos on that printer (in the hundreds). I will still use the I9900 for work prints since the ink is a little cheaper. I've never had any issues with any of the Canon hardware I've purchased. Crossing my fingers on the 9500. I also have a good idea about the print time. It takes twice as long to print on the 9500 than it does on the I9900. I have also done a lot of prints on an Epson 3800 pro that I rent when I need to deliver prints to customers. I am uncomvortable giving them prints with dye based ink. The canon is still faster than the Epson. Rear loading of paper is a dream on the canon vs. the Epson. I have had many many misfeeds on the 3800 when I use the heavier art papers.

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The Pro9500 printer is a good option for those who want archival quality prints on reduced gloss or art papers. If you want to do glossy prints, you may not like the result. In most prints, some areas will… not look glossy when viewed certain angles. WHAT YOU WILL LIKE: You can probably find a [...] promotional rebate for a while yet. It's giving way to the 9500 Mark II. The pigmented inks on Canon paper have an independently verified (fade) permanence rating of 100 years plus. It's easy to add profiles for third party papers in the Canon color management workflow. I can now validate that the three-black inks give EXCELLENT black and white results. Canon has some great (not cheap) art papers. Museum Rag, Museum Etching, Premium Matte. There are a lot of third party offerings that work well with this printer (Ilford Pearl is highly touted) Color accuracy is amazing. Best I have experienced compared to a dozen or more printers. I usually have to tweak color settings to get most printers to match a calibrated monitor even with their own papers. This gem printed it's very first photo with flawless color rendition on Ilford Smooth Classic, using Ilford's free ICC profile. The finest changes I can detect on my monitor are visible in the print. Wow! What a pleasure. This printer is built like a tank. It should outlast my Toyota Tundra, and nothing outlasts a Tundra! WHAT YOU MAY NOT LIKE: Not what I would choose for glossy, but I didn't buy this for snapshots. I bought it to provide my customers with archive longevity. Slow. Probably the biggest improvement that the Mark II offers. I don't really care as I'm not in mass production. Color matching outweighs this for me. When print media is set for the Fine Art papers, the 13x19's have an 1-1/2" boarder! This is to prevent curl from edge bleed. Workaround is to use the Matte setting, but this defeats the work Canon put into matching their ink placement to their papers. I can now say it is a bad workaround. It doesn't come with a USB cord, so buy one! CONCLUSION: I would recommend the 9500 to anyone who is not going to be printing glossy, and wants lab quality prints with archival fade resistance.

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