Can't print photo quality on Canon Pixma ip4200 w/ CUPS
Hi,
Just got my MacBook a month or so ago, and have it integrated into my home network. Most everything works fine, but for printing.
I've got a Canon Pixma ip4200 inkjet printer on a Windows XP system, and it's worked fine there for over a year. I tried using the Canon print driver, but of course it wouldn't work over the network -- but it works fine when I plug the USB cable directly into the Mac.
OTOH, when I use the CUPS (5.1.98.2, aka 5.20 beta 2) driver, I run into problems printing photos. I'm mildly annoyed that there is no "borderless printing" with CUPS, but the big problem is that the colors don't come out right.
If I select 600dpi output, the colors are simply very wrong -- brown becomes pink, facial tones are purple, blue is purple, and red is green, just to name a few. Yuk.
If I select 300dpi output, the image is washed out -- like only 1 out of 4 pixels is printing. (Get it? 300x300 vs. 600x600? It's like the driver doesn't increase the pixel or droplet size, just changes the number of pixels within a square inch.)
This sounds somewhat familiar based on other user problem reports, but I've not yet found a solution (my search includes a couple days of searching these forums as well as Googling, and a call to Apple Support, which at least got me to us the Canon drivers with the printer plugged directly into the MacBook).
This was a problem with 10.5.2 and now with 10.5.3, and is independent of the app I use. And yes, I've reset the printing subsystem and recreated the printer, numerous times.
Any ideas on what else to try, or is it that this CUPS driver just can't do photo quality?
TIA
Just got my MacBook a month or so ago, and have it integrated into my home network. Most everything works fine, but for printing.
I've got a Canon Pixma ip4200 inkjet printer on a Windows XP system, and it's worked fine there for over a year. I tried using the Canon print driver, but of course it wouldn't work over the network -- but it works fine when I plug the USB cable directly into the Mac.
OTOH, when I use the CUPS (5.1.98.2, aka 5.20 beta 2) driver, I run into problems printing photos. I'm mildly annoyed that there is no "borderless printing" with CUPS, but the big problem is that the colors don't come out right.
If I select 600dpi output, the colors are simply very wrong -- brown becomes pink, facial tones are purple, blue is purple, and red is green, just to name a few. Yuk.
If I select 300dpi output, the image is washed out -- like only 1 out of 4 pixels is printing. (Get it? 300x300 vs. 600x600? It's like the driver doesn't increase the pixel or droplet size, just changes the number of pixels within a square inch.)
This sounds somewhat familiar based on other user problem reports, but I've not yet found a solution (my search includes a couple days of searching these forums as well as Googling, and a call to Apple Support, which at least got me to us the Canon drivers with the printer plugged directly into the MacBook).
This was a problem with 10.5.2 and now with 10.5.3, and is independent of the app I use. And yes, I've reset the printing subsystem and recreated the printer, numerous times.
Any ideas on what else to try, or is it that this CUPS driver just can't do photo quality?
TIA
Black MacBook 2.4GHz, Various iPods, Mac OS X (10.5.2)
