Canon Pro-4100 Noisy/Grainy Prints

[ams1]

Hi - I'm running into an issue I am unable to solve with grainy/noisy prints off of a new Canon Pro-4100. The printer is approximately 6 months old and in good health. Prints are made on Moab Juniper Baryta Rag 305gsm paper using the stock Moab ICC profile. I've tried printing using an AM1X file loaded onto the printer with the ICC embedded and also by selecting the suggested Canon media type (Pro Platinum) and then specifying the ICC.

The grain shows up primarily in mid-tones/neutrals. This grain was not noticeable when printing the same photo on an Epson printer. Images are coming from RAW files captured by a Fuji digital medium format camera, so the grain is not part of the original file.

The following have been tried:

• Head cleaning (all ink channels are clear)
• Head alignment (print head is aligned properly - used standard/auto, advanced, and manual modes)
• Changing paper thickness (from auto to thickest and back)
• Changing vacuum/suction
• Resetting the Canon "common" color calibration (https://www.the-ninth.com/blog/canon...ibration-guide

Has anyone else encountered this problem? When I print the same file on an Epson P9000, the image is smooth and grain is virtually nonexistent. Looking at output from the Canon, there seems to be something that is causing the grain/noise to be noticeable, but I cannot quite figure out where this is coming from.

Prints are being made on an M2 Mac Mini running MacOS Ventura. Noise was worst from Adobe Lightroom with sharpening turned on... I've also tried printing a TIFF from Photoshop. While the noise improves, it is not completely eliminated.

The paper in question is coming off a roll, so I can definitely rule out printing on the wrong side...

Images of the noise here: https://imgur.com/a/M7G4cRz

I'm at a bit of a loss on this one...

[Manfred M]

I do print a fair bit (several times a week) on my Epson P800.

I have zero experience on Canon printers and generally only print from Photoshop; I find that Lightroom has too many "assumptions" built into the print workflow for my personal liking. Most of my printing is done from Windows, but I have done a fair bit of printing from a Mac in the past.

Based on what you have written and what I see, I suspect that both your Canon printer and the Adobe software have been set to manage the colour. Make sure that colour management is turned off on either Lightroom / Photoshop or the Canon print driver. When both are set to manage colour, you can get some really weird, grainy output. You should let Lightroom / Photoshop manage colour, rather than the printer.

Your should only be using the Moab ICC profile. The fact that you are also setting the Canon Pro Platinum suggests the source of the conflict.

As your prints are turning out well on the Epson printer and the Canon printer is working well, there has to be a problem between somewhere between the software and the printer.

I hope that this makes sense and helps.

[DanK]

Manfred, I think he is using the Platinum Pro media setting, not the Platinum pro ICC. From the post, I assume that's the correct one for this paper, but I haven't checked the Moab website.

I print on a smaller prograf using Lightroom, but I use a PC, which means that various settings are in different places for you. However, there are a lot of settings in the Canon print driver that could be relevant. On a PC, you access these through the Windows printer dialog box, using the "properties" button. That's where you control things like printer resolution. My guess is that your mistake is somewhere in those settings. The other settings you mention shouldn't affect noise. The wrong ICC profile would distort colors; the wrong media type would affect how the ink is laid down; the wrong paper thickness could cause head strikes, etc.

Normally, I would have it set for photo printing (of course), highest quality, with color matching set to "none".

So, I would check all of those settings.

BTW, please add your real name and location to your profile. We use real names here.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Dan - in re-reading the post, it is not clear to me whether or not more than one ICC profile was applied. That being said, the only way to effectively do this is to set one in the Adobe print module and the second one in the Canon printer driver, which implies that colour handling has been assigned to both the software and the printer. I have seen this type of grainy, over-sharpened look before, when this was done (and this happened when printing using a Mac).

Your description of misapplication of ICC profile, media type and paper thickness are globally accurate, the actual impact is not quite that straight forward. The wrong ICC profile can also impact the amount of ink that is deposited, which does more than distort colours, it also impacts drying time. I once ran the wrong ICC profile (matte profile on a luster paper) and the result was a visual mess that had some signs of ink smear. I also know of at least a couple of expert print makers who deliberately use the ICC profile for a different paper because they like the look better.

This is really no different than a common practice in the wet darkroom where the recommended developer dilution or development time was not followed for film processing in order to get a specific "look" on the negative. I remember one photographer who deliberately ran color film for one film brand through another film brand's chemistry just to get a particular (strange) look.

[DanK]

I just looked: Platinum pro is the recommended media type for Juniper Baryta. So if the OP is using the Juniper Baryta ICC, those two factors can be ruled out.

Re ink laydown: normally, vendors control this by specifying the appropriate media type. I have never had a problem with this using my Prograf and the recommended media type.

Paper thickness is another matter. If there are head strikes, it is sometimes necessary to lift the head, which can be done from the menu on the front panel. For example, this is recommended for Breathing Color Riverstone, which is a very thick paper by virtue of being coated on both sides. However, the OP didn't mention head strikes or streaks.

Re avoiding double profiling: here I am a bit at a loss because I have been told that the Mac procedure is different from the PC procedure. But for what it is worth, here are the steps necessary to avoid double profiling when printing from Lightroom to a Canon printer on a PC:

1. In lightroom, set control of color the the appropriate ICC (via the Color Management box toward the bottom of the right panel).
2. In Lightroom, access the Canon printer firmware from the Properties button on the Print dialog. This can also be accessed via the Page Setup button in Lightroom
3. On the first page, set the settings that aren't relevant to ICCs: photo printing, highest quality, print media, size, which tray.
4. Go to the second tab ("Main"), go to Color, and choose manual. From the popup, turn off color matching. (That turns off printer control of color.) You can also control the use of chroma optimizer from this location, but that's not relevant to the issue at hand.)

One other question for the OP: are you printing the same size on the 4100 as you did on the Epson? If you are printing larger, one would expect noise to be more apparent. Did you print with the same paper on the Epson? Some papers show more detail than others, which would include noise. (As a general rule, barytas and other coated papers will show more detail than uncoated papers.) For comparison, I would use the same paper at the same size.

[Manfred M]

Dan - the screens on Mac and Windows are different, but the workflow and settings are not that different. The basics do not change.

You still set the colour management and paper profiles using the Lightroom / Photoshop software.

On the print engine side, you still set the physical printer parameters like the "equivalent paper" as per the Moab instructions, which determines the paper gap and drying times, using the Mac print driver software. This is also where you disable the printer from managing colour.

[DanK]

What I was told by a Mac user was that there is no direct analogy to setting color management to none in the print driver, that this is done elsewhere, but I have never printed a photo from a Mac, so I have no idea


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[Manfred M]

What I was told by a Mac user was that there is no direct analogy to setting color management to none in the print driver, that this is done elsewhere, but I have never printed a photo from a Mac, so I have no idea


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Unfortunately, I don't have access to a Mac and a printer right now. I should be able to get at one in a few weeks and will investigate.