A strange Canon printing phenomenon

[geewhizz]

For over six months now my Canon i990 has printed all my photos in GREEN, no matter what the proper colours - even b&w ones. I've been close to screaming point trying to diagnose where the problem lies! I was set to throw it away until last week I found the following happening:
1. I reset all the printer settings to default using the XP control panel.
2. I printed a photo on plain paper and all the colours came out perfectly.
3. I put some Fuji photo glossy paper in, set the printer settings to 'photo glossy' and it came out green.
4. I left the printer settings showing photo glossy paper but actually put plain paper in the printer - out came the pictures in green.
5. I changed the printer settings to 'plain paper' and put photo glossy paper in the printer - proper colours came out.
Now could someone please put me out of my misery and explain how this is happening and if there's any known cure. I'm at the end of my tether!
Thanks a lot.

[ukexpat]

For over six months now my Canon i990 has printed all my photos in GREEN, no matter what the proper colours - even b&w ones. I've been close to screaming point trying to diagnose where the problem lies! I was set to throw it away until last week I found the following happening:
1. I reset all the printer settings to default using the XP control panel.
2. I printed a photo on plain paper and all the colours came out perfectly.
3. I put some Fuji photo glossy paper in, set the printer settings to 'photo glossy' and it came out green.
4. I left the printer settings showing photo glossy paper but actually put plain paper in the printer - out came the pictures in green.
5. I changed the printer settings to 'plain paper' and put photo glossy paper in the printer - proper colours came out.
Now could someone please put me out of my misery and explain how this is happening and if there's any known cure. I'm at the end of my tether!
Thanks a lot.

Sounds like the Fuji paper and Canon printer just don't get along...

[geewhizz]

Thanks for your comments, but I did say that when I put plain paper in the printer and set the printer to 'photo glossy' the pictures still come out green. By doing that, I could establish that the type of paper being used was not the cause.

[ralf]

The printer driver is compensating for the actual coloration of the Canon paper (and/or ink absorption characteristics). I once tried printing out a simple gray-scale bar on plain paper using all the different paper types in the driver. The glossy papers and the matte photo paper came out with a yellow-green cast, and transparency (IIRC) had a purple cast. Only plain paper and iron-on transfers came out without color casts (the latter in mirror image).

If you use paper from other manufacturers, you need to set the driver to match that particular paper's color characteristics, and NOT use the equivalent paper type in the driver. For example, Kodak lists what settings to use with their photo paper in lots of different printer drivers, which is usually the "plain paper" setting with some explicit adjustments to the intensity of individual inks.

[rackboy]

I have a i950 ans for 2 years if printed great color but now for some reason it prints a green cast on photo paper. I changed no settings or ink or paper type and if i select plain paper and print on glossy photo the colors are true. Canon was no help on this either, it can't be the print head, ink or paper has to be a setting in canon software that changed. I reinstalled my printer and it printed one photo good then went back to green cast?? If you get an answer let me know

[wistful]

I can now second rackboy's experience. Using Canon's Glossy Photo Paper and that setting in my Canon S900, I get that yellow-green cast.
I wonder whether in my case the changes occurred when I transferred from Windows98SE to Windows XP.
I recently installed the latest printer driver (from the Canon site I could obtain it from*) after uninstalling according to Canon's instructions.
Actually, twice: most recently, it seems, I have had a recurrence of the situation where Windows pre-empts Canon's custom installation. It detects the printer and installs a driver whilst the other is installing. Or something. At any rate, I've ended up with a double dialog whenever there's an ink warning or paper out condition, etc.
One dialog is a more sophisticated version of the other. The one that needs answering will often be occluded by the other, which has focus. So an Alt-Tab is required to dismiss the correct dialog.
I'll report back again when I've got that fixed, because it's fouling other things - like printing from Picasa (which often hangs under this setup).
That foulup often means a system reset.
But I did get to printing this last time, and got the green cast.
In my case, printing "Plain Paper" using Canon Glossy Paper gave OK colours but a very blotchy - speckled or posterised - appearance.
Also, other paper which previously worked (according to their recommendations) under "High Resolution Paper" worked OK only after selecting "Plain Paper" - Ilford Galerie Smooth Multi-Use Paper.

*Oceania site fails, I got it from Asia (Japan?). A print test page says it's version 8.04, the component DLLs are labelled 1.61.2.0.

[wistful]

After a careful re-installation, I was OK.
Each installation requires a print realignment task.
I noticed that these were poor, and got this fixed by doing a clean (also on the Maintenance tab of the printer driver's interface.)
I had some tank replacements to do, too, although I think I controlled for this in my reported observations.
The other thing I could mention is that humidity has been high here recently.
However, I believe it *is* important to try and get a clean driver installation. This appears to have been behind my trouble with printing from Picasa, at very least. And may well have helped with the colour/setting problem also.

[makepeace]

I had the same problem with my 9100. It turned out to be a bad printer head, Canon talked me through the problem and then replaced it free. I think the cause was using some non-OEM ink cartridges. Always now use Canon inks and have never seen the problem again.

[jseah]

I have been using a Canon S900 for over three years now, printed using non-Canon inks, printed on non-Canon paper. The prints came out great, but all of a sudden, yesterday all my prints onto photo paper started coming out with a heavy magenta cast (I've also been using the same Canon print driver for almost a year). Prints onto plain paper works as expected (no magenta cast). So if I switch back to using Canon ink and Canon paper, it will print fine? Or do I need to get a new printer?

[niall25]

My canon i990 prints out bright images in a darker shade of purple. I did an online printer profile where each colour is printed out in blocks in a chart from varying degrees of brightness and shade. What I saw were green blocks in some of the places where yellow should have been. So yellow is being printed correctly in some shades, and green in others. The rest of the printed chart matches up correctly to the digital image so it seems that the problem lies with just the yellow cartridge.

Has anybody heard of a solution to this problem? Is it a hardware issue the printer? If this happens to alot of other printers then i doubt it would be the case.