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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent photo lab-quality 11x14 and 13x19 prints, and a very worthy successor to Canon's great Pixma Pro9000 Mark II printer!
By ƒůŽźŸ ωŬ≥ζŷ ♥☮♭♩♪♫♬♮☯☺♡✈
இ Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
ѾѾѾѾѾ Highly recommended with warm fuzzies!
փ Positives:
փ This printer can output superb gallery-quality prints with exceptional detail and resolution, while being significantly less expensive than the higher-end Pro-10 and Pro-1 printer models.
փ This Pro-100 prints better blacks and grays on monochrome prints than the older Pro9000 printer that it replaces.
փ The new wireless connectivity options of using 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi or Apple's AirPrint, along with a wired Ethernet option, provide flexibility of shared usage and printer placement by not needing to be physically connected to a USB cable.
փ The dye-based inks used in this Pro-100 can retain their colors for 100+ years.
ჯ Negatives:
ჯ While black-and-white prints are better than the previous Pro9000 printer, monochrome output is still inferior to the pricier Pro-10 and Pro-1 printers.
If you have never used a prosumer-level dedicated photo printer like this before, prepare to be surprised... both by the size and weight of this printer's box and by the stunning quality of color photos that you can print out, with exceptional detail and resolution even if you press your nose close to a 13"x19" print. Weighing a very hefty 56 pounds in its shipping box, the box that this printer is shipped in resembles a two-drawer file cabinet laying on its side (and it is heavier than most empty two-drawer file cabinets). This printer was shipped to me in its original Canon box package; the big box was not placed inside another bigger Amazon box.
Having previously used Canon's excellent PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II printer, this Pro-100 printer has a number of differences and improvements over that older model. First of all, this Pro-100 is bigger in size and about 10 to 12 pounds heavier than the Pro9000. Along with the USB 2.0 cable connection and Wireless PictBridge connection to Canon cameras that are also used in the older Pro9000 printer, this Pro-100 also adds wireless AirPrint printing from iPad/iPhone/iOS devices and, most significantly, both wireless 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and wired Ethernet printing from your LAN. While the ability to print directly and wirelessly from an iPad or Canon camera is useful, I think that for a professional-grade photo printer like this, most people will want to view, edit, adjust, and tweak their photos on their computer first before printing them, so being able to add this printer to my router's wireless LAN is a huge convenience, making it easy to both share the printer between different laptop and desktop computers on the LAN, and to have extra freedom in placing this large printer in an optimum location.
While both the Pro9000 and this Pro-100 use eight ink cartridges, the Pro9000's black/cyan/photo-cyan/magenta/photo-magenta/yellow/red/green colors are now represented as black/gray/light-gray/cyan/photo-cyan/magenta/photo-magenta/yellow in this Pro-100, with three inks dedicated to blacks and grays instead of just the one black ink cartridge on the Pro9000, resulting in noticeably better black-and-white monochrome prints on this Pro-100 when compared to the Pro9000.
The 10-cartridge Pro-10 printer also has three black/gray colors along with adding a red color back into the mix, while the 12-cartridge top-of-the-line Pro-1 dedicates five ink cartridges to black/gray colors. If you mainly print a lot of black-and-white photos, you should seriously consider spending the extra money on the Pro-1. While the Pro-1 has better overall color resolution than this Pro-100, one of the Pro-1's greatest strengths is in the range of blacks and grays that it can accurately print. High-resolution monochrome prints are one of the toughest test of any photo printer since some inkjet printers leak a slight bit of color cast onto black-and-white prints while other inkjets do not offer enough grayscale resolution, and this Pro-100 is not consistently perfect with its black-and-white output and its printing of the deepest black regions. While this Pro-100 prints better grays and blacks than what the Pro9000 prints, both Canon's Pro-1 and Epson's R3000 can print noticeably superior black-and-white prints when compared to this Pro-100 monochrome prints. These are not glaring deficiencies in the print quality, but there are subtle differences in how the black-as-outer-space regions of some photos are printed.
Although I have not precisely measured how long each ink cartridge lasts when printing the same photo each time, I have always believed that Epson's printers drink up their ink faster than either Canon or HP inkjet printers, both on Epson's photo printers and their printer/copier/fax multi-function printers. On average, I get about 7 to 10 large 13"x19" color prints from this Pro-100 before I have to replace some of the color ink cartridges. This is comparable to the previous Pro9000 printer. The more expensive Pro-1 uses ink cartridges that are almost three times larger in ink volume, and its colors are distributed across 12 ink cartridges versus the 8 cartridges used by this Pro-100. So this Pro-100 needs more frequent ink replacements than the Pro-1 printer, although it uses up the ink at a rate that is comparable to the older Pro9000 printer. But I seem to replace ink cartridges more frequently on Epson inkjet printers than on Canon printers. As with "razor blade marketing", I think that all inkjet printer manufacturers earn the bulk of their printer hardware profits from the ink cartridge refills. If you regularly print 11"x14" or 13"x19" prints with this Pro-100, at the current price of about $17 per ink cartridge, using up a set of all eight ink cartridges will cost you about $125 to $135 to replace all eight refills.
When using a sophisticated photo printer like this to print 13"x19" photos, you should likewise use a camera that is better than a $200 point-and-shoot camera. This printer's output quality is ideally suited for photos shot using a better SLR camera. And instead of printing photos directly from an iPad via AirPrint or directly from a Canon camera via PictBridge, you should carefully review and select your photos on the computer first, applying post-processing edits, aligning/straightening/cropping, sharpening, and other enhancements as needed. As with the computer lingo of "garbage in, garbage out", if your photo is not sharp or if your camera's autofocus locked onto a tree that was behind the person you were photographing, this printer will expose those problems far more if you output a 13"x19" print than what can be noticed on a 4"x6" print. I never print smaller than 8"X10" prints using this Pro-100 printer, and I certainly do not print text documents on this Pro-100, because printing small 4"x6" photos is both a waste of this printer's capabilities and is a waste of its beautiful pricey inks. For printing 4"x6" photos that I share with other people, using a less fancy inkjet photo printer or a printer/copier/fax multi-function inkjet printer suits me just fine. I only use this Pro-100 for printing photos that will be framed, and my favorite sizes have been 8"x10", 11"x14", and 13"x19". Once I became addicted to printing beautifully colored and richly detailed 13"x19" photos from this Pro-100, it is hard for me to go smaller than 8"x10" now :-)
Since you will likely be editing and adjusting your photos from your computer prior to printing them on this Pro-100, you should invest in some color calibration hardware if you are not already calibrating your monitor and printer. So along with spending money on ink refills, expect to pay at least several hundred dollars for calibration hardware. If you edit your photos on your computer, viewing them on an uncalibrated laptop/display screen, and then send the images to this printer, the coloration of the resulting prints may be different from the images that you were looking at on the screen. Datacolor and X-Rite both make excellent color calibration tools. Both the Datacolor Spyder Studio S4SSR100 and X-Rite CMUNPH ColorMunki Photo are great for ensuring that the display screens, printer, printer ink, and printer paper that you use are all calibrated together so you get exacting control over the how the image will look in going from your computer onto the printed page. Although I have both the Spyder and ColorMunki tools, I personally prefer Datacolor's Spyder more than ColorMunki. If you are thinking "Whoa, this calibration gear can cost more than a new Pro-100! I just want to print my photos the way that my camera captured them!", you can still usually get excellent print results without calibration by using Canon inks and Canon papers with this printer... and as long as you get a visual feel for how light/dark/green/blue/red/yellow your images appear on the screen when compared to how they print out. But if you are a graphic artist or you want to adjust the colors/hues/saturation/brightness in Photoshop, calibrating your display screens to produce custom monitor profiles and calibrating the printer to get a custom printer profile will ensure that what you see is what you end up printing. So while using this printer to get professional lab-quality prints may not be a lot cheaper than paying a high-quality photo lab, printing at home does offers a more immediate and convenient printing of photos combined with the ability to precisely control how your prints will appear on paper.
Also introduced in this Pro-100 is a new "Print Studio Pro" plug-in that provides a printer interface to Photoshop CS/Elements/Lightroom and Canon's own Digital Photo Professional (version 2.1 or later). If you are printing from either Adobe's or Canon's software, this plug-in lets you adjust printer settings, manage color settings (e.g. via an ICC profile), etc. If you mainly just change some common print options using the standard Microsoft Windows printer pop-up windows, the large number of options available in this "Print Studio Pro" plug-in may be a bit bewildering. After all, both this printer and the "Print Studio Pro" plug-in are targeted towards professional-level photographers. Luckily, most of the default settings in this plug-in provide for a good starting point. But for people who are accustomed to tweaking specific color profiles and printer profiles, these available adjustments should be reasonably easy to set up and the options are nicely grouped together in logical functionally related layouts.
Other software packaged with this printer include a "Easy Photo Print" and an image filters application that lets you apply basic special effects to your photos, along with tools to print onto CDs and CD/DVD case covers. This printer includes a tray to hold a CD or DVD so you can use this printer, along with the included "Easy Photo Print" software, to easily print professional-looking disc labels. The color labels that are directly printed onto the CD/DVD may have the inks smear and smudge if they get wet, unless you use a water-resistant disc like Taiyo Yuden/JVC WaterShield (in fact, *all* of Taiyo Yuden/JVC CD and DVD media are excellent in general).
Upon opening this printer's large shipping box, I was able to fully set up this printer for wireless Wi-Fi printing, including installation of all software, after a little over one hour's time. All of the contents inside the shipping box were neatly packed together with lots of tape holding various parts and pieces in place. This printer has impeccable build quality, with an excellent fit and finish, and it is a very solid piece of equipment. Any large-format photo printer like this will not be compact in size, and this Pro-100's size of 27.2"x8.6"x15.2" (Width-Height-Depth) needs extra room on a desk or table. In particular, the 27-inch width is wider than many large-format photo printers that can output 13"x19" prints. And Canon's Pro-1 is still even larger in size. Connecting this printer using the supplied USB cable is the easiest setup method. My iPad also easily detected this printer's AirPrint capability. The included software guides you through either the USB or network connection menus. To initiate the connection to the printer, you press and hold down the [Resume/Cancel] button and then let it flash 6 times for a wireless WPS connection or let it flash 11 times for a wired USB connection. This printer connection setup process is quite cumbersome, but its wireless printing is very reliable once it has been configured. If your wireless access point or router is not able to connect to this printer using the WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) mode, a more reliable approach is to choose the "Wireless Setup Using the USB cable" connection method that Canon's software also offers as a setup option.
The print quality of this printer is excellent, even when compared to other dedicated photo printers. A dye-based printer like this will naturally produce better color saturation than a pigment-based printer such as Canon's Pro-1 or Pro-10, or Epson's R3000. But a pigment-based printer will usually produce deeper blacks and dark tones. This Pro-100 is an excellent printer especially for landscape and nature photography because the colors are very rich and saturated. However, when printing portraits, skin tones can sometimes appear a bit ruddy or suntanned. I think that this is more due to the natural characteristics of dye inks, and not an issue with the color accuracy of the printer itself. The printer is not changing the hues of the skin by adding too much red color, but the existing flesh tones, and all colors in general, may be slightly more saturated than what is depicted in the actual images when using a dye-based inkjet printer. Slightly oversaturated skin colors in people are more noticeable than extra saturation of colors in animals, objects, landscapes, and nature scenery. In fact, if you show people two landscape/nature/floral photos where one photo accurately depicts all colors and the other photo shows the same scene but with more color saturation, most people will prefer the more colorful saturated photo than the photo with accurate colors. But the "more colorful is better" preference does not apply to extra saturation of skin colors. By slightly toning down the saturation of my photos that contain people in them prior to printing, I can get more natural skin tones on my prints from this Pro-100. For printing portraits and photos that include people in them, I reduce the saturation of the skin areas by about 5% to 10%. But for printing landscape and nature photos, the rich coloration is quite appealing, so I usually do not reduce the saturation levels on most of my landscape and floral images. For a photo of people surrounded by colorful scenery, I often slightly decrease the saturation just on the skin areas while letting the surrounding background stay the same. For photos that I have processed through HDR, which are usually a bit more saturated, I may reduce saturation by 5% or as much as 10% prior to printing them on this Pro-100. And most of my HDR-processed photos are far less saturated than many people's HDR processing since I prefer more natural and realistic-looking HDR-processed images instead of the wildly colored HDR images of some people that I think are tiresome to look at. If you normally post-process your photos to be heavily saturated in colors, you should take into consideration that a dye-based printer like this Pro-100 will slightly bump up the saturation even more when compared to a pigment-based printer.
௫ Fuzzy Wuzzy's Conclusion:
Dye-based inks previously were not as colorfast as pigment-based inks over the long term. But the technology has improved so the dye-based inks used in this Pro-100 can retain their colors for 100+ years. You can expect excellent results for both image quality and color longevity if you use Canon's Pro Platinum, Luster, or Premium Photo Gloss or Semi-Gloss papers with this Pro-100 printer. Dye-based inks do not perform as well on porous matte photo papers and other uncoated fine art papers. If that is your preferred printer paper, instead of using a semi-gloss or gloss paper, then a pigment-based ink printer like the Pro-10 or Pro-1 may be better suited for your photo paper preferences. The longevity of all printed photos depends upon various factors such as whether the photo is protected in a frame or photo album (longer life) or is frequently handled (shorter life), whether the photo is framed (shorter life) or stored inside a photo album (longer life), and whether the framed photo is exposed to bright light (more fading) or displayed more in the shade (less fading). Dye inks are absorbed into the paper, whereas pigment inks stick to the surface as small pigment particles that are not absorbed into the paper. Using a t-shirt analogy, dye printer inks are like a t-shirt design that has dyes soaked into the cotton while pigment printer inks are like a t-shirt design that uses an iron-on applique. Because of this, pigment inks are more easily damaged due to scratches, chipping, or flaking, whereas a dye ink photo can be framed or mounted without glass covering it and it will be more resistant to damage. However, if a dye-printed page is exposed to water or high humidity, since dye inks easily dissolve in water, the dye ink photo can smear, bleed, or fade, whereas pigment inks are more resistant to water because they stick tighter to the surface of the page and will bleed less if exposed to moisture. Dye-based inks previously could produce a much wider color gamut than pigment-based inks. But just as dye inks have caught up to the colorfast longevity of pigment inks, pigment inks have now caught up to the wide color gamut that was previously an exclusive advantage of dye inks.
Overall, the detail, resolution, and color accuracy of this Pro-100 are superb, worthy of gallery displays and at least as good as, or better than, prints that you order from a drug store or retail department store. As mentioned, if you want incrementally better color accuracy and resolution and better black-and-white prints that compare favorably to the high-end prints offered by photo labs, you have to step up to the Pro-10 or Pro-1 printers. If most of your photography involves people, portraits, weddings, etc, you may also want to consider the Pro-10 or Pro-1 because their pigment-based inks produce more natural looking skin tones, unless you reduce the saturation on the skin areas prior to printing on this Pro-100, or you can also create custom profiles by calibrating this printer's output along with the display monitor and printer paper being used. I should emphasize that the deeper saturation of colors on this dye-based inkjet printer is not glaringly noticeable on the skin colors of all photos that I print out, but the subtle difference is more noticeable if I compare a people/portrait image printed on this Pro-100 and place the print right next to the same image printed on Canon's Pro-1 pigment-based inkjet printer. Dye-based printers just have a slightly different look and feel than pigment-based printers. Other than those two caveats, the quality of the photo prints from this Pro-100 should satisfy all but the most discerning amateur photographers. I rely both on my own research and the opinions of others to help me make informed buying decisions. I hope that this review helped you to be a wise shopper! :)
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Love this printer and it came in two days
By Bob Moore
This Printer is everything they say it is. Ive already printed an 8X10 for a customer and they loved it. I really love that I ordered it on a Tuesday and selected standard 5-7 day shipping. Printer arrived on Thursday and paper on Friday. I would definitely buy from this seller again.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Prints great photos
By Susan M. Downin
This printer makes great photos, but is difficult to install. Photo quality comparable to my Photosmart printer, but can print larger sizes.
See all 3 customer reviews...
Not working - bad investment
Pogo printer