TurboPrint & PrintFab

I did not succeed in printing with the two black and one gray ink that the Pixma 9500 uses when printing in gray scale. I clicked the print in grayscale everywhere, set it to Grayscale or Grayscale Photo, but the prints came out all too warm, not black and white at all. Then, after numerous prints, I noticed that the gray ink was not used, it stayed at 100% full. Then I turned on my Virtualbox on Linux Mint, an old copy of Photoshop, the Canon software that came with the printer and voilà, a print in black and white and with the use of all three black and white inks.

I have verrsion 2.20 of TurboPrint, Linux Mint 17, printing from within Gimp 2.8 on Innova papers with Innova profiles.

What could be the problem???

Hello,

"Grayscale Photo" is the correct setting to print with mainly black & gray ink (a bit of color may be added to maintain neutral gray).
Grey ink is used on all print media except "Plain Paper".

In the setting "Colormode"="Grayscale" only black ink is used.

To check wether and how much grey ink is actually used, you could post the log file /var/log/turboprint/print.log (section for last print starting from "### New print job" is sufficient).

Before I do some more tests and post the log. there is something I don't quite understand.

I can add paper color profiles to my printer. But where can I choose the paper when printing? According to Innova I have to choose Semi Gloss as media type, and then Innova as paper type.
When I choose Semi Gloss in the TP window for media type, this is also the paper type. When I use Innova IPA 09 as my media type (I guess because I added and imported that color profile), this is also added as my paper type. I would think I have to use the Innova media type because that's the paper I'm using, but that always turns out much too warm.

When I only use Semi Gloss, the images are better. More black and white, though a bit on the blue side. But then I don't understand the whole point of paper profiles

To add a new profile to TurboPrint, you have to use the dialog "Profiles" and add a new profile entry. This is where you can choose a "Paper class", e.g. "Glossy/Semiglossy" - this is probably what Innova refers to as "media type".
After adding the profile entry and importing the ICC profile, there will be a new "Paper" entry in TurboPrint Control and in the application's print dialog.

Innova offers ICC profiles for Innova papers for Canon PIXMA Pro printers, however these profiles will produce correct colors only when used with Canon's original Windows printer driver. The reason is that different printer drivers have different color output, depending on the dithering algorithm, linearisation, use of light (photo) inks vs. regular inks, black generation etc.

To get the best possible color accuracy, you can order a profile from our profile creation service that is described in the TurboPrint manual (print a color chart page from the "Profiles" dialog in TurboPrint Control, send the profile chart to Zedonet and we will return the color profile by email).

You can also create your own ICC profiles if you have a spectrophotometer and a profiling software.