Canon Pixma ix6550 printer magenta cast

All of my B&W prints on the Canon Pixma ix 6550 printer has a strong magenta cast - can anybody help with this problem?

Just googled it. Seems its a known issue. Suggested on another forum its because it only has one black, and all such printers suffer similarly

fficial&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Mi7&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&channel=rcs&sclient=psy-ab&q=ix6550+printer+magenta+cast&oq=ix6550+printer+magenta+cast&gs_l=serp.12...0.0.0.111038.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.HU9B4K2uh1I&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41248874,d.d2k&fp=b987864691354c7e&biw=1366&bih=705" rel="nofollow" class="outlink" target="blank">https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ix6550+printer+magenta+cast&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&...

Epson printers suffer from a similar issue, but with them the cast is green, not magenta. For this reason I never make BW prints on my Epson. If anyone has a way of avoiding this I would be interested!

Regards
David

It's a very common problem with Canon printers and there seems to be no solution other than using a dedicated B+W printer or get your images printed commercially.

I regret buying my Canon printer, had nothing but problems with it!

Thanks for your help - I have just returned the printer back to the shop and am now looking for another. Can anybody recommend a decent A3 printer for between £200 - 300 which wont cause colour cast problems with B&W prints?

Not sure if this might help. I have a Kodak printer which also prints mono images with a slight colour cast. This can be prevented in the settings by telling the printer to print using grey scale. Might be worth a try.

I had the same problem for the first few prints from my iX6550. Prints also came out darker than I expected.
The solution was easy.
Work through the printer menus until you get the point where you can tweak the settings manually'
Set the overall printing to light instead of the default.
Move the red-cyan slider to give between +8 and +12 (cyan bias).
Sorted!
The Cyan setting may need a touch of adjustment to match the paper being used (glossy or pearl for example), but you can set the thing so that those settings are used all the time.
I have heard that this printer over-saturates on matt paper, but have not tried this for myself (always use Pearl for club comp entries).

Geoff

gartmore / Doc Jeff - thanks

I tried the settings and played about with the red-cyan slider but it did not seem to have any effect. I also tried the saame when it was in greyscale mode and again it came out magenta. I have tried a few other forums and it seems to be a common problem with this printer - Epson is looking good again.

I thought about what I actually do (in some cases almost on autopilot).

Open the .jpg image (PSE10), go to Enhance > adjust lighting > shadows and highlights. This atomatically lightens most any image. Save as a .psd file (non-lossy), then open it again and repeat. Now it is a lot lighter.

Go to File>Print set the printer (for me, 'cos I have a laser hooked up as well), and then go into Change Settings.

Then >Advanced Settings > Click the Main tab. Then on Color/Intensity > Manual > Set

To lighten up the whole print (yet again) set Brightness to Light.
I also remove my red tinge by moving the Cyan slider to +8 to +12 (+10 to +12 works for me most times).

Then it's one proof on A4 and go for A3.

If it is really critical, once you have an A4 reference print, you can go back to the RAW file and adjust that. (A fringe benefit of being able to save both formats.)

I think, but cannot prove easily, that the repeated lightening is as important as the red-cyan adjustment. Too much cyan - say approaching +15 - seems to give a monochrome image a faint blue cast. This can be quite attractive, and will maybe make the clouds look good, but the judges will jump on it.
Geoff