TurboPrint & PrintFab

Hello,

I've recently installed the latest version of Ubuntu and downloaded the the demo of TurboPrint. My printer is a Canon PIXMA PRO9000 and I'm trying to print via GIMP.

I've got some slightly thicker than average plain paper and I've established that when using TurboPrint, the 'Plain Paper' Settings with 'Super 9600dpi' produce a stunning result with perfect colours, no banding and excelent quality. However, no matter what I try, I am unable to print a borderless image on A4 Paper with these same quality settings. Here's a list of what I've tried and the results...

1) I selected A4 paper, then in the layout TAB of TurboPrint, I checked the Borderless box. When I found that the print still had the same border as before, I went back into the settings and found that the 'Borderless' box kept un-checking its self.

2) I looked for an A4 Borderless paper size, but A4 Borderless is not available to me in TurboPrint, even though I can see it in the list of paper Types available in the Ubuntu printer configuration.

3) As a last resort, I tried making a custom paper size in TurboPrint. This produces a borderless print, but TurboPrint/GIMP ignores the print quality setting. If I chose Super 9600dpi, the printer insists on using a lower quality high speed mode, which produces a far lower quality print.


Is there any way that I can print borderless A4 photos with the Super 9600dpi plain paper setting via TurboPrint?

Many thanks,

Craig.

Hello again,

After spending some time playing with the settings and trying other paper types, it would appear that the problem is directly linked with the combination of 'Plain Paper' and 'Super 9600dpi'. As soon as I try to make a borderless print with Plain Paper selected, TurboPrint defaults to a lower quality print setting. When I disable borderless printing I get a fantastic print.

Is there any way around this? Selecting a different paper type (eg. inkjet paper) produces a print with less contrast, less richness and a generally less accurate colour print - regardless of how I try to change and adjust settings

I would be extremely grateful if anyone out there can answer this question, as I have three systems that need to be set up and I'd like to know if TurboPrint is capable of offering a better solution than the standard drivers available for Windows. Many thanks in advance.

Hello,

quality setting choices are restricted to medium print quality for borderless printing on plain paper - this is a limitation in the printer firmware that is also present in Canon's Windows driver.

zedonet wrote:Hello,

quality setting choices are restricted to medium print quality for borderless printing on plain paper - this is a limitation in the printer firmware that is also present in Canon's Windows driver.

Thank you for your reply. I now understand the problem.

The difficulty I have is that I need to print approximatelt 100-150 borderless images per week on this paper (also in A3 format) and the Canon Pro9000 produces horizontal banding with medium quality settings on plain paper. I have tested another Pro9000 printer and the same problem occurs, so I am worried that I have made a very expensive mistake.

I see that the TurboPrint Driver provides an option to reduce the amount of ink applied to the paper (something that the Windows Driver does not) and I have been able to use this setting to allow me to use a different paper profile on this paper. The result is that I can print without banding, but the images still look 'washed-out'

Is there any combination of ink / colour settings that can recreate the plain paper settings with a different paper profile? Or do the different paper profiles use a higher resolution too?

Thanks again for your help.
Craig.

Hello,

I'd use "Inkjet paper" media setting and increase the brightness value (TurboPrint Control Center, index card "Main"). Increasing brightness works like a "gamma" setting - medium intensity colors are printed brighter, black and saturated colors remain unchanged.