Does the Canon MP360 use the black ink in colour mode?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

After seriously blocking (And destroying) my head I am working on a
'test' print which will be scheduled too the printer on a weekly basis.

I have made one document of colour and one for B&W, as I am under the
impression that black is made up of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow when
printing in colour mode.

I don't know why I think this, but since I only use my Colour printer
for Photos (And use my laser for text), it only ever ran out of colour
ink.. This made me thing that the black was only used for 'text'
printing.

Is this really the case?? If I print a colour page with some 'black'
in, will this use the black ink too??

Jon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

<jon.p.weaver@alcatel.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1111957932.248768.237380@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> After seriously blocking (And destroying) my head I am working on a
> 'test' print which will be scheduled too the printer on a weekly basis.
>
> I have made one document of colour and one for B&W, as I am under the
> impression that black is made up of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow when
> printing in colour mode.
>
> I don't know why I think this, but since I only use my Colour printer
> for Photos (And use my laser for text), it only ever ran out of colour
> ink.. This made me thing that the black was only used for 'text'
> printing.
>
> Is this really the case?? If I print a colour page with some 'black'
> in, will this use the black ink too??
>
> Jon
>

Funny you should ask this as I was thinking the same about my MP360 just
yesterday. I'm having a problem with the black printing text. Heads are
clogged. I tried Windex, soaking overnight, and the compressed air
treatment. But I still get banding. Color works fine. My take on it is that
if you select grayscale you get color mixing to black and if you select
color, you get just black. Beats me though. Try printing out a test page in
grayscale and compare it to a test page in color. The text portion of those
test pages should always be black. I my case, I know the color cartridge and
nozzles are fine. It's just these damned black nozzles that keep clogging up
on me.

Ron

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

Hi Ron,

Now you come to mention it, thats exactly why I have come to believe
that in a colour print, black is made up of 'colours'.

When my blockage problems started, colour was fine, but it was black
which was COMPLETELY blocked up.

But when I printed, I still got 'black'.. It was only when I did a
'greyscale' print that I could see a problem.

So, I am 99% sure I am right.. In order to keep the heads 'alive', I
need to do a 'colour' AND a 'Greyscale' print.

Many thanks for that... My fingers are crossed that my 'scheduled
print' does the trick.

My head ended up so blocked that I could print ANYTHING.. I soaked it
for days in Windolene, boiling water, IPA.. Anything and eveything I
could find.. But it finally went in the bin.

If your head is blocked, its fairly easy to 'blag' a new one of Canon,
so give it a go!

Jon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

<jon.p.weaver@alcatel.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1111999638.779793.243480@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Hi Ron,
>
> Now you come to mention it, thats exactly why I have come to believe
> that in a colour print, black is made up of 'colours'.

It's well known that most inkjet printers use colour to help make extra
shades of black... Some also print colour under 100% black areas (eg text)
to make it really black - or to waste your colour ink depending on who you
believe!

Take a colour photo of a person and convert it to greyscale (what most
people call Black and White) using Irfanview so there is NO colour in the
image. If you print this using the Black mode on your printer the quality
won't be quite as good as if you print it using the Colour mode. The reason
is because in Black mode the printer has to some extent use a pattern of
black dots to create shades of grey and this reduces resolution slightly. In
colour mode it can make shades of grey by mixing colours. Other tricks are
used and the dot size is small these days so with many printers/images the
difference can be hard to see.

Some printers aren't very good at mixing colours to make grey and they
exhibit a colour tint (blue or pink usually) when they should be producing a
pure grey scale image - they are said to be "not very"neutral". In which
case you get to choose between slightly lower resolution and a colour tint.
If you are a professional photographer and you print a lot of B/W images you
can do something about this. So called "quad black" carts exist. These
contain shades of grey and replace the 3 colour carts and 1 black in your
printer. I believe you may also need a special driver to use a quad black
cart set but I might be wrong.

My Epson 2100 has a Black and a Light Black (eg grey!) cart. It prints very
neutral B/W prints. At least they look very neutral in daylight but have a
moderate colour tint when viewed under artificial light.

Colin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

> news:1111999638.779793.243480@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > Hi Ron,
> >
> > Now you come to mention it, thats exactly why I have come to believe
> > that in a colour print, black is made up of 'colours'.
>
> It's well known that most inkjet printers use colour to help make extra
> shades of black... Some also print colour under 100% black areas (eg text)
> to make it really black - or to waste your colour ink depending on who you
> believe!

I did a test this afternoon which was to print a fountain fill of
white-black in colour and greyscale and can see exactly what you are
saying.

On the Greyscale print, the 'bands' were easy to see and the very
light greys could clearly seen to be a bunch of dots.

In 'colour' mode, the spread of shades was much better.. I looked with
a microscope and at the 'light' end of the print, you could see
coloured dots.. However as it got towards the 'dark' end, I could see
'black', but still wasn't sure whether this was black ink, or a
mixture of colours.

If I were to print a test page with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
(And Red, Green and Blue for good measure) and printed this as colour,
do you think that this would give ALL of the heads a good exersise or
am I better off with sticking with a 'colour print' and a 'black
print'?

Jon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

"Jon Weaver" <jon.p.weaver@alcatel.co.uk> wrote in message
news:573665cf.0503280959.d5cc636@posting.google.com...
> If I were to print a test page with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
> (And Red, Green and Blue for good measure) and printed this as colour,
> do you think that this would give ALL of the heads a good exersise or

Yes that would use all the heads but it might be hard to see if one nozle in
a head is blocked but the others are working. My Epson comes with a head
test utility. This prints little horizontal lines - one for each nozle in
the head. Presumably it does this by talking to the printer in some magic
way because it would be difficult to achieve using a test image.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

"CWatters" <colin.watters@pandoraBOX.be> wrote in message news:<5nf3e.52355$jv5.4157544@phobos.telenet-ops.be>...
> "Jon Weaver" <jon.p.weaver@alcatel.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:573665cf.0503280959.d5cc636@posting.google.com...
> > If I were to print a test page with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
> > (And Red, Green and Blue for good measure) and printed this as colour,
> > do you think that this would give ALL of the heads a good exersise or
>
> Yes that would use all the heads but it might be hard to see if one nozle in
> a head is blocked but the others are working. My Epson comes with a head
> test utility. This prints little horizontal lines - one for each nozle in
> the head. Presumably it does this by talking to the printer in some magic
> way because it would be difficult to achieve using a test image.

I am not so worried about finding out which heads are blocked.. The
Canon software has a similar utility to do that test.. I just want to
keep the printer exersised once per week.

Perhaps I will change my 'test print' to include the black on the
colour one and then I will just have to print one page!