Hello all,

I have a customer that just recently upgrade from some G4 towers running Panther to MacBook Pros running Leopard. They are finding that when they print to their Canon i9900, the color is drastically lighter when printing from the new MacBook Pros on Leopard than the G4's on Panther.

I've done some searching on google and here on the topic and have come up blank so far. Maybe someone here in the forums has an idea of why this would happen.

If more details are needed, please let me know.

Thanks in advance!

David

I'm sure the printer drivers are different. You might need to apply a color profile to get the results to match.

Thanks, Jack. I am going to do some research to see if it is even feasible to use the older driver on the new computers to see if that fixes the problem. I'm not sure where I would come across color profiles as the Canon site was not much help.

Thanks again!

I would *not* use the old drivers. That's a recipe for disaster. The printing subsystem has had quite a lot of updates since panther.

Gotcha. Thanks for the advice!

What program are they printing from?

Indesign and .pdf files primarily.

David: If you've upgraded the printer drivers on the new MBP's running Leopard, have you seen an improvement?

Also, your client should be using the proper colorspace(s) in his documents, which varies depending on his printer and workflow. If the old application settings didn't get translated over to the new laptop hardware, then you could see a color shift.

If your client is running color critical workflows (e.g., advertising, photography), he should consider using a color managed workflow. You will need to obtain some kind of printer and monitor profiles for that workflow. And then use those profiles. There are also some other bad practices to avoid.

There are free generic profiles, but if those aren't accurate enough, you need to use custom profiles. For printers, there is a unique profile for every printer/inkset/paper combination. If your client is using photos (that he's taken or has contracted to be taken) and wants to pursue color management, his camera also needs to be profiled. In short, every input and output device needs a profile. The better the profile, the more consistent will be his results.

What version of InDesign and PDF's created by what program/version? Might this be relevant?
Printing to inkjets...ID CS3