Posted to Photo Printers 2009-02-07
Canon's latest printer for the professional or advanced amateur photographer is the Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Photo Printer. This high-end printer uses a pigment ink system with 10 different full-time "LUCIA" pigments available to produce professional quality prints up to 13 x 19 inches. Pigment colors include grey, black and matte black for some of the most realistic-looking B&W photos available from an inkjet printer. Maximum print resolution is 4800 x 2400 dpi. The printer is compatible with Windows XP/2000 and Mac OS v. 10.2.8 through v 10.5x and features both USB 2.0, Direct Print and PictBridge ports. The unit can handle paper sizes as small as 4 x 6 inches. The Pro9500 is fast - printing a 4 x 6 inch bordered photo in high quality mode took 45 seconds. A 13 x19 inch print in high quality mode took 5 minutes and 1 second. The quality of the output easily rivals that of commercial photo labs.
FeaturesAs you would expect from a printer at this price, the Pro9500 is loaded with features. Aside from those already mentioned, the printer has a number of modes for printing on specialized papers, including Fine Art Museum Etching, Semi-gloss, Fine Art Premium Matte and Fine Art Photo Rag. All of these specialized papers are available from Canon. The museum quality mode produces archival quality photos with a stated life of 100 years - the gold standard in the film camera world. The unit comes with two paper trays - one for thinner stock and another for thicker papers such as the Museum Quality stock. PerformanceAs already mentioned, the Pro9500 is fast, especially when printing smaller prints. The print times for 13 x19 inches may seem like a long time, but that's a lot of ground to cover. This printer easily rivals or exceeds the competition in speed. And the output is exceptional - commercial quality prints from a printer that sits on your desktop. Multimedia card options are noticeably absent, but this printer is designed to be paired with a high-powered PC or Mac and used as a "photo lab". One note is that the output when printing on high-gloss photo paper has a noticeably matte-like finished output. SummaryIf you're a serious amateur or professional photographer in the market for a printer for your photo lab, then you really should give the Pro9500 a test run. If you're not a serious amateur or professional, though, this is definitely more printer than you want to use. It takes a thorough knowledge of printing with a program like Adobe Photoshop in order to use this printer and get high-quality results. The printer comes with the EasyPhotoPrint plug-in for Adobe Photoshop to help ease this task. Pros
Cons
|
