High Quality Affordable Desktop

for Amateur and Professional Printmakers

test

Dye-Based Inkjet
The Canon Pixma Pro-100 printer is a dye-based inkjet printer designed primarily for photographic quality printing on resin coated (RC) papers at regular sizes from 4×6 inch up to 13×26″. The target buyers for this printer are amateur and professional photographers looking for an affordable desktop printer to produce both high quality color and B&W prints in house that have the “look and feel” of traditional RA-4 process color and/or RC multigrade B&W prints.

Two Photo Gray Channels
What makes the Pixma Pro-100 unique is that it is the first dye-based printer to come standard with two channels of photo gray dyes in addition to the customary photo (PK) black channel. In the upcoming article, we will explain why photo gray inks are important not only to good B&W printing but also to color fidelity as well. In recent years Canon has offered some desktop printer models with one additional photo gray channel, but the Pro-100’s 3K channel configuration is intended to bring both b&W and color printing on a dye-based printer up to an even higher quality level.

Wi-Fi
Because the Pro-100 is a wi-fi enabled printer, it can co-exist very nicely with another all-in-one (AIO) printer in a family household or small office environment. However, although the Pro-100 can also be used to print on plain paper and envelopes, the Pro-100 is not really a good replacement for a general purpose printer since it has no scanning, faxing, or direct copy features, nor is it optimized for fast text printing. It is for all practical purposes a dedicated photo printer and a really nice one at that.

Fine Art Media
The Pro-100 printer is also capable of working with fine art media, and as the Pro-100 printer project continues here at Aardenburg Imaging we will be studying a range of third party media options that work well (or not) with this printer. Nevertheless, the Pro-100’s raison d’être and where it undoubtedly shines is with Canon’s signature series of resin coated (RC) papers that are specifically optimized for dye-based photo printing. These papers are as follows:

Canon Photo Paper Pro Luster LU-101
Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss SG-201
Canon Photo Paper Pro Platinum PT-101
Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II PP-101

Samples in Aardenburg Test Database
Samples of these media plus one third party RC paper, Red River UltraPro Satin 3.0 (68lb – 270gsm – 10.4 mil), have been added to the Aardenburg lightfastness testing database. The samples have reached the 10 megalux hour exposure interval, so while testing is still in the early stages, the samples are already starting to yield useful information. To find these samples in the database, filter the database for “pro-100” and/or look for ID #s 303-307 in the list.

Thank you to all who donated to help make this project a reality. Aardenburg would not be able to provide essential industry insight without the generous participation of the Aardenburg Imaging Membership Community.

Mark H. McCormick-Goodhart
Director, Aardenburg Imaging and Archives

Project Successfully Funded!