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Print Quality Settings (7.00)
Users can access the print quality settings through the main tab of the driver or properties window. The quality choices are High, Standard, and Custom.
Clicking Custom enables the Set button to the right, which opens up the window below. Users can fine-tune their quality setting by adding one level of quality higher (Fine) than is possible in the Main tab. The choice of dither or diffuse pattern for images is also possible, depending upon whether users want to employ a half-tone or random look to their dots.
Internal Editing (6.50)
The Pro9500 printer driver provides a decent amount and kinds of editing options. These are accessed through the Custom Color option on the driver’s Main tab. The window below displays several options. Within the first, Color Correction, users can choose to allow the printer driver to select the color management system—driver matching, Windows ICM, or none. The input profile can also be set to Adobe RGB when Windows ICM is selected. Color balance can be adjusted as well, suing the slide bars for each of the three process colors—cyan, magenta, and yellow. Users can adjust the Intensity, Brightness, and Contrast here as well.
The one downside to these otherwise handy tools is the lack of a live preview. Users can only preview the effect within the driver on a tiny stock portrait of a child at the beach. A thumbnail of the actual image being adjusted would be more helpful.
The Effects tab gives the user further options for image correction and adjustment. Images can be converted to monochrome colors, such as Sepia, Blue, Pink, and Green, as well as a Custom slider bar for fine-tuning colors. Also included here are Canon’s one-button correction tools. These include Vivid Photo, for enhancing background colors while leaving faces untouched; Image Optimizer, which smoothes out jagged edges of low-resolution images; Photo Optimizer PRO, an automatic correction of brightness and contrast; and Photo Noise Reduction, for reducing digital noise or artifacts.
Dedicated B&W Settings / Effects (4.00)
A grayscale checkbox in the Main tab gives users the option to remove the color form the image for black-and-white printing, if they are unable or choose not to do this in Photoshop or other editing software.
Media Types (7.00)
Not all Canon papers can be used in the Pixma Pro9500. However, there is still a wide variety of media available. Standard Canon papers that can be used include Photo Paper Glossy (GP-502), Photo Paper Plus Glossy (PP-101) and Semi-Gloss (SG-201), and Matte Photo Paper (MP-101). There is also a selection of Fine Art papers available, including Premium Matte (FA-PM1), Photo Rag (FA-PR1), and Museum Etching (FA-ME1). The Pro9500 can accommodate media up to 1.2 mm in thickness.
We printed on the both the Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss and the Museum Etching surfaces. The Semi-Gloss paper had good blacks and decent tones, but we did notice a gloss differential to the paper. The Museum Etching is a beautiful, heavyweight, matte surface paper, the tooth of which did not interfere with crisp images. It reproduced very strong blacks and crisp tonal separation.
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