The Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-2600 - Man V’s Printer

For the past few days I’ve been battling with the Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-2600 in an attempt to re-print an image (Ivelet Bridge below) with  same tone and colour as I’ve produced (without problem) with the Epson SC-P800 for the last eight years. 

For the pedants out there, I’m not foolish enough to believe I’ll get an absolutely exact match, but something close would be nice. 

Perhaps it’s unfair to say the fight has been with the big, heavy,  dumb machine that now squats in the corner of our dining room. No, the fight has been with the combination of Lightroom, MacOS, Canon printer driver, ICC’s, AM1X files and the Pro-2600 that make up my print workflow*. I actually love the big dumb thing, so let’s not apportion blame where it doesn’t belong. 

To cut to the chase, it’s the combination of the software that simply does not work. If you doubt my word please go ahead and waste the amount of time, paper and ink I have, trying to find a consistent workflow and output.  I’m just grateful for a couple of the forums out there that confirmed I wasn’t alone in my suffering and wasn’t going mad. 

Where the issue lies - with Adobe or Apple or Canon - isn’t clear, but these are all major companies with a stake in design / photography / colour / printing /  etc. and someone needs to get on and fix it!  

The upshot is that I no longer use Lightroom’s print module and  instead use Canon Professional Print & Layout. It’s a hassle moving all the templates I’d built up in Lightroom, but CPP&L gives accurate, consistent results as well as  explicit control over the process. And if does’t work, at least I’ve only one company to blame. 

As for the printer, when I’ve more experience I’ll write a longer review, but first impressions are positive. I can’t see a material improvement in print quality, but then I didn’t expect to. What I do see is the difference between a prosumer printer (the Epson SC-P800) and a professional grade printer, which makes the whole printing operation faster, cheaper and easier … and of course the ability to print bigger prints!  It’s just a shame it has to be the size of a piano and weigh four times as much to print an additional seven inches! My only real criticism is the length of the name, Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-2600. Does it really have to be so long! 

Before I end this short rant, I’d say like to say a word about soft-proofing in Lightroom. Don’t, or at least only use it to get a rough impression of what the image “might” look like (far better to do a hard proof). If you want a print that replicates what you see on monitor, use a paper with a big enough colour gamut. It’s a fool’s error to spend countless hours trying to tickle an image onto on a paper that it does not belong on. I know because I’m that fool!  

*Note: I can’t comment on other operating systems, driver versions, Lightroom versions etc.