"Jonathan L. Parker" writes:

On 2/17/14 8:10 PM, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:
"Jonathan L. Parker" writes:

...All of a sudden, however, it won't print in
color. When I try I get only a black-and-white image that's way too
dark and pictures that almost look like photo negatives.
Any ideas where to start?

1. In your CUPS interface make sure you are using RGB for color, not
CMYK...
2. Make sure the resolution mode you are using is compatible with the
media, and with color...
3. Set CUPS debug option on in the admin panel.

Thanks for trying to help, Gernot.

I managed to find an easier resolution. I went back and checked the
list of available drivers for Canon printers and it appears that from
somewhere I've picked up one that appears to be from Canon itself-or
the result of a really good reverse-engineering job-for the BJC-85
printer, which is very similar to the BJC-50 and uses the same
cartridges. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I went ahead and selected
the driver and after tweaking a few more settings I'm getting color
quality about as good as I get in Windows-and print speed to match.
For a 15-year-old printer only being used as a backup, that's more
than enough.

For anyone facing this same problem, the driver I selected was the one
labeled simply "Canon BJC-85," not the one with "CUPS+Gutenprint
5.2.9" behind it. If anyone wants to try the other driver and let us
know how you make out, that's fine. I'm quitting while I'm ahead.

Hi Jonathan,

Since I'm the maintainer of the gutenprint Canon backend, but did not
write and of the support code for the BJC printers, I want to ask a few
more questions:

1. It appears you are using 5.2.9, but the BJC-50 printer driver in
gutenprint 5.2.9 did not work for color, nor does it produce good B/W
prints?

2. The BJC-85 driver you are now using is not the gutenprint one, but a
different one? What is the exact URL of the print queue now that the
driver is installed?

3. I seem to remember that there is a BJC driver in Ghostscript, but not
sure right now what models it supports.

4. I would be very happy to do some checks of the various modes and
options in the gutenprint code, and modify/correct things if you
would be willing to test. In fact, if I were to send you some raw
print jobs that you could directly send to your printer, that would
be easiest, no need for you to install the driver. Would you be up
for that? It is much better to fix the problem for other people as
well, than to rely on a substitution solution (not that there is
anything wrong with a good alternative).

Regards,
Gernot Hassenpflug
--
NNTP on Emacs 24.3 from Windows 7