What printer is best for me

Question

I have always had a canon printer.  I loved my first three but I have been very disappointed in the last one I bought, a pixma MG6120.  I'm not crazy about having the extra gray ink cartridge and the ink in the rest of my cartridges just evaporate over night it seems. I rarely print as much as I use to with all my children gone, except for the occassional email or coupons. Primarily I print invitations and envelopes and graphic designs to use around the house or to give to people.  I'm always disappointed in how the design looks on my monitor and how it prints, especially reds and greens. I also print on transparency paper and waterproof permanet vinyl. I do like to print the occassional pictures but lately I've been getting such good prints from Costco it's not worth the ink to print them in my home. I also scan alot, but I guess I could just keep the printer I have to do that, if there is just a regular printer that would work for me.  So my wants are a good printer that will print exceptional invitations on cardstock with brilliant colors and then the occassional photograph and the ink not evaporate over night.  Thanks so much for any suggest for a printer that would be best for me.  Thanks Gaye

Answer 1

The Pixma MG6120, what you have is a very good capable printer.  I would just see if I could get it to do what you want before you buy a different one.  You must decide if this printer has some features you don't want ot need.  For instance this printer is optimised to print high quality B&W.  Something most printers can not do.  Hence the extra cartridge.  If this is not of importance to, you may want to look at a printer that doesn't have this feature. Otherwise, ....................It is essential you get some settings on your monitor that somewhat matches what the printer is printing.  Your printer may be doing exactly what you are telling it to do and you have no idea it is, because your monitor is so far off.  If you don't do this step, you can forget it.  However, there are only a few things that you need to be concerned with. You don't need any fancy extra add-ins to do this.  No additional software or gadgets, no spiders or monkeys, etc. But you must get the gray-scale very close.  You need to get the brightness very close and you need the contrast very close.  Most folks set there brightness way too high by default.This presents a big problem when judging prints. You need to judge your prints in good light, preferably daylight. Again they may be correct and you don't know it.  After you do these things you can make adjustments to your prints by just looking at your screen.  Because you know the monitor and printer are on the same level.  One more point, you can NOT get a printer to print every color exactly the way you saw it.  It isn't possible as all colors and adjustments effect all others.  My goal is to get the skin tones right.  That is what people notice most. Remember you are dealing with two different disciplines here.One is colored light and the other is colored dyes.  They are not the same thing. In the end no printer is the best at everything.  It is just too cpmplex.