The young Pixma Pro9500 represents Canon ’s entranceway into the high closing of the exposure printer securities industry , which includes Epson ’s Stylus Photo R2400 and Hewlett - Packard ’s Photosmart Pro B9180 ( ) . Like its competitors , the $ 850 Pro9500 put up very good print quality , printing on papers up to 13 inches by 19 inches in size of it , support for heavyset medium types , and more . After some initial problems , largely related to the rendering of the print number one wood that ship with the pressman , I was able to get beautiful prints out of the unit , especially on mat - finis and fine - art paper .

The basics

The Pixma Pro9500 uses 10 individual , paint - base ink cartridge . In addition to the stock curing of picture ink — cyan , light cyan , magenta , scant Battle of Magenta , and yellow — the Pro9500 adds green , cerise , grey-haired , and two versions of fatal inks , one for lustrous photo papers , the other for matte and fine - art papers . In direct contrast with the Stylus Photo R2400 , you do n’t have to swap the black ink to change between composition type with the Pro9500 , a great feature film also found on HP ’s B9180 .

Setting the printer up is prosperous ; the hard part is making certain there ’s enough headway behind the printing machine to reconcile thick paper when you habituate the flat paper path ( a top - loading tray is used for stock papers ) . The Pro9500 comes with a CD - read-only storage that contains a print machine driver , a lackluster exposure impression covering call Easy - PhotoPrint , and Easy - PhotoPrint Pro , a Photoshop CS / CS2 spark plug - in . ( I was capable to notice a Photoshop CS3 version of the plug - in by digging through Canon ’s European web land site . ) This plug - in is nowhere about as comprehensive or as prosperous to use as the one that Canon ship with its professional - storey 17 - inch pressman , the imagePROGRAF iPF 5000 ( ) , however .

Canon state that 10 inks give the Pro9500 a all-inclusive color gamut than that of its competitors , which results in better tonic graduation and more vibrant print . However , at first it look like the contribute ink made photos calculate regretful , not better . My initial prints had flat people of colour and generally dingy quality , and , when I tried to short-circuit Canon ’s driver and print directly from Photoshop or Aperture using Canon ’s ICC vividness profile , the upshot were even bad .

Things improve when I download an updated variation of the Pro9500 driver from the Canon land site . Using Canon ’s driver - base coloring material and Canon papers , I come much better results . Most people who viewed the Pro9500 prints in a chemical group feel that they were quite good , although when viewed in a jury set alongside prints from HP and Epson printer , the Pro9500 photographic print rarely were vote the best . On glossy and semi - gloss prints , most people mat up that HP and Epson ’s prints looked much better . On Canon ’s own ok - art and premium matte papers , however , many viewer feel that the Pro9500 was at least comparable to B9180 print , and skinny to but generally behind prints made with the Stylus Photo R2400 and Stylus Professional 3800 .

The Pro9500 does a good chore with disgraceful and whitened images . When examining such prints on their own , most people felt that the tonic grade in the Pro9500 ’s black and white prints were good , although our jury picked the Epson print — which apply a black-market ink and two grays — over the Pro9500 in every instance .

Performance and ink life

The Pro9500 is no speed demon ; on average , it would impress an simulacrum in double ( or even three time ) the time it took its competitors . For model , the Pro9500 took approximately 6 minutes to output an 8 - by-10 column inch print in the nonremittal photo way , 3 minutes for a 4 - by-6 in mark , and 16 minutes for a 12 - by-18 inch image .

The Pro9500 cartridge ( $ 15 each ) are fairly small for a prominent - data format printer , but I was generally impressed with the ink usage . I run out of gray and photo black ink after approximately 110 prints of various size ( mostly missive - size ) , and none of the other colors ran out until I extend to nearly 200 print . This is less usage than I get out of my B9180 , but much better than my experience with the Stylus Photo R2400 , which devours ink quickly , especially when change over between paper types .

Macworld’s buying advice

Canon ’s Pixma Pro9500 is a decent printer that produces very unspoiled print , specially if you ’re using Canon ’s matte and fine art papers — andif you have the most current driver . I would n’t urge it if you design to impress solely on shiny paper , however ; there are much better alternatives ( the B9180 or Epson ’s Stylus Photo 1800 , for example ) for that task . If you ’re looking for a speedy printer with good ink utilisation and heavy photographic print quality on nearly all printer case , it ’s hard to beat HP ’s $ 700 Photosmart Pro B9180 .

[ Rick LePage isMacworld ’s editor at large and an editor program atcompletedigitalphotography.com . ]