How do I get my Canon Pixma printer to just use PGBK cartridge

Question

How do I get my Canon Pixma printer to use just black pigment (PGBK) ink for black and white documents?

Answer 1

Most inkjet printers that have both pigment black ink and dye-based inks use some of the dye-based inks even for printing greyscale and text to improve the appearance. Creating grey from pigment black requires sparsely printing relatively large ink dots, which can look grainy. Dye-based ink can be printed in smaller droplets and are not as dark. With text, filling in imperfections in the characters with dye-based grey is similar to how ClearType improves the appearance of characters on the screen.

The process uses more cyan than the other colors, so if you are out of cyan, you will get weirdly colored results, as you discovered (that is, if you have a printer that will continue to operate if one ink color is out). Your printer is one that can.

This article describes how to set the printer to use only the pigment black cartridge. The author based this on his Canon PIXMA MG5320, but it looks like the instructions are good for most printers in the PIXMA line. There are separate considerations for single vs. double-sided printing. Quoting from the article:

Single-Sided

For a simple 1-page document or photo, you need the following options. To set these options, you need to get to the print properties page. For example, in Adobe Reader XI these would be set by clicking on File > Print, and click the "Properties" button. In Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, these would be set by clicking on File > Print, click the "More Options" button, then select "Color Management", then click the "Printer Preferences" button:

• Under "Commonly Used Profiles", click on the "Standard" profile (it may work with other profiles as well, but I haven't tested them).
• Make sure "Duplex" is NOT selected.
• Select "Grayscale"
• Under "Media Type", select "Plain Paper" (it doesn't matter what kind of paper you're actually printing on, select "Plain Paper" regardless)
• Under "Print Quality", select "High"

That's it - click OK. Click "Print" in your application. (Of course, you can also select your desired tray to print from and the paper size in the printer properties as well - that's up to you and whatever you require for your specific application.)

Double-Sided

As above, you need to have automatic duplexing disabled for the printer to print using Pigment Black only (a post I found indicates Canon may have been concerned the Pigment Black ink would stick to the rollers and make a mess - it's possible, I don't know if that's actually true or not).

So, if automatic duplexing needs to be disabled, how do print on both sides of the paper? The answer is, you need to do it manually (sometimes referred to as "manual duplexing"). How do you do this specifically? Here is how I've done it with my printer (MG5320) and Adobe Reader XI. You can extrapolate for use with other applications - the process will be similar. Once you have your document, set the printer properties as above with the 1-page option and click "OK". Back at the main print dialog screen, configure the print job as follows:

1. In the "Pages to Print" section, expand "More Options", select "Odd Pages Only" from the drop-down menu. Also select "Reverse pages".
2. Click "Print".

After all the pages have printed on 1 side:

3. Re-insert the printed pages into the paper tray as follows:

   • face up
   • in the same page order as the printer ends up with (ex, pick up the printed pages, put them back into the paper tray, do not re-sort them at all)
   • with the top of the pages to the back of the printer

4. At the print dialog screen (File > Print), in the "Pages to Print" section, expand "More Options", select "Even Pages Only" from the drop-down menu. Also DE-SELECT "Reverse pages".

5. Verify the print properties haven't changed - click "Properties", verify "Grayscale" is selected, "Duplex" is de-selected, "Print Quality" is set to "High", and "Media Type" is set to "Plain Paper".
6. Click "OK", then "Print".