The Effects page lets turns your photo into a simulated color illustration, slide the lever to increase or decrease the effect. You can also create a monochrome effect like Sepia, Pink, Blue, Green or select a custom color. The Vivid Photo option enhances the green and blue colors and contrast and may be too much for some images. You can also enable or disable the Image Optimizer or Photo Optimizer PRO enhancements which help produce better enlargements from lower resolution images. The Photo Noise Reduction option helps reduce speckle noise often found in blue areas such as the sky. It has two settings: Normal and Strong.

The Profiles page lets you load, create or save custom sets of printer parameters for the type of printing jobs that you do frequently.

The Maintenance page lets you clean the print heads with options for a regular cleaning cycle or a "deep" cleaning cycle for really clogged heads. There is also an option for aligning the heads or checking the print nozzles. You can also set the Auto Power Off time, Custom Settings and the Quiet Mode. From here you can also start the Status Monitor (see next frame.)

The Status Monitor shows you visibly the level of ink in each of the ink tanks. When one of the tanks is low the Status Monitor will pop-up to alert you. The low tank(s) will have a yellow exclamation mark over it to let you know that it needs to be replaced soon. The ink warning first comes on when there is still some ink remaining so you won't run out in the middle of a printout and waste a sheet of costly photo paper.

I always enable the Preview option (found on the Main driver page), this is displayed just before the printer begins to actually print. Here you can visually verify your image cropping, orientation, paper size, media type, paper source and the printing type (borderless / bordered) -- before accidentally wasting a sheet of expensive photo paper because a driver setting was incorrect.

Steve's Conclusion

The PIXMA Pro9000 replaces the i9900 as Canon's top of the line 8-color, 13x19 inch photo printer using dye-based inks. Canon's other PIXMA "Pro series" 13x19 inch printer is the Pro9500, it adds two more inks, matte black and gray, and all ten of its inks are pigment-based. So what's the difference you ask?   Both are fast, capable color printers - the Pro9500 would be the best choice if you need to print gallery-grade monochromatic photos. The matte black ink produces higher density blacks on fine art papers while the photo black provides high contrast and the gray ink gives it a stable gray balance.

The Pro9000 consumes a fair amount of desktop space, requiring about 30 inches of width and 36 inches of depth (with the rear and front trays open.) Unlike other printers with a rear feed to handle thicker media, the Pro9000 employs a unique front feed. The paper is fed in through the front and is placed on the back paper support, it's pulled back through while printing. This eliminates the hassle of leaning over the printer or turning it sideways to facilitate feeding the paper. The front tray has two positions; normally it serves as the output tray for the auto sheet feeder, when lifted up and opened again it becomes the front paper feed. When using only the auto sheet feeder you can close the back paper support and push the printer about 17 inches closer to the wall. Wheels on the back of the printer make this job easier, just lift up the front and then roll it forward or back.

The new Pro9000 is a very capable successor to the i9900 and continues the tradition of speed and image quality that you'd expect in a "top of the line" 13x19-inch printer. The Pro9000 can handle media up to 1.2mm thick via its straight-through paper path. Canon has added two new fine art papers to its line of available media: The 100% cotton, Fine Art Paper “Photo Rag” (for photo art as well as copies of water colors, oil paintings, woodblock prints and illustrations); and Fine Art Paper Premium Matte (a heavy 210g/m² paper with a smooth matte finish for gallery-grade photographs and other art content). Both new papers are offered in 8½ x 11-inch and 13 x 19-inch sizes. Canon Photo Paper Pro and Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss is available in a new 8 x 10-inch size making it easy to produce frame-ready prints.

The Pro9000 uses a 6,144 nozzle FINE technology print head to deposit precise and constant 2- picoliter ink droplets to create photo lab quality prints with remarkable quality and speed. The ChromaLife100 ink system when using select Canon photo papers produces prints that can resist fading for up to 100 years when stored in an archival quality photo album. The 100- year-lifespan rivals that of many traditional film based photos. This eight-ink printer features a wide color space that delivers vivid coloration and high glossiness. The combination of the individually packaged inks– Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo Cyan, Photo Magenta, Black, Red, and Green – and Canon Photo Paper Pro glossy paper creates beautiful finished images.

Test print times using an 8-megapixel JPEG image and Canon Photo Paper Pro glossy media (unless otherwise noted.) These are actual "click to drop" times meaning the timer starts when we clicked the Print button and stopped when the paper dropped in the tray.

The bottom line - the Pro9000 is an excellent choice for the semi-pro or pro user that needs to print large color photos up to 13 x 19 inches on a wide variety of media including fine art papers. If you need to make archival quality monochrome prints then go for the Pro9500 instead. I have always been impressed by the quality and speed of Canon's wide carriage printers having owned and used the i9100 and i9900, the Pro9000 takes their best features and adds the ability to print on even thicker media. I sound like a broken record when I keep saying that the output from these printers is "photo lab quality" but it's true. Many years ago I spent hours in the dark, inhaling toxic chemicals to produce real lab-quality photos and believe me, this is a much better way to go. Long live technology!