“Unfortunately, our printers do not support printing on transparency media. This paper is not porous enough to soak in our ink. We do not have any workarounds or alternate settings that we can suggest to use with this media”. – Canon Product Expert
When I owned a Canon Pixma iP4200 one of the things I was using it the most for was printing transparencies. I was sharing office space with a screen-printing shop at the time and that is how I made most of the positives. Later on I purchased a laptop with Windows 7 installed, requiring me to download a compatible driver from the Canon website. To my surprise the “Transparency” setting was no longer available. Later I purchased a Canon iP7240 (the latest printer in the home photo printer range at the time). No transparency setting either. I’m not going to lie to you the iP4200 made the best positives that I have ever seen from a cheap inkjet printer, they were opaque and sharp.
Later on when I researched the subject I found various online queries on the Canon forum:
Judging from Canon’s reply it looks like they changed their ink formulation. I’m not sure why the setting was removed from the iP4200 updated driver though, unless of course they changed the ink formation on the older machines as well or that driver works across printers.
Canon’s new printers do not make the printed transparency the same when making a positive; I have tried various paper settings as well as manually adjusting the brightness settings. It is clear comparing the two that the new printer output is nowhere as opaque as the older ones. While I like Canon products I feel their photo printers are not what they used to be. I have owned a Canon iP4200 and currently own a newer iP7240, the 7240 quality is not as good and the changes just seem cosmetic and frivolous (new shape, flatter yet wider and door opening automatically). It seems like Canon took one step forward and two steps back.
How does this affect you if you not a screen-printer? After all overhead projectors are going the way of the dodo.
Well, transparencies can be used to make various cool things such as transparent and frosted business cards as well as see-through swing tags, invitations, greetings cards, keychains and other similar laminated items.
[…] The last time I saw a “Transparency” paper setting in a Canon software driver was on my iP4200 under Windows XP, that option disappeared for the Windows 7 driver for the same […]