Almost any ink jet printer can churn out decent photos, particularly at small sizes. But to get exceptional quality, and to print on fine-art papers at sizes up to 13 by 19 inches, you need a high-end printer built for professional photographers or serious amateurs. The Canon Pixma Pro9000 may just fill the bill. The Pro9000 packs an eight-color ink system, designed both to widen the range of colors it can print and to reproduce the subtle shading that makes skin tones look realistic and rounded objects look three-dimensional.

Although it can serve as an all-purpose printer in a pinch, the Pro9000 is clearly built for photos: The default paper setting in the driver is for photo paper. Slower than its rivals, the Pro9000 ran through our business applications suite at a lackadaisical 25:58 (min:sec), but nobody is going to buy it to output spreadsheets. And although print speed is far less important than output quality for photos, its worth noting that, in its price class, the Pro9000 is the fastest photo printer I’ve tested, averaging 1:06 for each 4-by-6 print and 2:05 for each 8-by-10.

Photo quality is equally impressive. When tested with semigloss fine-art paper, the Pro9000 earned a perfect score on almost every point I use to evaluate color prints. The only shortcoming as a slight tint on a monochrome photo. I also printed our standard photo suite on a range of other papers. With matte paper, the quality was just as good for color photos and better for monochrome prints, which were free of tint. I also printed an assortment of photos on several of Canon's fine art papers, including Museum Etching, Photo Rag, Premium Matte, and Semi-Gloss. I was so impressed with the results that I plan to frame several of the photos.

Graphics quality is also superior, with no notable flaws. This makes the Pro9000 a fine choice for graphic artists. Its text output was a little bit below par for an ink jet, particularly with more stylized, non-business fonts, but few people will be using the Pro9000 to print text.

At 7.6 by 26.0 by 14.0 inches (HWD) and 30.8 pounds, the Pro9000 is larger and heavier than most ink jets. You’ll need extra room in the front and back to print on large-size paper, in effect making the printer’s footprint 26 by 26 inches. But for most photo enthusiasts, the Pro9000’s spectacular prints will be well worth the extra space it takes up.

For photo quality in its price range, the Pro9000 can’t be beat. About its only real drawback is that, if you print a lot of photos in a single session, you may find that one or another of its eight ink cartridges will always seem to be on the brink of needing replacement.

Price
Canon Pixma Pro9000: $499.99 list

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