New to printing, need some help with BW photos?

Hello,

I just got a new canon pixma ip8720 yesterday and I've been printing on canon fine art matte paper. Photos with light and bright colors and small areas of dark black look great but with photos with larger areas of solid black or grey I can see faint lines that every row of ink leaves when the printer starts a new row on top of it:

example

I cleaned the printer heads thinking that might be a problem but that didn't seem to make a difference. I have the settings on printer managing the colors and relative colorimetric when I print. I printed on the glossy paper that came with the printer and the effect is lessened or at least not as noticeable, so maybe my paper is just wrong for this application? I have a lot of black and white so I'm hoping there's some way I can fix this or print them the right way, can anybody help?

Banding is a mechanical issue. It might be caused by clogged nozzles or a misalignment of the print heads. I would do a nozzle check and clean any clogs. Then align the head if your printer has that feature. Make sure your paper thickness is set correctly. I don't know your printer specifically but most inkjets function in a similar manner.

As Larry said, run a head alignment and also make sure a nozzle check is perfect before proceeding.

Then:
- turn off high speed (bidirectional) printing
- print at max resolution (often identified as "photo" in the printer driver)

Thank you for replying! I will try aligning the heads and cleaning the nozzles again.

my pixma does the banding thing all the time
the nozzle is clogged with mine when it does that.
it usuallytakes about 3 "deep cleans" to fix it ..

my pixma does the banding thing all the time
the nozzle is clogged with mine when it does that.
it usuallytakes about 3 "deep cleans" to fix it ..

If cleaning the nozzles solves your problem printing something once a week should keep the nozzles clear. A test print will probably be sufficient.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

If cleaning the nozzles solves your problem printing something once a week should keep the nozzles clear. A test print will probably be sufficient.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

I did 2 deep cleans on the black nozzle and the lines are gone! Thanks, guys.