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Meet the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300: superior A3+ photo prints, simple workflow

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 pro photo printer on a tabletop in a studio produces a borderless print.

The compact-size Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 photo printer can produce gallery-quality prints up to A3+ size, with high-speed borderless printing, richer blacks, finer shadow detail and less ink wastage.

Introducing the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300, a pro photo printer packed with innovations and features that enable you to create your own colour-accurate and beautiful gallery-quality prints up to A3+.

With quality at its heart, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 uses Canon's LUCIA PRO pigment-based ink technology for print permanence, rich colours including a new matte black and a wider colour gamut.

Giving you more creative options, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 can produce borderless photo prints on any media, and can print panoramic photos on cut-sheets up to 990.6mm long. It's also compact, with a 15% decrease in volume and a smaller footprint than its predecessor, the Canon PIXMA PRO-10S.

"The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 is an expansion of our imagePROGRAF PRO series, which is the pinnacle of our photo printer range, with models up to 60 inches, and we're opening up that technology to the A3+ segment," says Canon Europe Inkjet Specialist and printing expert Suhaib Hussain.

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 pro photo printer on a table with three gallery prints on the wall behind.

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 uses the pigment-based LUCIA PRO ink system with 10 inks, including three monochrome inks – among them a newly formulated Matte Black ink – for exceptional monochrome prints.

Superior ink system

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 adopts archival-quality LUCIA PRO pigment inks with 60-year light and gas fastness. The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300's 10-ink system consists of nine colours, including two dedicated black inks (Matte Black and Photo Black) and a grey for amazing mono prints, plus a Chroma Optimiser ink coating for improved surface uniformity on glossy media.

It is the first in the imagePROGRAF series to feature a newly formulated Matte Black ink with a higher black density for richer blacks with the finest shadow detail when monochrome printing with matte media and fine art paper.

"With its 10-ink system and long-lasting prints using LUCIA PRO pigment inks, the new A3+ Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 is equally suited for proofing in small studios, and it will especially appeal to anyone looking to submit prints to exhibitions and galleries or to get into fine art printing for the first time," says Suhaib.

"The optimised ink formulation of the LUCIA PRO inks allows for a denser placement of ink droplets on both glossy and fine art media, which results in a wider colour gamut with deep blacks and rich colours with precise gradation."

On glossy media, the synergy between the denser LUCIA PRO inks and Chroma Optimiser "contributes to even light reflection and improve surface glossiness," says Suhaib. "Not only does this further reduce the unwelcome patchy bronzing effect on the surface on prints and improve image clarity over its predecessor, but with the denser Photo Black ink it also enhances the dynamic range."

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 pro photo printer printing a panoramic image, with similar prints on the gallery walls behind.

The A3+ (13-inch) desktop Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 supports various panoramic size papers, and the paper size limit can be extended to 990.6mm. Other custom sizes can be added.

Automatic ink switching, less wastage

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 minimises wastage and increases productivity through technologies such as automatic ink switching. "Canon's thermal inkjet design has dedicated nozzles per ink channel, so there's no loss of ink from flushing and no delay when switching from glossy to matte media," says Suhaib. "The printer switches seamlessly when changing media, thereby eliminating the possibility of wasting ink and valuable paper."

The print head design also has built-in redundancy, which makes features like the Nozzle Misfire Detection system possible.

"Thanks to Canon's unique print head design, imagePROGRAF PRO-300's nozzle density is much higher than rivals, which means we have spare nozzles in our print head," says Suhaib. "So, if a nozzle becomes clogged, whether that's through the printer not being used for a while or actually during printing, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300's processor will know and the back-up nozzles will be fired instead, so it can keep on printing. It's not going to mess up your prints with banding when you have deadlines to meet."

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 pro photo printer alongside a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO 500 printer.

Although it is capable of printing up to A3+ size, the desktop Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 has been designed to minimise its physical footprint, so it will fit comfortably into even a small office or studio.

A smooth workflow

When you're serious about your photography, you want to take Canon quality right through your workflow from capture to print, with complete confidence that every stage will reflect the ease of use and colour integrity you expect from Canon.

Enabling you to print with confidence every time, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 has a 3-inch colour screen for easier operation, as well as paper skew correction to improve accuracy, and faster print times.

The LCD panel displays ink levels and operational messages, and can be used for performing functions such as media selection, general printer maintenance and checking network settings.

Using a series of sensors, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300's paper skew detection and correction system monitors and adjusts the alignment of paper as it feeds through the printer, reducing misfeeds and paper wastage.

"The imagePROGRAF PRO-300's print control method reduces print times compared to the PRO-10S," says Suhaib. "The imagePROGRAF PRO-300 will print a colour A3+ photo with a border using Canon Photo Paper Platinum Pro in under 5 minutes."

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300's 3-inch LCD touchscreen and easy-to-use controls.

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300's 3-inch LCD touchscreen makes it easy to use, with menu selection of various maintenance features, network settings, and control literally at your fingertips.

Professional Print & Layout

As a part of the imagePROGRAF PRO series, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 ships with Canon's enhanced Professional Print & Layout software. Available as a standalone app or as plug-in for Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Professional Print & Layout simplifies your workflow to ensure that all the necessary print, layout and colour management features are available at your fingertips to help you stay productive from input to output.

In addition, working seamlessly with Canon's EOS camera technology to unlock unique features in Professional Print & Layout, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 enables you to achieve the highest level of print fidelity from images captured using Canon EOS cameras. Functions such as DPRAW Print and HDR Print can read the RAW image data from EOS cameras, to reproduce the sharp areas of an image accurately, as well as recover highlights from single-exposure images.

"Professional Print & Layout supports professional photo print workflows and includes features such as soft proofing, hard proofing [pattern printing], ICC profiles and image 'nesting'," says Suhaib. "We're helping photographers to get what they see on their screen to match in print. It's all about giving the user confidence."

كتابة Kevin Carter