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Canon’s Chromalife 100 inks are used in Canon’s Pixma photo printers - some use 4, 5, or even 8 ink cartridges. At the top of the range the A3+ Pixma Pro 9000 uses 8 dye inks, while the Canon Pixma Pro 9500 uses 10 pigment inks including a light grey making it the best choice in the Canon range for monochrome and archival printing.
For most people the interesting part of the Canon range is the 5 ink printers like the Canon Pixma iP3600, Canon Pixma iP4500 and Canon Pixma iP4600 which, although reasonably priced from about £ 60 - £ 100 in the UK, are capable of excellent photo prints and are relatively cheap to run. The printers are unique in using 2 black inks as well as 3 colour inks. This may seem a strange set up, but in fact is designed to give you the best of both worlds - high quality photo printing and economical general home or office use. For text there is a large pigment black cartridge which gives excellent text quality and much more ink per cartridge than normal, while for deep blacks on photo paper there is a dedicated photo black cartridge. That coupled with tiny droplet sizes means that prints from Canon Pixma printers using the 5 ink system are almost as good as you will get from photo printers using 6 colours or more and costing several times as much.
In short, Canon’s Pixma 5 ink system is great, really giving you excellent results and reasonable running costs.
Canon Pixma 5 Ink System Review
At the time of writing the 5 ink system is used in the following printers:
Canon Pixma iP3600
Canon Pixma iP4500
Canon Pixma iP4600
The Canon 5 ink system traces it’s roots back to the Canon i865 which used BCI6 inks and was followed by the Canon Pixma iP5200 and iP5300 which used the CLI-8 cartridges.
Canon Pixma iP5200 Review
Canon Pixma 4 Ink System
This is unfortunately where the glowing reviews end. Some Canon Pixma printers use a 4 ink system which, again, is different from that used by other printer manufacturers. Canon’s 4 ink printers use only one black ink cartridge, dispensing with the dedicated photo black, but keeping the pigment black for text only - not photo printing. This means that they use a combination of the coloured inks to make black in photo prints. This is less than successful. These printers are fine for general use, and photo prints are possible, they’re just nothing like as good as with the 5 ink system. So if you really care about the quality of your photo printing, make sure you buy a printer with the 5 ink system.
Canon Pixma iX4000 Review
The 4 ink system is used in the following:
Canon Pixma iX4000
Canon Pixma iX5000
Canon Pixma iP3500
Understandably, Canon don’t publish a lot of detail about the ink systems used in their lower range printers.
Although I haven’t tested the Canon Pixma iP2600, iP1900 or iP1800 it’s likely they use a conventional 4 ink system, so while OK for photo quality, they will be expensive to run if you plan on printing more than an occasional snap or two. Results will probably be similar to those from the Canon Pixma MP150 tested in 2006.
Canon MP150 Review
Chromalife 100 Fade Resistance
Canon are unusual in that they think that most fading of inkjet prints is caused by exposure to gasses like CFC’s, not by exposure to light. They do still quote the best print life for prints stored in albums.
Canon claims a 100 year life for Chromalife 100 prints on Canon media if they are stored in a photo album. 30 years if framed behind glass, but only 10 years if unprotected.
Chromalife 100+ was introduced in 2008 and increases the figure to a claimed 300 years in an album, 30 year light fastness and 20 year gas fastness.
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In a historical context the Canon S9000 was the most important printer Canon launched. The Canon S9000 was an A3+ printer using 6 BCI-6 inks. It was aimed squarely at the pro market, and like all revolutionary new products it had two killer features - It was fast, incredibly fast by the standards of the time, and the print quality was superb. For many pro’s wondering if an inkjet printer could ever replace a conventional darkroom, the Canon S9000 was the answer. 
