The Pixma Pro9500 was the first photo-quality inkjet printer to offer 10 inks – using a mammoth 10 cartridges containing Lucia pigment-based tanks. The result? A huge colour range when compared to lower-end machines, with output that confidently handles the subtle gradients needed in photographic reproduction as well as the sharpness required by illustration and line art. The Mark II version has the same top-line colour reproduction, but is a speedier machine than its predecessor – about one and half times faster according to Canon. Still, it remains the slowest printer in our test.

To minimise the risk that your application’s colour management features clash with the Pro9500’s driver, you can print from Photoshop or Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software using a plug-in. Launched from the Automate menu, it consolidates Photoshop’s Print control with the Pro9500’s own driver. You configure all your colour management and profile settings in one place, with no fear that they’ll be overridden somewhere else. Print off one image – or as many as are currently open in Photoshop. This is great functionality, but we wondered why Canon stopped there. Why not a plug-in for iPhoto or Aperture? The standalone software Easy-PhotoPrint Pro Ex remedies this, with iPhoto-like organisation features and Canon printing features combined.

For all its power, the Pixma Pro9500 has a couple of downsides. The aforementioned software issues stretch to some poor documentation and lengthy driver installation. There are also fewer hardware features than its most direct competitor – the HP B9180. There’s no network port and it lacks the B9180’s built-in spectrophotometer. And Mac users don’t benefit from another innovation in the Mark II; Ambient Light Correction is a feature of the Easy-PhotoPrint Pro plug-in, but it’s not available in OS X. Still, the Pro9500 retains the edge in photo output – especially with support for 16-bit Raw image printing.

As far as comparative output for illustration artwork goes, it’s a close run contest between HP’s B9180 and the Pro9500 in this round-up. For photos, this is the winner – but relatively slow and the most expensive on test.