A note on Canon printers and it may apply to others.
I have a Canon Pixma printer. I use their "Image Garden" programme to print photos. I think it's excellent.
But I don't use it that often, I can go a few weeks between printing. So I always do a nozzle check on cheap plain paper before using it and do a clean if necessary.
The print heads can get a bit sticky and not all the colours otherwise print.
This maybe because I don't use Canon ink cartridges as they are a ridiculous price. Pound for pound, printer ink is more expensive than gold.
I buy compatible carts on eBay. My last set of 6 carts was £17.12 post free.
It hasn't happened to me with this printer, but sometimes with non-branded carts the printer won't accept them. But if you keep putting them back in, they eventually will.
I have a love-hate relationship with printers. My previous printer was an Epson Stylus photo RX620. That was brilliant, it would even print contact prints from vintage 35mm transparencies.
But after a few years, a message came up to say it had "reached the end of its usable life." What it actually meant was that the ink waste tank was getting full.
My cart supplier, at the time, gave me a code to put in the machine that bypassed it. So it carried on working.
But it didn't like the change from XL to Windows 10, there weren't any updates at the time, but I think there are now.
My only real criticism of the Pixma, is that it spends an awful long time, "thinking about it" before it prints.
