Why has my cartridge run out of colour after printing 4 photos

Could be the print job you send to the printer is set up to print in black and white.
Or the cartridges are full and the nozzles from the printhead are blocked.
Run a cleaning cycle on the printer. If some colour appears continue till all colours are back for all nozzles.
If you did not use he printer for a long time, remove the cartridges one by one and put a drop of cleaning fluid in the pipes in the cartridge holder (where the ink goes in) tun replace the cartridge and print one or two full sized colour photos, till all colours are back.

I'm assuming that the colour cartridge is a three in one. Blue, Yellow and Magenta.

When printing a colour document, the printer automatically balances colour mixtures from the three primary colours listed above. Should a print out be too red, its probably because its run out of yellow and/blue.

The best way to check is to print out a test page, you should get a block for each of the colours and black. If one's missing, there's your answer.

I've had the Canon i9100 since 2003 and have excellent photo printing results. In 2009 it started playing up and I'd gt some banding. More recently, black didn't want to print. It was as though the black ink in the print head got dry some days.

April 2010 - The colours started printing strange and I bought a brand new print head and installed it. Only takes a minute. Still had an issue with photo printing. Black and white was excellent but colours weren't true.

Found advice online to try cleaning the print head to print head carrier electrical contacts by rubbing them with a rubber eraser.

I did that and now I'm getting perfect colour photo prints again.

I had been thinking about buying a new A3+ printer but this is old printer is now working as good as new.

The other week I had the black print head clog up, requiring daily nozzle deep cleaning [a normal 'ocassional' maintenance function]. Thought I needed a new Print head, so anything worth a try.
I loaded up an old black cartridge [I load all my own......always have] with Isopropyl Alcohol and ran deep clean on that cartridge a couple of times, then repeat printed [6 times] a page full of the number 8 in about half inch character size, to get the alcohol through the nozzles. then Deep cleaned again 3 times, to wash it through the print head.

I reloaded the normal ink filled cartridge and ran the '8' page again till I got good black output. It has now been working without problem, daily, for over a week. Clearly if it's a Magenta only problem, the cleaning as described above would be a bit different, as the magenta is one of 4 colour cartridges.
My printer does quite a lot of work, and was bought at least a couple of years ago, being used daily for alpha numeric and photo printing work. This was the first difficulty I experienced with it.
Hope the above might help.Ken

This has been just happening with me aswell - I just changed the colour cartridge with the black cartridge ran out but i kept it in as it told me to place one in. Trying to print out but black ink wont come - just blank pages - surely the colour cartridge can make black? However, if you have the colour cartridge and are on microsoft word or similar, change the colour of the writing to dark navy and it will print out documents.

You can try this, but maybe a new print head is needed.
OK, Canon will hate me for posting this.

1. Remove ink cartridges
2. Remove print head
3. go to sink or tub (stainless steel, not plastic type), pick up a roll of paper towel on the way.
4. Fold several layers of paper towel and place on flat surface.
5. Run hot water until HOT!
6. Turn hot water back to a dribble.
7. Run the dribbling hot water through print head, be careful not to wet the gold contacts.
8.When water running through print head is clear, place print head on paper towel.
9. Repeat number 7 and 8 until no colour shows on paper towel.
10. Gently DAB print head (DO NOT WIPE) inside and out with dry paper towel until dry.
11. I normally replace print head after drying, but you may wish to let it air dry overnight.
12. Replace print head in printer and install cartridges
13. Start printing.

I do this to all 4 of my Canon printers every 6 months or so.

If any colour fails to print after this process it means your print head probably needs replacing.

Set printer to print multiple copies. Put in less amount of paper. While printer is waiting for more paper, change cartridge.

its ok I solved it! I didn't realise that all the photo cartridge does is gloss over the colour picture produced by the colour cartridge. I simply had to replace the colour cartridge which had run out, so now its all working perfectly!!

you need to run a print alignment test.. this should correct the colour faults (unless you really do have blocked cartridges,