Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: finhenx on September 11, 2006, 06:53:17 am
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Hi. I wonder if anyone has similar experience with an Epson R800 or other Epson printer. Already long ago I was alarmed that my prints' color balance changes oddly. In April I started printing out a 0-255 gray scale ramp after every cartridge change: this confirmed me that a shift, usually towards or away from green takes place. The ramp was always printed on the same paper sheet. I mainly use matt media from Epson for my prints. So far have relied on factory profiles as there's no point for tailored ones as things are. I have not experienced similar with my previous Epson printers.
I have struggled with Epson's technical help (Finnish) since May 2006, answering over and over again questions about nozzle checks, used paper stock, profiles etc. All that stuff is clear to me and unfortunately can't explain the problem.
Until September 11th Epson has not replied any better than "for best results I should not use their Archival Matte paper but glossy media only". When it turned out that I have similar test results on glossy media too "I should instead consider a pro-level printer". But can I trust a pro level device either if the Epson inks quality changes...
For anyone's interest I have attched here a jpeg: a scan made of an Archival Matte sheet with several gray scale ramps. A clean nozzle check precedes each printing. Printing is always done from Photoshop with consistent settings+profiles.
Can anyone be of help here?
Thanks
Henrik Duncker
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I'm using R1800 (same inks as R800) and didn't notice any colour shifts in photos printed when changing cartridges. I didn't do the formal test like yours, but will try it from now on to see how things develop (there are some cartridges that aproch the end...).
Did you try printing without colour management - just using colour controls (Brightness +1, everything else -1) or special photo modes in printer driver? After several tests, it seems to me that black&white printing is better done through driver (Colour controls or Photo Enhance B&W Neutral), bypassing PS colour management. Blacks are much more neutral and there's more detail visible in print, which is lost when printed through PS colour management. For colour printing I'm using Epson canned profiles for specific media and it works for me quite well (soft-proofed screen to print match well).
Allan
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Hi Allan. I begun making gray-ramp tests only because I noticed disturbing color shifts in my color prints, which obviously must be color managed. And because I only print color images, it never occured me to print the gray-ramp tests paradoxically without color management. However, running parallelly a series of non-color managed gray-ramps could get me closer to the answer whether this is a software or hardware issue. Either way, something is wrong. Thanks for your ideas.
Henrik