Colours off after formatting computer

[KenBabcock]

Hey all,

To make a long story short, my hard drive crashed and I formatted and re-installed Windows 7.

Since the format, my colours are off.  Some are not as deep and saturated as they should be, others are casting magenta, not dark whacked out reds, but rather a subtle, murky looking haze.

Before the format this was my set up and it was bang right on what I saw on the screen.

Epson 7600 printing on canvas.
Printing from a Dell 1501 laptop.
Photoshop 7
RGB 1998 profile.

I do have Photoshop CS5 and several desktop computers with larger 24" monitors, however, with the setup above my prints were right bang on.  All my Photoshop settings remain the same as before.

The thing I can't figure out is why the prints are turning out differently.  You would think they'd all cast magenta, or would all be too light, etc... but this is happening at random.

I did change the light magenta cartridge right away after getting Windows installed again, ran a nozzle check after a couple of prints and it was clogged already (and yes, it is Epson ink).

I'm stumped.  I'd like to return to my previous setup because of the accuracy I had.  I don't want to experiment with new profiles, larger monitors or printing from CS5.  Although I have newer software and equipment, I believe if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Any ideas?

[Vuurtoren]

Hi there, I'm not sure if I can help being that I think I would need to look at your computer setup.  But for what it is worth have you checked to see whether or not the monitor's own screen profile is the same.  I only ask this because I had a similar situation, but it was not a computer crash, and after I re-installed Adobe creative suite and a number of other things my monitor profile was deleted and that gave me an inconsistent screen view.  I doubt whether this helps but thought I would throw it in.  The look up table in your hardware could be different now, if that is, you used a screen calibration software tool before the crash?  Are you confident that the colour managed workflow is set-up as before?  Are your ICC profiles for your canvas paper back in the same place/folder as before?  If the prints are really different from the screen this has to point to an inconsistency between screen rendering of those colours and the colour data being sent to the printer.  I doubt whether your printer is at fault here - it can't be.  So my immediate thoughts would be to double check the fine details of the ICC profiles and the screen calibration as a first step.

Just thoughts.

Kind regards
Chris 

[Bill Koenig]

You didn't mention anything about monitor calibration, with out that, all bets are off.