New 3880 - Red cast, maybe oversaturation?

[loonsailor]

I just got a new Epson 3880 to replace my HP B9180.  The prints I'm making have a reddish cast and a lot of saturation, compared both to the HP prints and to what I see on my monitor (an NEC 2690-wuxi, profiled with an Eye-one display2 / spectraview).  It's consistent across the several paper types I've tried - Epson UltraPremium Luster, Canson Infinity Baryta, Hahn PhotoRag, all with factory profiles.  Generally, the HP prints are less rich, but look much closer to what I see on the monitor. The printing tutorials I've looked at, like Eric Chan's, don't exactly reflect what I see in the driver control panels, I guess because the 3880 driver is a bit different than the 3800 driver.  So, in case I'm doing something wrong, I'd appreciate a sanity check on how I'm setting things up in Lightroom, which is where I usually print from.

In the Lightroom print module, I set the printer, paper size and feeder source from "page setup".  In the "Print Job" panel I set print resolution to 360ppi, print sharpening "standard", media type glossy (except on the PhotoRag, where it's matte), check 16-bit output, and set the profile to the correct one, which I've installed in /library/ColorSync/Profiles/Epson 3880.  I've tried intent both ways, but "relative" generally seems a bit better.

In "Print Settings"->"Print Settings" I set the media type="Velvet Fine Art" for PhotoRag, "UltraPremium Photo Paper Luster" for the others, Color, check 16-bit/channel, Color Settings = Off (No color adjustment), 1440 dpi for the PhotoRag, 2880dpi for the other papers. High speed is unchecked. When I go to "advanced settings", it's just informational, telling me the appropriate epson profile to use for the selected media type.

One weird thing is the driver's "Color Matching" panel.  It offers two check boxes - ColorSync and EPSON Color Controls.  However, it's almost always grayed out, with the ColorSync button selected.  I have seen it available - not grayed out - a couple of times, but I'm not sure what I did to make it available.  In those cases, I selected EPSON Color Controls, just to see what would happen, and it seemed to make no difference.  Is this the same as the Color Settings pull-down menu on the Print Settings panel?

As I said, what I see is a red cast (blues going purple) and maybe too much saturation.  It happens on all the papers I've tried - three different manufacturers, one matte two semi-gloss, all with their own factory profiles - so I don't think it's a profile problem.  Am I doing something wrong?  I haven't tried yet to dial back the Color Density on the driver's Paper Configuration module.  Have people found that to be helpful / necessary?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Paul Stalker]

Your settings sound ok to me---I use a 3800. I think the 3880 is even less likely to clog than the 3800 but have you tried a nozzle check yet? I realize yours is new but when I got my Refurbished 3800 it came clogged. Since the original unclogging it's been great---just one more minor clog in a year's time.

I don't see a "color matching" panel on mine. Under Page Setup...; 3800 printer Properties...; Media Settings, Mode, I have Custom selected and under that I have No Color Adjustment selected as opposed to Color Controls selected.

cheers

[Farmer]

Which version of the driver are you using and which operating system?

[loonsailor]

Which version of the driver are you using and which operating system?

MacOS Leopard 10.5.?, Driver 6.60, Lightroom 2.6.

I'll try a nozzle check.  I'm also going to shoot a pic of my ColorChecker Passport, do the camera calibration on it, and then print it.  That should give an accurate sense of what's happening.

BTW, the panels available on the driver are:

Layout
Color Matching
Paper Handling
Cover Page
Scheduler
----------------
Print Settings
Page Layout Settings
Paper Configuration
Extension Settings
----------------
Supply Levels
Summary

The first five items are identical on the HP B9180 driver and, for that matter, on my HP 8500 all-in-one driver, so I guess those are standard to the OS.  All the panels below the first line, starting with "Print Settings", are unique to the 3880 driver.  It's that second "Color Matching" panel that I was referring to in my first note.

[novice9]

I just started printing with my new 3880 last night and have experienced consistent software behavior (out of lightroom 3.0) and, having only made 6 prints, experienced an overly reddish cash in 2 of them.  If I recall correctly, switching from semi-gloss to gloss in the media type corrected that issue, but I cannot be certain.   I too experience those two options grayed out all of the time and find it frustrating that there is no explanation of what they are and why they are grayed out.   Have you made any further progress?

[Wayne Fox]

Have you tried without the 16bit output option?  I have had this deliver less than optimum results on several occasions. I've never tried to resolve the problem because I don't believe the difference in output is enough to worry about, so I just quit using it.

[loonsailor]

Thanks for the input.  It's interesting to hear that you're seeing something similar, novice9.  Maybe something has changed with the new printers after the long back-order?

I've tried a bunch of things, but no real progress.  Printing on Epson UP-Luster with/without 16-bit checked (in Lightroom and Driver), with paper type set to luster or glossy in driver (both using luster epson factory profile), all give similar result.  It's pleasing, but definitely too dense in the shadows and somewhat red - particularly looking at blues which print sort of purple.  I photographed my Xrite ColorChecker Passport, made a camera profile for it, and printed it, and the results look better than I expected, but still off a bit.  I also re-profiled my display, and changed the luminance from 140 to 100, per Eric Chan's suggestion.  The display now looks somewhat more like the print, but the prints are still more blocked up in the shadows.

I have to admit, I'm confused.

This has all pushed me over the edge, and I've ordered a ColorMunki to try making my own profile on this specific printer.  I'll let you know if that makes a difference.

[Photo Op]

As I said, what I see is a red cast (blues going purple) and maybe too much saturation.

Give this thread a read, regarding "blues going to purple"-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat...thread=34329087

[loonsailor]

I thought it time to close this thread out.  I've learned a bunch in the last week.

To recap, my old printer - an HP B9180 - was doing a nice job of creating prints very close to what I saw on my monitor (an NEC LCD2690Wuxi, profiled with and Eye One Display2 / spectraview).  I moved to an Epson 3880 and the results were quite different.  I saw more saturation, darker shadows, and a red/purple shift.  Since things had been working, I naturally assumed the Epson was somehow "off".  I tried different papers, all with the factory profiles.  I tried different settings in lightroom, reprofiled my monitor, all with no real improvement.  In order to see if the printer was in error, I bit the bullet and bought a ColorMunki, reprofiled my monitor with it, and created my own paper profiles with my printer.  The results were nearly identical to the factory profiles.  Arrrrgh!  In order try to reduce the number of variables, I decided to get somebody else who I trusted to print the images, and see what he got.  I exported to tiff (proPhoto RGB) and sent a couple of files over to Rob Reiter at Lightroom, an excellent local custom printer (http://www.lightroom.com/, named long before the software).  I was shocked to see that his results were nearly identical to those on my new Epson!  Not only that, but when I looked at the images on his monitor I see images identical to the prints, not to what I see on my monitor.

My conclusion is that the Epson 3880 is just fine.  The problem is that I've got a problem with my display or profile, and that I had simply been "lucky" in that the HP had printed very close to my off-color display, a perfect case of two wrongs making a right.

Now, the next step is to get my display in order.  I see another forum thread in my future.

Thanks for all the help.

[Rusty]

And thank-you for clarifying this to all who may be concerned, including myself.
Good luck in finding a solution.