Anemic Prints from 4900

[Mick Sang]

Hello All:
I hope someone has a suggestion that may help with a “stumper” we have encountered with our 4900. Suddenly we see a clear colour shift in the prints primarily in the reds. They are noticeably weak. We run nozzle checks prior to every print run and they are all firing. We made a new custom profile for the paper involved. But, the reds are still anemic. We have a P5000 running side by side with the 4900. So, we reprofiled the same paper and ran a print through it for comparison. It was perfect as compared against the on-screen soft-proof.
 
In ColorThink each profile looks good. Although the P5000 has a larger gamut, the overall shape looks good and the LAB values of each RGB patch result are very close. Also, very importantly, the on-screen soft-proof through each custom profile looks good - virtually the same between the 2 printers. So, the custom profiles appear to be fine. We also printed a simple colour patch chart through each printer from ACPU (no profile) to compare the solid colour patches. The density of the solid red from the 4900 reads slightly lighter than that from the P5000. The Magenta patch from the 4900 reads .65 and is .80 from the P5000. Visually, it doesn't appear to be so much lighter as to cause this obvious reduction that we see in the oranges, skin tones and reds throughout  an image. Also, the ICC profile was made with the same inks in each machine, as they are, and the soft-proof doesn't indicate the anemic result in print. 
 
This started last month. Prior to this, the 4900 was printing fine. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 
Paul

[deanwork]

I talked to someone about 3 months ago who had a similar problem with a 3880. The profiles looked totally normal in soft proofing but output color was way off. They finally called Epson who advised them to delete all the printer software and reinstall everything related to the printer. This solved the situation immediately. I haven't read all of this thread, maybe you have already tried this along with checking the nozzle pattern in the nozzle print check.

Hello All:
I hope someone has a suggestion that may help with a “stumper” we have encountered with our 4900. Suddenly we see a clear colour shift in the prints primarily in the reds. They are noticeably weak. We run nozzle checks prior to every print run and they are all firing. We made a new custom profile for the paper involved. But, the reds are still anemic. We have a P5000 running side by side with the 4900. So, we reprofiled the same paper and ran a print through it for comparison. It was perfect as compared against the on-screen soft-proof.
 
In ColorThink each profile looks good. Although the P5000 has a larger gamut, the overall shape looks good and the LAB values of each RGB patch result are very close. Also, very importantly, the on-screen soft-proof through each custom profile looks good - virtually the same between the 2 printers. So, the custom profiles appear to be fine. We also printed a simple colour patch chart through each printer from ACPU (no profile) to compare the solid colour patches. The density of the solid red from the 4900 reads slightly lighter than that from the P5000. The Magenta patch from the 4900 reads .65 and is .80 from the P5000. Visually, it doesn't appear to be so much lighter as to cause this obvious reduction that we see in the oranges, skin tones and reds throughout  an image. Also, the ICC profile was made with the same inks in each machine, as they are, and the soft-proof doesn't indicate the anemic result in print. 
 
This started last month. Prior to this, the 4900 was printing fine. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 
Paul

[JRSmit]

I am following this thread with interest.
It reminds me of a issue I had with my 4900 many years ago that was a sudden color cast, a slight but visible magenta cast.  This took me however about two months to find out. Changing the magenta ink did not resolve it. With reprofiling and opposite color cast correction in the images I was able to continue with production. The root cause was the roomtemperature that went to over 50’ Celsius during one day in a very hot summer. This caused the yellow and cyan Inks to change some how, and not the magenta ink! After replacing the yellow and cyan, and some head cleaning to flush the lines, the cast was gone.

So did you look at the yellow and cyan and other patches?

Hello All:
I hope someone has a suggestion that may help with a “stumper” we have encountered with our 4900. Suddenly we see a clear colour shift in the prints primarily in the reds. They are noticeably weak. We run nozzle checks prior to every print run and they are all firing. We made a new custom profile for the paper involved. But, the reds are still anemic. We have a P5000 running side by side with the 4900. So, we reprofiled the same paper and ran a print through it for comparison. It was perfect as compared against the on-screen soft-proof.
 
In ColorThink each profile looks good. Although the P5000 has a larger gamut, the overall shape looks good and the LAB values of each RGB patch result are very close. Also, very importantly, the on-screen soft-proof through each custom profile looks good - virtually the same between the 2 printers. So, the custom profiles appear to be fine. We also printed a simple colour patch chart through each printer from ACPU (no profile) to compare the solid colour patches. The density of the solid red from the 4900 reads slightly lighter than that from the P5000. The Magenta patch from the 4900 reads .65 and is .80 from the P5000. Visually, it doesn't appear to be so much lighter as to cause this obvious reduction that we see in the oranges, skin tones and reds throughout  an image. Also, the ICC profile was made with the same inks in each machine, as they are, and the soft-proof doesn't indicate the anemic result in print. 
 
This started last month. Prior to this, the 4900 was printing fine. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 
Paul

[guido]

Another thing to try would be to one at a time, remove the ink cart and gently agitate the ink being careful to keep the port pointing downward so as not to loose the priming, and reinstalling it. The pigment particles in the ink tend to settle over time and the agitation gets them back to as more even distribution...