Epson P800 black clipping printing issues

[soren]

Have this strange printing issue with Epson SureColor P800 using Windows 10. It kind of clipping the dark areas, it can look orange or green or blue in the darkest part depending of what image I print, it looks posterised. Its only in the dark black tones, other higher values seems to be just fine. Nozzle check is fine, did remove and reinstall the driver, still the same issue. Change the USB port, restarted the computer, print on different matte paper with correct profiles (no color management set in printer) still same issue. Change the image profile to ADOBE (RGB98) from Prophoto, did not help. Anyone have a clue what to look at next? Why suddenly this issue as it has been running fine just a day ago? Windows upgrade issue? USB cable? Next I will connect a Mac and print to see if it is an OS issue...

Any ideas?

Forgot to mentioned that printing is with Photoshop

Thanks
Soren

[digitaldog]

You should always test output using good color reference images designed for that task. The color reference images RGB values are such they are set for output and are editing and display agnostic. Test the output this way and examine for the same color issues so we know it's not your image specific issues causing the problems:
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/2014PrinterTestFileFlat.tif.zip
Could be the profile. Does this happen when you try “Printer Manages Color”?

[soren]

Yes true, I do have lots of testimages but you can never have to many of them I did not have any on this site so will do a try later thanks. Well actually I did try different papers with the proper profiles recommended for the papers, even downloaded new profiles in case they have gotten corrupt in some way. Also did a print with printer manage color (Epson Enhanced Matte) and the issue is the same to my surprise. I will do some test images prints and also print with my Mac and take some images of the prints to publish here for scrutiny. The prints do look really awful...

Thanks

[digitaldog]

It might be a hardware issue.
Connecting to another system is a good idea to eliminate that possibility.

[soren]

Did use the test file Andrew kindly linked to and attached are two samples. Images taken with an old iPhone with not perfect lightning but you will see the issue quite easily. The black just give up when coming to denser areas, you can see this very clear in the hair of the portraits. It looks posterised and I have no clue why this is happening. Last thing I will test is printing the same file with a Mac computer after that all options are out. Unfortunately the printer is two years old so not under warranty...

Thanks

[digitaldog]

Something is majorly messed up, no question. You say you've done a nozzle check and all is well? Again, do try this on another system and see if it continues. If it does, it's looking like a hardware issue.

[soren]

Yes nozzle check is fine, but will do some cleanings to eliminate that as well. What puzzles me is that sometimes the dark areas prints green, another images blue and others turns into orange tint. Portrait to the right end has a red-magenta cast in the dark areas. Guess there is some kind of interference... will do another test with a grey scale image as well

Thanks

[mcbroomf]

You haven't possibly inadvertently loaded the paper in upside down?

[mcbroomf]

OK forget that I see you tried different papers

[soren]

Problems solved, it was actually the nozzles that did not fire. After doing one cleaning process the prints turned out fine. Not an excuse but I did not check the nozzle check in person as the user said it was perfect and he even used a magnifier glas to be 100% sure. The one thing he did miss was that the black did not fire at all it was a blank "page" so he did not see that one was missing I told him the only thing we have not done is a cleaning process even though the nozzles "was" perfect, after this he recognised the missing black... lesson learned...

Thanks for the support.