Epson P9000 sharpness/accutance

[larkis]

I had my epson P9000 print head replaced a few months ago and have subconsciously felt that the prints form the new head are lacking the micro detail/acutance of the old ones. The difference is very subtle, but especially on small prints that are viewed up close I can perceive a difference.

Today I decided to scan an old 8x10 print of an image produced with the old head along with two prints produced with the new head. The crops are from a 1200dpi scan which has been reduced by 50% for the web. I attached a jpg of the whole image to give a sense of the size of the crop in relation to the full image. The paper is Ilford smooth perl for all of the prints.

What could be causing this blur? Is there some setting on the printer I should be investigating/playing with?

[larkis]

Not sure what to make of this, but I printed the file out of photoshop (with my own print sharpen) and the file looks on par or even sharper than the original. I'm not sure what to conclude, either the print sharpening in lightroom has changed (the original file was printed a few years ago) or there is some other factor at play. I would assume that if the printer itself was more blurry there would be a hard limit to the tiny hairs it could resolve no matter what print sharpening was happening. There is also more texture/color detail in the skin in the file that was printed out of photoshop.

The only difference between the new prints and the old one is the new head of the printer, a switch from mac to windows and a newer version of lightroom.

[Lessbones]

most likely the bidirectional calibration isn't as tight as it was before.  Run a head alignment, or at least try printing unidirectional.  Other option is head height is higher now.  Sharpness in inkjet printing is derived from the degree of precision of dot placement, so first each color in relationship to each other, then the entire motion of the head back and forth when using a bidirectional mode.  The only other thing that could affect the perception of sharpness is a color profile that is lacking in contrast compared to your old one, in which case you'd have less "clarity" but not actual optical sharpness.