Printing Help!! :eek:
 

Help Please. I am using an Epson R1800 and I have been trying to print these pictures from my gallery. When I print it - the B&W parts always have a slight pink cast, sepia cast or blue cast I cannot get it to print true B&W. The red/pink bits come out fine every time, but the B&W is a mess. I have Cleaned the print heads etc and if I put a straight B&W shot through it comes out fine. They have both been done using a duplicate of the background, converting that to B&W, merging the two and then using the eraser to reveal the underlying red. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

I know it sounds daft with no logic but how about trying processing the other way round so the foreground is B&W with the background colour which is revealed with the eraser? Makes no sense but who knows?

I've had similar problems with the Epson RX560. Whatever I do, unless I converted it to B&W jpeg format, they come out with a cast usually either greenish or bluish. I can't recall whether I've tried printing them without using the Epson software or not.

Not in a very good mood with Epson at the moment either. My RX had an ink moment where it decided to dump a flood of black ink onto a page, which of course got into mechanism, and now one gets a black smudges and smears. Epson response

Hmmm. This one is only 2 years old they should last longer than that.

The last Epson printer I bought back in 2001 only lasted 2 years. How do I know that in 2 years time a new one won't go titsup too?


I've reconnected to old HP its doing fine. Occasional I put a page or two through the Epson and the smearing and smudging is getting fainter.

Maybe a silly question but, has your printer been calibrated to match your monitor.

Incidentally, I still use a calibrated Epson Stylus Photo EX from time to time with excellent results, this was bought in 1998.

nirofo.

Thanks folks, yes, my printer is calibrated to the monitor - I use the Spyder Pro which creates a printer profile to match the monitor after calibration. What I cannot get my head round is the fact that the colour part is fine, but the B&W can be different colours. First try was brown/sepia, second was pink and third was blue - the only difference in the three was that each test was run with a higher dpi output in order to improve the result.

Hi Andy,
Are you printing from photoshop. If so have you proofed them. Also are you using genuine inks. What paper are you using to print them and have you tried other types. Have you got both the printer and photoshop colour managements on (then select one or the other, do not have both on at the same time, you will have odd results like you have). Have you tried a custom curves adjustment as epson cartridges can spill out to much ink (especially black)and you may have to adjust for the cast.

Its nothing to do with your screen calibration as that's a viewing aid. its down to the printer or maybe the paper.

If you have done all of the above and have one of the colour managements (not both, preferably photoshops))turned on then do a test sheet ( make a load of small images to fit on A4) do a custom curves using each channel for each layer (check your RGB at first it to see if that could of been the problem in the first place) and then print and check the colour to see which one improved and if you find the one of the test samples has worked then save the adjustment for that layer for future prints. If you find the colour cast on one of the samples look better but not 100% then repeat the test sheet again with further adjustments.

Hmmm. One would have thought that a blacks and grays would come out as black and gray not shades of green. After all when one is printing in colour the blacks don't come out green, they come out black. In my experience the Epson printer only goes wrong when it is printing something converted to a grayscale and saved as a colour jpeg.

They use all inks when printing B&W except the r2400 and on. Also they set down to much black.

Hi there, thanks for the suggestions. My Epson R1800 has a Lyson continuous ink system attached. I use a printer profile that was created by my Spyder Pro. I use various papers and enter them under the printers own generic description ie; premium glossy or matt. Most of my prints are A3 and up until now I always had glorious B&W prints. and If I put a B&W shot through the printer it's as good as its ever been. It is this one series of B&W with a selective colour in that have gone haywire. Processing is through CS4 and I always flatten layers before I print. Today I put the print through my old Epson colour laser and it was perfect, put it back through the R1800 - same colour cast :confused: :mad: :eek:

Hello Andy,
As already said It tends to happen when you are mixing B&W and colour with the epson printers as they use (except the 2400) all the ink to print B&W and they don't set down that well when printing a mixture of colour and B&W. The only way to get round this is to do some test sheets and try to correct the colour cast in photoshop.
Before you do that, if you do a test sheet that is. Try to print it this way-
open in photoshop, file, print.
Then under the colour handling, select photoshop manages colours.
then select the paper you are using under the printer profile option. also make sure black point compensation is checked.
Press print and then you get more printing option.
Select colour management and check OFF, no colour management. This stops the printer managing the colour.
Then goto to print settings and select the type of paper and select colour.
Hit print and see what you have.

Oh, forgot to mention about how to go about proofing the image.
Duplicate the layer.
goto view.
proof set up.
select custom
Device to simulate and choose say (for the epson) SPR1800PGPP (PGPP Premium Gloss Photo Paper)
Check simulate paper colour.
hit OK.
Now adjust the duplicated image to the same as the original.

Andy as you have tweaked the printer profile it maybe worth backing up the new one and re-installing the original profile as a test. For grey scale work it will use black ink only, but for colour work the shades of grey are a mix of all colours (Although some print setup will allow you to specify that black in used instead, sometimes know as GCR (Grey Component removal)). I know from experience getting the mix right without a cast is a problem especially when viewed under different lighting conditions.

For those who are interested, an insight into what is in a printer profile. Colour is a 3 dimensional object and the colour mapping is done through a 3 dimension array (tables of numbers). This array is often referred to as a colour cube. Each corner of the cube represents white, black, yellow, cyan, magenta, red, green, blue. The first attachment is a simple illustration of a colour cube. The cube has 3 co-ordinates (x,y and z) to represent a colour position within the cube. Think of each box holding a number to represent a colour. The number of positions in the cube depends on the size the array. Low end desktop printers are typically 7x7x7, 9x9x9 and high end commercial work 11x11x11 or 17x17x17. The size of the profile file is a good indicator of the size of the colour cube. 50Kb low end and up to 2Mb high end. The act of profiling is to modify the table values to the corrected colour for each position within the cube.

In the second attachment the green line passes through all the grey shade positions within the cube from black to white. The act of profiling may have changed some these grey position values to introduce the cast in question.

Well researched and good info you have found.

This Is all good when setting up you office and having everything bang on. It wont' solve the problem as from experience its the printer or inks. In the past I have had the green cast using an epson then swapped to my canon printer (great bit of kit and only used for the payed work) and the image was fine i then swapped printers again did what i have already mentioned and jobs a gooden.

I am off on holiday after today so good luck with it hope you get there in the end.
If all else fails buy a canon :) although prints do tend to fade quicker.

Just realized Rob, You took your time replying to this thread, It was posted on 22.1.10? Hmmm odd.

LOL - I am not a desktop printer expert, because I print so few they are more trouble than they are worth. I had to do the research in ICC profiles for my line of work in the newsprint industry.

Thanks, that is one thing I haven't tried, switching the colour management off - I'll see what happens and report back. Thanks to all for their help and suggestions.

Hope it works for you Andy.
I may still be able to reply now anyway as my little one has come down with viral infection and is not feeling well at all. e got a worse today. So there goes the holiday, sods law, :( but they come first.