wrong colors printing from imagePROGRAF iPF610

[Jennifer W.]

Forgive my ignorance here. I'm a school librarian who inherited this printer...it's worked great all year, until now. I had to replace the yellow cartridge, and suddenly the colors are drab & wrong. On the Nozzle Check Pattern, the colors look more green, red, yellow than blue, pink, yellow:
check pattern by pinkpenguin83, on Flickr

For reference, this is supposed to be a purple (like, artificial grape candy purple) bear:
example by pinkpenguin83, on Flickr

Any suggestions on what could be causing this? Is the new yellow cartridge possibly plotting world domination (or at least printer domination?)?

 

[The Hat]

Hi @Jennifer W., all your colours in your nozzle check look fine to me, its more likely to be cause by the Application you are printing from, this can happen when there is a mix match between the printer and the Application, you didn’t by any change allow the App. to control colour without first turning it off in the printer...

 

[Jennifer W.]

Hi @Jennifer W., all your colours in your nozzle check look fine to me, its more likely to be cause by the Application you are printing from, this can happen when there is a mix match between the printer and the Application, you didn’t by any change allow the App. to control colour without first turning it off in the printer...

Thanks for responding! I had considered that, but I tried printing a PDF and from a word processing program, and both gave me the same results. I've also gone into printer color settings and restored all to Default just in case something went wonky...it didn't work.

text colors by pinkpenguin83, on Flickr

 

[stratman]

What color is the paper you printed the text on? If not white then please use white paper in future tests.

Are you sure you are using the correct color in each cartridge?

Could there be any contamination in the Cyan and Red?

 

[Jennifer W.]

What color is the paper you printed the text on? If not white then please use white paper in future tests.

Are you sure you are using the correct color in each cartridge?

Could there be any contamination in the Cyan and Red?

The paper is white. The area where the computer & printer are is my back workroom (glorified closet) so the lighting isn’t that great, but I figured the picture got the point across that other than yellow & green everything is screwy!

I replaced all three color cartridges to see if it was a cartridge issue, so the likelihood of it being a cartridge issue is next to zero. And this started it with the old ones which I know were correct colors, and these new ones were factory sealed (not refills).

 

[PeterBJ]

As green is made from cyan + yellow and red is made from magenta + yellow it looks to me that yellow was added to cyan and magenta in the nozzle check in post #1. It could be caused by a defective and leaking yellow cartridge and/or an internal leak in side the print head.

I think it is important when the problem started to find the cause. Post #1 suggests it started with the install of a new yellow cartridge, meaning a defective or maybe wrongly installed yellow cartridge:

it's worked great all year, until now. I had to replace the yellow cartridge, and suddenly the colors are drab & wrong. On the Nozzle Check Pattern, the colors look more green, red, yellow than blue, pink, yellow:

I think this from post #5 suggests an internal leak in the print head as the new cartridges made no difference:

I replaced all three color cartridges to see if it was a cartridge issue, so the likelihood of it being a cartridge issue is next to zero. And this started it with the old ones which I know were correct colors, and these new ones were factory sealed (not refills).

A service manual might be useful in troubleshooting the printer, you find a download link in this post.

 

[PeterBJ]

The paper is white. The area where the computer & printer are is my back workroom (glorified closet) so the lighting isn’t that great, but I figured the picture got the point across that other than yellow & green everything is screwy!

Using Irfan View I have tried to correct the paper colour to white. It looks to me like cyan and magenta are also getting mixed:

 

[stratman]

Using Irfan View I have tried to correct the paper colour to white. It looks to me like cyan and magenta are also getting mixed:View attachment 6866

That's what I was referring to earlier. However, now I am not sure the Cyan and Magenta are correct in the nozzle check since googling for examples of other nozzle checks for this model printer. The Cyan definitely looks too green and the Magenta may be more purplish than anticipated.

There could also be an additional variable of a monitor that needs calibrating. Once you start fiddling with color balancing of an image then all bets are off on whether the image, printed or displayed on a monitor, is properly displaying colors natively.

This leads to several hypotheses on what's happening:

- monitor needs calibration
- Wrong Cyan and Magenta ink used
- Print head physical damage allowing mixing of Cyan and Magenta
- Electrical failure causing even the nozzle check to be altered

The suddenness of the loss of color fidelity occurring after changing the Yellow cartridge is suspicious for print head / electrical malfunction.

The use of the different colored text is not a reliable aid in determining color management since who knows how the printer will handle the data OR whether the monitor is showing appropriate colors in the first place. That's why the reliance on standardized images such as the one recommended by The Hat at https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...ixma-pro-100-lightroom-mac.12294/#post-106019

 

[stratman]

@Jennifer W. - the image of your nozzle check may be unreliable for diagnosing your issue. Are you able to scan the nozzle check, crop it, and then post that image?

Also, please print out The Hat's evaluation image found here on photo paper of your choice (not plain paper like the nozzle check), scan and then post.