Epson 3800, Inkrepublic Prints Bluish Black

Fenrir Enterprises said:

In Windows, you have to change the settings in the Printer Preferences in the Printers & Faxes / Devices folder. If you change the settings while printing out of a program it only changes it for the duration of using that program. Mac probably has a similar setup, though I don't know how to change the "overall" settings for them.

I'm not seeing it, but does it let you "save custom settings"? You'd still have to change it every time but it would only be one click.

Click to expand...

costadinos said:

That's strange, but at least you know for sure that profile mismatch is causing the color shifts now.

I use Windows and can't find anything here, but there could be some "default" settings somewhere overriding those you enter.
Try re-installing the driver, maybe that helps.

You can also try disabling the color management in photoshop and select the profile in the printer driver (pick the right profile in the "color settings" ICM tab), all the "pro" models offer that functionality.

Click to expand...

costadinos said:

That's strange, but at least you know for sure that profile mismatch is causing the color shifts now.

I use Windows and can't find anything here, but there could be some "default" settings somewhere overriding those you enter.
Try re-installing the driver, maybe that helps.

You can also try disabling the color management in photoshop and select the profile in the printer driver (pick the right profile in the "color settings" ICM tab), all the "pro" models offer that functionality.

Click to expand...

I deleted the the printer driver and installed a new which solved the problem I had disabling the color management. Now it works and the printing colors have changed a little into a positive direction. Still though the blacks and greys are bluish. Do you think that it might be a problem with the controller chips from InkRepublic?

RogerB said:

I thought that on the Mac, selecting Photoshop Manages Colors automatically turned off printer color management in the driver. Am I mistaken?

It does look to me like a case of third-party inks not matching OEM. Maybe the real answer is a custom profile?

Click to expand...

No, with a new printer driver it works.

Now you need custom profiles for your inkrepublic inks.
They do not match OEM inks. It's that simple.
But at least now you can disable color management in your driver, which is the first of many steps.

It's still probably a profile issue, the chips have nothing to do with the color(unless of course you managed to put the wrong colour of ink in the cartridges ).
Where did you get the profile you are using?

Try downloading and using one of these:
http://www.inkrepublic.com/members/Profile/IRK4-nano.zip

Just remember to adjust the printer driver media settings to match the profile you are using (for example, do as before but choose Epson Premium Glossy instead of matte paper and use it with the "3800_265G_GlossyPremium" profile in the archive). And just print a test image, the paper you'll print it on won't really matter, you'll just see if this resolves the problems you are having.

costadinos said:

It's still probably a profile issue, the chips have nothing to do with the color(unless of course you managed to put the wrong colour of ink in the cartridges ).
Where did you get the profile you are using?

Try downloading and using one of these:
http://www.inkrepublic.com/members/Profile/IRK4-nano.zip

Just remember to adjust the printer driver media settings to match the profile you are using (for example, do as before but choose Epson Premium Glossy instead of matte paper and use it with the "3800_265G_GlossyPremium" profile in the archive). And just print a test image, the paper you'll print it on won't really matter, you'll just see if this resolves the problems you are having.

Click to expand...

I've done as you suggested and printed tests with all three profiles which I downloaded and installed. They came out very similar to each other but don't solve my problem.
Greys and blacks are now bluish/greenish and bright greens and pinks becomes muddy
Originally I used the the profile which is recommended for Archival Matte using an Epson 3800: PRO 38 ARMP It's one of the default profiles of the printer driver.
I didn't put the wrong colors in the cartridges, I'm not smart in this printing matter but at least I made that procedure right!! The reason why I asked about the chips was, that I wonder why the three/four black cartridges are not used in the grey areas or at least dominates these parts of the print. My theory was that one of the two controller chips from InRepublic could be malfunctioning.
By the way, thanks a lot for helping me!

You welcome. I still don't think the controller chips could cause any colour shifts. All these chips do is communicate the usage of each cartridge to the printer, so it knows when it's time to replace it (and of course give us a hard time refilling non-OEM cartridges at the same time).
If this was indeed a hardware problem it would have to be on one of the PCBs controlling the printhead, but then you'd get the same problem with OEM cartridges as well.

Try printing again using this Adobe application:

http://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/kb/en/834/cpsid_83497/attachments/ACPU.dmg

and use it to print a TIFF image (you still have to choose no color management after you click print).
Or, better yet, print the colour target I uploaded and see if the black patches are still bluish.

costadinos said:

You welcome. I still don't think the controller chips could cause any colour shifts. All these chips do is communicate the usage of each cartridge to the printer, so it knows when it's time to replace it (and of course give us a hard time refilling non-OEM cartridges at the same time).
If this was indeed a hardware problem it would have to be on one of the PCBs controlling the printhead, but then you'd get the same problem with OEM cartridges as well.

Try printing again using this Adobe application:

http://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/kb/en/834/cpsid_83497/attachments/ACPU.dmg

and use it to print a TIFF image (you still have to choose no color management after you click print).
Or, better yet, print the colour target I uploaded and see if the black patches are still bluish.

Click to expand...

I've printed a test print through the Adobe Color Printer Utility. It came out more dense, bluish greys and nearly no pinks. I can't find your color target uploads. Where did you place them?

There's an attached file, "i1 RGB 1.5.zip" on the bottom of the last post, there's a TIFF inside.
(by the way, do you have access to another Mac or PC you can try printing from?

What you are experiencing is really strange though, if it isn't a colour management issue afterall, could one of the black inks be contaminated with cyan or another colour? You wouldn't see that in the thin lines of a test pattern, but you could try applying some ink from the grey cartridges using an ear swab, onto a piece of paper, and verify that the blacks inside the cartridges are actually neutral.
Even if only a very small amount of cyan found its way into one of the light blacks it could cause huge colour shifts since the light shades get used the most.

costadinos said:

There's an attached file, "i1 RGB 1.5.zip" on the bottom of the last post, there's a TIFF inside.
(by the way, do you have access to another Mac or PC you can try printing from?

What you are experiencing is really strange though, if it isn't a colour management issue afterall, could one of the black inks be contaminated with cyan or another colour? You wouldn't see that in the thin lines of a test pattern, but you could try applying some ink from the grey cartridges using an ear swab, onto a piece of paper, and verify that the blacks inside the cartridges are actually neutral.
Even if only a very small amount of cyan found its way into one of the light blacks it could cause huge colour shifts since the light shades get used the most.

Click to expand...

Ups! Didn't see the attachment in the first place. I've printed the target and it came out better than I thought it would. Some colors though are much darker than in the file:
1B, 1E, 1F,1N, 1P, 1Q and 1R alone in the first row. Also 12b, 13B, 14B, 15B are very different among others. I made samples of the four blacks, and they all look neutral. I attach a scan of the print and the black samples.

nishda59 said:

Ups! Didn't see the attachment in the first place. I've printed the target and it came out better than I thought it would. Some colors though are much darker than in the file:
1B, 1E, 1F,1N, 1P, 1Q and 1R alone in the first row. Also 12b, 13B, 14B, 15B are very different among others. I made samples of the four blacks, and they all look neutral. I attach a scan of the print and the black samples.
View attachment 292View attachment 293

Click to expand...

Apologies for butting in, but I think this is getting more complicated than it needs to be. First, using ACPU to print a normal image is not helpful. ACPU was intended to give a simple "no color management" path for printing profile targets. You don't want to print normal images with no color management - they are guaranteed to look bad.

Second, the i1 profiling target is untagged, as it should be, so I'm really not sure what it is telling you. When you opened the file did you assign a profile to it? Did you print it using ACPU? Did you apply color management in the printer driver? Too many questions, too many variables. But, even if you assign sRGB and print through a normal color-managed path, more than half the colors in that file are out of gamut for a 3800 so I wouldn't expect the print to be a brilliant match to the screen.

For me, everything suggests that the IR blacks are more neutral than the OEM blacks, which are a bit warm. The Epson profile will add a bit of cyan across the board to compensate this warmth but will give a cyan cast to the IR print. Maybe the IR cyan is a bit more saturated than the OEM - hard to say without real measurements. But, whatever the combinations I think you just need a custom profile if you want accurate colors - most third-party ink users find that to be the case.