Epson 3800, Inkrepublic Prints Bluish Black

[costadinos]

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.

I just wanted to check whether the printer could actually produce neutral grays, sending an un-tagged file to the printer without any colour management, should at least maintain the neutrality of the greys (blacks/grays will print using K/LK/LLK, unless of course the OEM inks aren't actually black and the printer has to always compensate for that, at a hardware level, which I doubt). Judging by the scans, it does.
If you look at the earlier posts, the OP did try printing using the official IR profiles with the same poor result.

This has to be software-related. At this point I can only suggest try printing from another computer or from a clean install of PS/printer drivers.
There's another program called QImage, which is also colour-aware and you should also try.
Download the trial version and use it with the official profiles from inkrepublic's site, like before.

 

[nishda59]

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.

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.

Hi RogerB
Thanks for your reply. The IR blacks seems warm to me. But the OEM might be even warmer. I don't know.
I'm not very advanced i the printer world. I haven't tried making a custom profile yet. What to do and where to start?

 

[jtoolman]

I believe a custom profile for the paper being used is what I originally suggested.
Always solves it for me. Specially when I went from EPSON OEM to OCP inks.
Rather than taking weeks to troubleshoot the reason, in one evening I was printing neutral and correct color.

Joe

 

[nishda59]

I believe a custom profile for the paper being used is what I originally suggested.
Always solves it for me. Specially when I went from EPSON OEM to OCP inks.
Rather than taking weeks to troubleshoot the reason, in one evening I was printing neutral and correct color.

Joe

Hi Joe. Starting this quest was problems using the profile for the paper I used: Epson Archival Matte. It's an the profile is included in the printer driver for SP3800. I've tried glossy paper using the according profile, still with bluish greys and blacks.

 

[nishda59]

I just wanted to check whether the printer could actually produce neutral grays, sending an un-tagged file to the printer without any colour management, should at least maintain the neutrality of the greys (blacks/grays will print using K/LK/LLK, unless of course the OEM inks aren't actually black and the printer has to always compensate for that, at a hardware level, which I doubt). Judging by the scans, it does.
If you look at the earlier posts, the OP did try printing using the official IR profiles with the same poor result.

This has to be software-related. At this point I can only suggest try printing from another computer or from a clean install of PS/printer drivers.
There's another program called QImage, which is also colour-aware and you should also try.
Download the trial version and use it with the official profiles from inkrepublic's site, like before.

Before posting my request I already tried with another computer and I reinstalled the printer driver twice. I'll reinstall Photoshop and the driver and see what happens.
Unfortunately Qimage doesn't run for Mac

 

[RogerB]

I believe a custom profile for the paper being used is what I originally suggested.
Always solves it for me.
Joe

You and me both!

 

[jtoolman]

Hi Joe. Starting this quest was problems using the profile for the paper I used: Epson Archival Matte. It's an the profile is included in the printer driver for SP3800. I've tried glossy paper using the according profile, still with bluish greys and blacks.

As was explained earlier, using ANY ICC made for the OEM inks will result in bluish tones in your darks using Inkrepublics black inks.

You need to create a custom profile for YOUR printer using YOUR inks and YOUR paper.
That is the only way to solve this.
If I use your inks on any of my two 3800s I will also have the same problem.

 

[RogerB]

I just wanted to check whether the printer could actually produce neutral grays, sending an un-tagged file to the printer without any colour management, should at least maintain the neutrality of the greys (blacks/grays will print using K/LK/LLK, unless of course the OEM inks aren't actually black and the printer has to always compensate for that, at a hardware level, which I doubt).

If I print a solid mid-grey square (127,127,127) with my 3800 set to no color management the ink usage (in ml) looks like this:
PK 0.00
LK 0.21
LLK 0.14
C 0.00
M 0.00
LC 0.11
LM 0.16
Y 0.02

This is with no color management, so the ink usage is what the printer firmware thinks is needed to make a neutral grey. You can see that there is a big dollop of LC+LM in there - in other words a lot of blue to make it neutral. Even a solid black (0,0,0) has about 10% blue in it.

 

[jtoolman]

Which clearly demonstrates that Black, Gray inks are not really neutral. Thus the need for the driver to add bits of other colors to try to neutralize the output.
Pigment inks seems to be more neutral than Dye Black inks which seem to have a purple tint to them. Add a drop of ink to a glass of water!
Joe

 

[costadinos]

If I print a solid mid-grey square (127,127,127) with my 3800 set to no color management the ink usage (in ml) looks like this:
PK 0.00
LK 0.21
LLK 0.14
C 0.00
M 0.00
LC 0.11
LM 0.16
Y 0.02

This is with no color management, so the ink usage is what the printer firmware thinks is needed to make a neutral grey. You can see that there is a big dollop of LC+LM in there - in other words a lot of blue to make it neutral. Even a solid black (0,0,0) has about 10% blue in it.

OK, that's interesting, I never would have thought that grey inks were off by that much. So is it possible that black/grey inks, even the OEM ones, are not actually composed of pure black pigments but may contain other colours as well?

How did you get a report on the ink usage of the individual channels by the way? My 7900 only shows total ink usage per job for example, not individual colours.
It would also be interesting to see what happens when printing solid black (0,0,0) and something close to white ((250,250,250) for instance), if you have the time.