Epson P50 not printing enough ink in some areas

[crexas]

EDIT: If your problem sounds like the name of the topic, then don't read the first post, jump right to the second post and look at the first picture
I have changed the name of the topic. The original was "Epson P50 ink control".

Hi. I have a little problem with my Epson P50. I print on special A4 sheets and just can't find the right paper type for it. Glossy / Premium Glossy setting pours too much ink, Matte - not enough. I have tried them all. The only good paper type for me was Plain Paper. BUT! Plain paper only lets me print low quality and this is not enough. I need to print on best photo quality.

What are those paper profiles in Epson drivers for exactly? As far as I can tell they instruct printer what ink density is going to take place on my media. But then there is a question, if paper settings control only ink amount, then why do only some paper settings allow to choose highest print quality? What I would really like to do is somehow enable best quality on plain paper setting (maybe a driver hack of some sort?). I contacted Epson support and they told me that they do not recommend using any other paper rather than Epson's. That was all I got from them.

How I have tried to solve this:

1. Installed a program called InkSaver that (in short) let me reduce the ink output by cutting out a % of pixels right before printing. In the end it just made my prints lighter and ugly.
2. Found a software for this printer called PrintFab that is like a replacement driver for Epson's that lets you do a lot of stuff that Epson doesn't (something like a RIP). And it let me control "ink limit". But it mixes colors in a different way so I would need a new icc profile specifically made for it. And it doesn't have a few needed functions that Epson's drivers have.

So far no luck. Does anyone know of any ways to get into Epson paper profiles and edit them a bit? I could bet that on each paper type there is a simple value describing amount of ink that should be placed on media. Something like Plain Paper ink amount + Glossy paper best quality printing combination would be a life saver for me.

 

[crexas]

Never mind my first post. Found out that those media settings are much more complicated than I first thought. I know you must be thinking "Duh..."

How I found this was that I had a problem with printing from the very beginning of purchasing my P50 with a ciss already installed (from Inksystem) and their own ink. I have a shitty scanner but you will see what I am talking about. Here is a scan of A4 page filled pure black and printed on matte settings, RPM quality:



I don't know how to call this problem, I first thought that too little ink was coming out of the print head and I had to increase it. The problem of not enough ink always appeared on the same place on my paper (top right corner). The problem was not only with black. Other colors seemed to be lighter in that spot too, especially grey color was changing to pink, but dark and black parts were more visible. "Glossy" and "Premium glossy" worked a little better since they pour more ink, but it was a bad idea, since I print on matte paper, so there was "enough" ink on the bad spot, but too much on other parts. So I began my quest on solving this mystery.

First few things that came to mind were:

a) my paper is bad (but ruled out after borrowing another brand matte paper from a friend).
b) my ciss or ink was the problem that caused ink starvation in print head. Checked the tubes, air filters, ciss height level, everything was according to instructions. And nozzle check was perfect every time. None clogged. Checked ink level in carts, there was enough ink in all of them.
c) there was no mechanical damage done to the printer and no parts could have worn out since this printer is only 1 month old.

Long story short I experimented with all kinds of stuff that came to mind. And finally, after a month of searching I found the problem AND a fix! My first post here was posted after 3 weeks of struggling with that damn printer. I stumbled upon a topic on resetters.ru (http://resetters.ru/index.php?showtopic=18855) with some people having the same problem on their T50/T59/R280/R295 and a few other printers.

That is a long read so I will jump to the conclusion. Some Epson printers are shipped without a proper calibration. The kind of calibration I am talking about is PF adjustment in Adjustment Program. It is something like a calibration of rows and spaces between them. Spent a few days till I found a working AP program for my P50. There is actually no P50 AP in the wild, but I was lucky enough to get AP for T50 to work for me. Yeah I know they are the same printers, just named differently in different regions, but AP programs have some kind of a restriction that does not let you use them on another region model. PF adjustment prints a test of rows and all you have to do is pick a number from the printed box that looks best and input it in the program. And that's it! As simple as that. After this simple calibration all my prints look beautiful again. And no, this wasn't a coincidence. This problem was always present until the adjustment and after that I've done about 500 prints and it never came back. It helped a lot of other people with the same problem on Resetters forum. Here is a scan of the same black print after calibration:



(It may look worse than it really is because of my scanner that I have since Windows 98 ^^. The print is perfectly black with no visible problems)

I know this may be a very rare problem, but I hope that some day, someone with the same problem will find this information valuable and save himself a lot of time searching for a solution.

 

[blackdog]

I have the same problem, also yellow ink does not come throught, i have bought the printer yesterday with the kit and never used original cartridges. Where can i fain this calibration or Adjustement Program please.