Marrutt cartridge ink issue

[EpsonPepson]

I have purchased a set of Marrutt cartridges and inks for my Epson photo R2000, and I've installed the Cyan so far.

Unfortunately my prints are way too heavy on blue color now. That's really disappointing.

I followed the installation instructions to the point.
I have performed several nozzle checks and cleanings.
I've printed from several different programs. Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat Pro. Results are the same.

Anyone else experienced this?

I've send an email to Marrutt, they haven't answered yet.

 

[The Hat]

Hi @EpsonPepson and welcome, When you purchase a set of cartridges you must install all of them to get the correct colour spectrum, each of the new colours are specially balanced to work together as a set and when you do that things will start to look far better..

 

[EpsonPepson]

That makes sense, however.
They state that the inks should work perfectly fine with the OEM inks right here: http://www.marrutt.com/epson-r2000-other/marrutt-refillable-cartridge-system-for-epson-r2000.html

USE ALONGSIDE OEM INK CARTRIDGES
The refillable cartridges filled with Marrutt Professional Photographic bulk ink can be installed one at a time alongside the OEM cartridges with minimal change to colour output. For users with colour profiling equipment and the more critical photographer, the Marrutt refil cartridges can be installed alongside OEM cartridges with short-term profiles created as each cartridge is introduced to maintain optimum print quality. We advise the last colour to change is Magenta.​

 

[The Hat]

They would say that, but then there’re not the ones that’s trying to print off good quality photos, give them a missal and they probably would say Mass..

P.S. Don’t forget to profile these inks..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Are you doing your own icm color profiles ? I only can tell you from own experience, with dye and pigment inks, that inks from different suppliers differ amongst each other and vs. the OEM inks, some more , some less and not in line with the suppliers' promises. I would follow the advise to change over to the new inks with the
refill cartridges, all at the same time. Don't do too many cleaning operations just to switch the inks in the ink system, you are filling up the waste ink reservoir, rather print x number of pages of profile target prints, those cover all colors, that ink is wasted anyway but not raising the count on the waste ink reservoir since that ink ends up on paper. Would you then have a significant amount of original inks/cartridges left?

 

[EpsonPepson]

It makes sense, thanks alot.
I have to admit, I'm not entirely sure what profiling is and how to do it.
I've changed a couple of more inks now, matte black, yellow and orange is left as oems, and I tried to fiddle around with the advanced settings to compensate which brought me fairly close to a descent printing result.
Is that profiling, I am doing now?

@Ink stained Fingers, I wondered about where ink goes when the printer is cleaning, do you mean there's an actual reservoir with waste ink somewhere in the printer. What happens when that get filled up?

 

[EpsonPepson]

I understand from Epson's support site, those sliders under Advanced Settings represent percentage and I've been fiddling with those and printing but I honestly don't see any big changes on the prints. Not considering that I've turned one of them all the way down to -25% at one point. If one color is reduced by 25%, I reckon it should produce some radical changes. It really doesn't

I only notice a difference in printing when changing media type. Before I printed in Presentation paper matte, now I set it for Plain paper. The paper I'm printing on is ClaireFontaine 120gm.

This one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clairefontaine-1844-Copying-Paper-Sheets/dp/B000KT6W62

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

with printer profiling you follow some steps - you print a target, a page with various color patches covering all colors, you or somebody takes an instrument to measure these colors, a piece of software is comparing the readings with the original data of that target print and calculates a compensation table, called an icm-profile.
You activate this profile in that software you are using for printing, and the color deviations are corrected via this profile. You can do that for yourself, there are various software/hardware packages on the market like Colormunki, or you look up a service provider in your country by searching for 'printer profiling' . Their pricing varies, so compare , you are saving a lot of time and some money not wasting ink and paper for various trial prints doing it your manual way. And please be aware that you need a separate icm profile for every ink/paper combination you want to use. User interested in refilling and printing with 3rd party inks typically tend as well to use other papers than the original Epson material, every paper has a different color rendering, even with
Epson inks you would need profiles for 3rd party papers. You can find a lot of information about the whole subject of 'color management' in the internet. Marrutt as well provides such profiling service
http://www.marrutt.co.uk/icc-profiles/lyson-icc-profiles.html but there are more offering such service. I think they are offering as well profiles for some of the papers they are selling, and other paper companies like Hahnemühle or Canson do that as well but you need to check
which ink/paper/printer combination is actually supported.

 

[The Hat]

@EpsonPepson, The type of manual profiling that you are doing will work to a certain degree and it’s not perfect by any means, but you first have to know how to use it properly.

Firstly you can get good and acceptable colour control by using this method but it probably uses far more paper and ink than a good profiling machine and software will do.

You are trying to adjust your sliders to get an effect you don’t quite understand, these sliders are set to adjust RGB colours and not CYMK colours which your printer uses to lay down.

You can’t just move the Cyan slider and then expect only the cyan to decrease in your test prints, in effect the other colours get altered too, plus this type of profiling should only be done in the control panel otherwise it wont save any of your results..

 

[Roy Sletcher]

You can’t just move the Cyan slider and then expect only the cyan to decrease in your test prints, in effect the other colours get altered too, plus this type of profiling should only be done in the control panel otherwise it wont save any of your results..

Absolutely correct.

Refer to the CIEL*a*b* colour scale - Moving the cyan value (the b axis) has a corresponding effect on complementary (yellow to orange depending on the value of the colour you define as cyan)

This ad hoc approach is wrong on so many levels that it beggars belief. Without measurement tools it is no better than blind guessing.

Not to decry blind guesses and luck. Many institutions including government departments rely on it!

rs