Marrutt cartridge ink issue

[The Hat]

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

I also use this method as a poor mans Colormunki, but then I tend to know how to get results..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the R2000 is a great performing printer, and to utilize it to its best I recommend you to print with icm color profiles aktivated. As long as you use original Epson inks and Epson papers you have the ICM option in the driver to activate this function. But the ease of this is gone once you don't use Epson inks and/or Epson papers anymore, in this case you need to get your own profiles made and activated in the software used for printing. The manual adjustments in the driver are no real equivalent to profiling, it is not consistent since it does not refer to any standardized process, and it is time and material consuming.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

I also use this method as a poor mans Colormunki, but then I tend to know how to get results..

Again I am in agreement. Lots of practice, experience, and a good colour eye go a long way.

Unfortunately it a mix that tends to be personal and hardware specific, and also difficult to consistently reproduce under varying conditions. Probably what we would anecdotally refer to as inefficient and inconsistent.

However, I will concede it can be made to work very well for certain people.

rs

 

[EpsonPepson]

Thanks for the help guys. Now I understand what profiling is, seems a bit of a hassle to me but I might give it a go. Would be easier if I could just turn down the output for blue and green colors, I reckon the green would be a mix of the blue and yellow which leaves me with that darn blue.
I tried that with those sliders, but I have to admit, I don't see any change on the prints, not 25% worth of change anyhow.
It seems silly they make sliders for CMY when it is actually the RGB that is controlled by them, as you say. Makes sense the other color are affected too.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

there are various comments I can make about the adjustments in the driver, it is based on your personal judgement, you might optimize the print of a particular image but next day you find out something is wrong with other images. If you want to change, tune, optimize your images, color, contrast etc you are better off to do that in Photoshop or other programs, there you have more ways to control your changes, applying them only to parts of an image etc. The printer together with the driver should assure that you get the best possible printout in terms of color rendering, best use of your inks for the maximal acheivable gamut, and this today, and tomorrow in a repeatable manner, based on measured data, not on a personal judgement, and actually it is easy to use profiles, to get them made by a service provider and to activate them in Photoshop or other software. You probably have spent some money on photographic equipment, you have invested in the printer, and as long as you stay with OEM materials you wouldn't need to do much to use the availble profiles. And with icm-profiling you have the opportunity to do the same for your own ink and paper selections. There is one more thing to include into the discussion, you should consider to calibrate your monitor as well. But a word of caution, you cannot expect printouts to look the same as you see them on the screen. There are simple reasons for that but probably go beyond the discussion at this point. And don't really try to think in RGB or CMY terms when it comes to change one color, you cannot easily predict the outcome, there is not one green, but a range of green tones between yellow and cyan , and when you change the ruler for cyan by 10% you just don't know the impact on all the different green tones. And once you dig into profiling a little bit deeper you'll find that those adjustments are typically nonlinear, e.g. you may need more cyan for darker tones and less for lighter tones, thinking in RGB terms just complicates the matter.

 

[EpsonPepson]

So, Marrutt have send me a couple of profiles to try on. Unfortunately, I don't see any change at all. It still prints too much blue.
Also, the printer is now spilling red ink all over the place, on the paper when printing and in the bottom of the printer. I only get a chance to see it for a second when the printhead moves out of the way after pushing the "ink drop" button to get acces to the cartridges. Red ink is on the components below where the print head is resting to the right.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It still prints too much blue.

- too much blue compared to ? the monitor ? is that monitor calibrated ? is the image processed in any way before printeout - e.g. white balance adjustment etc

 

[EpsonPepson]

compared to printing before I changed to the Marrutt refillable cartridges and also the monitor. It's an imac. I'm not expecting my prints to look like whatever the monitor shows, I know colors change a lot when printing, but this is is just out of the ordinary. It really feels like the blue is more concentrated which of course is a bit of a surprise to me.
Green colors turn out more blue.
Blue areas are too dark.

 

[The Hat]

You seem to be having several issues all at once with your prints. !

You know the red is leaking so try find and fix that issue first and when you have done that then go back and see if you’re have a similar issue with the cyan, then run a nozzle check and examine that very carefully..

 

[EpsonPepson]

yeah, I've been cleaning the printer in the area below the printer head now. Hopefully some of the issues are resolved.
I stumpled upon this thorough video which helped me out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRZU1_XD7xE