Epson 3800 decided to fade out…

<p>I have this new problem. Just recently my 3800 stops printing the last inch of the image area. This happens w/ most of the full letter size prints (with half an inch white border) or even w/ a square image centered on the sheet, the last inch is evenly faded to paper-white. Sometimes I get an out of paper error, even though I had the paper inserted correctly. It seems like the printer thinks that the image should be spread over two pages?!?</p>

<p>Now, all the jets are clean, I have plenty of ink left and the three network status pages print in full. I use the same Epson Luster paper from the same batch that never gave me trouble before and in the last few weeks all my prints were okay.</p>

<p>The rest of the image area is perfect except I have this fade-out effect only at the bottom of the paper.</p>

<p>I am on a Windows 7 Pro 64bit system, with CS2 and CS5 installed and in both I get the same result. To my knowledge the drivers are up to date and the print preview shows the whole image area.</p>

<p>Any ideas?</p>

<p>Thank you,</p>

<p>GS</p>

<p>This happened to me for a while and the annoying thing is I can't recall what I did to rectify it.</p>

<p>My suggestion at the moment would be to take your original file and go to Image-Canvas Size and in the Canvas Size window make sure you have the top middle square highlighted in the Anchor area. In the Height input area increase the height of your file by say a third e.g if it's currently 12" make it 16" leave the rest alone and click OK. Your image should appear aligned as before but with a longer "tail" of blank image. Hopefully this will fool the 3800 into printing all the image data and not fade out as if the paper were running out. No need to bother changing the physical paper size that you put in the printer just proceed as before using what you were.</p>

<p>If that doesn't work try ALSO increasing the paper size in the Print window to match the size you've increased the canvas size to. So if you're currently selecting Letter as your paper size make it a Custom size to match the new Canvas size, save it for repeatability so your print profile for this combination of paper and image type will always select the amended instructions. i.e give it a name you can remember it by to repeat these steps. For example if it works call it "MacsTopTip" if it doesn't call it "BackToTheDrawingBoard" - (just before deleting it).</p>

<p>Good luck </p>

<p>Thank you, I'll try it tonight.</p>

<p>It is pretty frustrating as this problem came out of nowhere. At the end I'd like to know what caused this. </p>

<p>Even if I print an 8"x8" image on a 8.5"x11" canvas (and paper) the bottom of the image area is faded out within the last inch. The rest of the image is 100% okay.</p>