Epson Stylus 2400-pictures coming out very dark

[nickmunning]

Thank you, all. I will pursue all suggestions. Carol, I appreciate your approach and will look into it and get back to you all. I

will shake the cartridges, and get some Epson ink. But until it gets here (I live in the boonies and have to order it) I will try

the other suggestions of Charles and Carol. However, my gut feeling is that the problem is too severe to be the ink

manufacturer. This has worked for me in the past. My previews are looking closer to my monitor picture than they ever

have. I don't know if that tells anyone anything. I am trying to learn about soft proof but I find it somewhat confusing. but

that's a different issue. Carol, I believe you are absolutely right abut the FW being firewire! Thanks. Nick

[mnigro]

Third party ink sets? Keep in mind these cartridges have cheap ink AND inferior chips that receive instructions from your computer on how to put down ink to paper. Ink and paper manufacturers spend millions of R&D dollars to be certain that their profiles perform as promised. Third party ink is never profiled for quality paper such as Epson's. Worse, cheap ink is subject to color shifting when exposed to light. Try all the advise above but add Epson ink sets to your solution.

 

On softproofing, go to Zuberphotographics.com and see his articles. No magic here. Soft proof the image and what's on your screen should match your printer output. Zuber puts up some great articles.

[mnigro]

So, I'm sitting at my computer getting ready to soft proof some wedding pictures and I fired up my Epson 4000 for it's weelky nozzel check and cleaning. I did not see anywhere above that you tried that. I learned the hard way four years ago when clogged nozzels drove me crazy for about four hours and a box of Epson matte paper.

 

Go to your printer maintenance and run a nozzel check using photocopy paper. You might be in for a suprise.

[nickmunning]

Michael, I did do a nozzle check, but not with photopaper. I take it that makes a difference. The print on regular paper was faint but it all looked in line. I will try it with photopaper when I get home tonight.

 

Also,

 

Carol, I tried the "Repair disk permissions" to no avail but will attempt your second suggestion later tonight. Thank you all for your interest and help. Nick

[thirteenthumbs]

Michael,<br>I'm running a high quality 3rd party ink on an R2400 on a PC XPsp2 Cs2/Photoshop 7 Platform. 1 in

1000 prints might have a 1/2 to 1 shade difference in some obscure portion of the print that would differentiate it from

the manifacturers. I have some prints I can print in PS7 and get perfect results and a slightly darker print from

CS2 using the same paper,ink, profiles, print settings. I do not use custom profiles. <p>Nick<br>The printer utilites

could care less if you use

plain or photo paper as they are just mechnical rountines.

[steve_eichorn]

Nick, let me tell you what happened to me and the solution I found. this might not be your case, but maybe you can gain some info from my experience.

My prints ALWAYS came our too dark Epsom 750, Epson R380 and the 1400 Each succeeding one, I stubbornly thought would fix the precceeding problem. Patrick has said that 90% of dark prints are monitor calibration related. I now say more, but it's small difference. I did the "let printer manage colors" first and after testing, tweaking, 20 sheets of paper later, I would get something close to what I saw. (my, maybe soon to be business is WYSIWIS photography "what you see is what I saw" ) so you can see that getting accurate color, saturation, etc is important to me. So the cheapskate here bought a Spyder2 monitor calibrator, to calibrate my monitor an LG1960TR. After doing so, following the directions exactly, even adjusting the color sliders, the "before and after" screen shots didn't show much difference. Here's the key: this monitor has a 3000-1 contrast ratio and when I would darken up the screen to match a test print, I would think the screen is too dark. What I didn't do, is give my eyes time to adjust. Long story, short, is after I heard from somebody about the average "nits" you should have (you have to look it up) and I adjusted it to around 116. At first it looked way too dark, but when my eyes got adjusted to the brightness, it looks natural. It's just like putting on a pair of sunglasses, at first everything looks orange, then after a while, it all looks perfect. You take then off later, and everything looks blue.

To me, color management isn't hard, but you need to get a calibrated monitor, a calibrated printer/paper combination for EVERY paper you use. For general stuff maybe you can get by with "paper that works with all printers" I won't do it anymore. If it doesn't show what I saw to the best of my memory, it doesn't leave the house.

 

For your problem, if it was me, I would treat everything as a brand new install. So a registry cleaner program would be in order after you uninstall everything, so there is no trace of the Epson 2400 anywhere. Then install everything like you just opened the box. That should take care of a lot of possible errors. Then I would do a

SMALL test print, if still too dark, then recalibrate your monitor. Maybe somewhere the brightness settings on the monitor got changed? Kids, Jack Daniels, Budweiser maybe? :) Outside of all thatI can't think of anything! I hope your very frustrating problem gets fixed soon, so you can get back to shooting!

Steve

[carol_conti_entin]

Nick, when you wrote "One thing I have noticed is that after I hit Print, then go back to check the settings, they have defaulted to other

settings that I did not choose," are you talking about the settings on Photoshop's print page, or in the Mac's print dialog box? That may

give you a clue as to whether the corrupted file(s) belong to Photoshop or to OS X or Epson. Another clue would be if you print from

some other software program such as Word or Excel or Safari -- are the colors on that print accurate? If only Photoshop files are coming

out too dark, then the culprit is likely some corrupted Photoshop file(s).

 

Here's a hypothesis as to why Photoshop may suddenly print too dark if (a) corrupted file(s) is/are the cause. Let's say in Photoshop your

Color Handling setting is "Photoshop Manages Colors" and on the Mac OS X print dialog "Color Management" screen you click the button

labeled "No Color Adjustment." Photoshop tries to send its color management instructions to the printer, but the corrupted file(s) prevent

the instructions from reaching the Epson driver. The result is that neither Photoshop nor Epson manages the colors. Word or Excel or

Safari, on the other hand, don't try to manage the colors (as far as I know) -- they routinely leave it up to your printer driver, which you

routinely allow to manage the colors when you are using one of those programs. Thus, Word or Excel or Safari prints might still come out

okay. If their prints are too dark as well, then the Epson driver might be corrupted.

 

Steve Eichorn's second paragraph makes great sense to me. You've tried so many things at this point that a thorough uninstall, cleaning,

and reinstall of everything Epson and Photoshop is a good idea -- and probably faster for you than trying to isolate and replace only the

corrupted file(s).

 

For a SMALL test print, I made a TINY new Photoshop file (0.2 inches by 0.2 inches) and filled it with a light green color. That was plenty

good enough to show me whether things were still printing too dark and -- after I replaced the corrupted file -- that things were finally back

to normal. Best of all, I could print such a small file in blank corners of wasted prints rather than on new sheets of paper. Good luck!

[nickmunning]

I too think it is a corrupted file after all of this- or at least something to do with the software. Presently, I am on a weeks vacation (motorcycle) which should yield many pics. So I have to put this printer thing on the back burner until I get back. I will try all suggestions, including Steve's, if the easier ones don't work. If I ever (and I will) get this worked out, I will post the solution on this forum. I will try to find if there are any corrupted files like Carol mentioned. Actually, all of the suggestions will become an important part of someday doing this professionally. Once again, thank you all for your help. Nick