Colour profiles?

botheredbothered Manchester UK
edited August 2005 in Science & Tech
Hi all,
I've a little problem with my printer. It's an Epson stylus photo 925. When I print a photo the colours are wrong. Yesterday I was trying to print a photo of a little niece for my sister in law. On the screen pic, she has brown hair with light shining on it, on the printed pic the 'shiney hair' is almost blue and her face has a megenta shift. I am printing through PSP and have set the colour managment to use the printers profile. I have also phoned Epson, they said to use their downloaded 'Photo quicker', I have also tried printing through Photoshop but all the printed pics are the same, wrong colours. There isn't a colour profile for my monitor (Iiyama vision master pro) but I did set one the same as the printers incase it was the display giving the wrong colours, no change. I'm on the verge of throwing the printer in the bin.
Any ideas guys?

Comments

  • CryptoCrypto W.Sussex UK Member
    edited August 2005
    Bothered,

    are using genuine epson cartridges?

    has the printer always been like this or suddenly taken a dive?

    Don't worry about your monitor calibration for the time being, I'm sure your niece hasn't got blue hair and magenta skin.

    My own setup is an Epson 915 with genuine cartridges for photos and and all purpose Epson CX3600 with compatibles for general purpose work. Photo printing with the compatibles is awful.

    Crypto
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited August 2005
    Epson ink, Epson paper. Thing is if I print clipart or any other graphics it's ok. It's just photos.
  • CryptoCrypto W.Sussex UK Member
    edited August 2005
    has the printer always been like this or suddenly taken a dive?

    Thing is if I print clipart or any other graphics it's ok. It's just photos.

    Clip art always looks good, but skin tones in photos are the best way of checking a printer calibration.

    I spent a long time googling for printer calibration help and there's a load of stuff out there with some very expensive software as well.
    I ended up downloading a test picture and adjusting the colour profile manually. takes ages and uses lots of ink :(

    I'm leaning towards the thought that you have a physical fault with the printer. Can you connect another printer to your PC and or connect your printer to somebody elses?
    Delete and reload the printer driver?

    Take off your rose tinted glasses :D

    Cheers

    Crypto
  • CryptoCrypto W.Sussex UK Member
    edited August 2005
    Bothered,

    If you still think it's a calibration problem have a look at this site on printer calibration

    I made a smaller version of the test picture (to save ink and paper) and it took me about 4 iterations to get a reasonable result.

    Good luck

    Crypto
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited August 2005
    Cheers Crypto, I tried setting the monitor up as the site suggests but it looks a little dark now. The gamma setting was out a bit. I tried getting drivers for the monitor from Iiyama, there is a link to them but it doesn't list mine. In fact according to Iiyama they don't make my monitor nor ever did! I will ring them on Monday. I'm playing with colour profiles for the printer now.
    Thanks again for your input, I'll carry on and post how it goes.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited August 2005
    Right, I've had enough. New printer time. I had an Epson for around 4\5 years and I cleaned the nozzles once I think. This 925 needs cleaning almost everytime I use it. It won't print the colours that are on the screen. Its been replaced once by Epson because the nozzles kept blocking. I like Epson and my next one will probably be Epson as well but I've had enough of this one, It's more trouble than it's worth.
    Anybody recommend a decent Epson photo printer?
  • CryptoCrypto W.Sussex UK Member
    edited August 2005
    Epson 925 is a nice one!

    Crypto ducks and goes back to watching the cricket
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Can you say Canon?
    Good printers, very fast, use a fraction of the ink that Epson does.

    If you are serious about printing pictures then you really need two printers. One for hte picts and one for everything else.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Epson C86
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited August 2005
    Crypto wrote:
    Epson 925 is a nice one!
    On paper it is (no pun intended) but in practice it's rubbish. Unless you print on it every day you're forever cleaning the nozzles which uses a fair amount of ink. At £40 a replacement set it's a very expensive printer. I have had some excellent results with it but there's just too much messing around with it. I want to click print and get a copy of what's on the screen, not have hours of messing with profiles.
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