Good cheap ink for epson?A recommendation Please.

Heedtheadvice

Hi.
Having extolled the virtues of both Epson photo printing and compatible cartidges :):)........:(:(:(
....I now have a problem!:eek:

I cannot pin down what the root cause is but mid tones are coming out with a sepia/red tint. This has only happened since a new purchase of cartridges so very much suspect them. A new brand to me Pictech.

I have used Jetplay for years with an Epson Stulus Photo R265 and been very happy with them.

Cannot rule out something else at this stage but the obvious thing to do is to replace all the set of six with another proven brand. Can anyone recommend a brand and supplier in the MSE vein of good value for money?

If anybody has any other ideas then please do put them forward. I have done a nozzle check (all's well), done a head clean (no change), replaced the entire set (just the same). Being a six cartridge set it does seem as if the Light Cyan is under sprayed given the magenta/red bias in mid range. Very deep blacks are fine as is high white (as one might expect) but virtually all the grey scale levels in between have the colour cast.

Photos look awful including ones that have been printed before/recently on and from part used Epson and Wilko ( excellent value/results) Glossy papers so ruling out paper.

Win 10 updated recently but cannot see why that should be an issue. Driver not changed for ages.......so unless a fault?

*&!"$(*&&*! :mad::mad::mad: Do feel it is the inks.....

Neil_Jones

All colours on printers are made by mixing together four basic colours (or six in your particular case) and if you end up having a certain tint or colour, it usually means one of the other colours is not printing. A red tint is usually a sign of the printer not printing blue.

This can be caused by using print profiles on the computer, typically photoshop-based applications can tend to interfere with this. Unless you have a need to use them they are best avoided if at all possible. These are used primarily so a print out will match what you see on the screen, except this becomes irrelevant in most domestic monitors anyway.

Here's some details on ICC Profiles as they're called:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/using-icc-profiles-with-epson-printers.html

Heedtheadvice

Thanks Neil for the response.

My colour cast is slightly on the magenta side of red so (if an ink problem) that would tend to indicate a lack of cyan, would it not?

As far as I know (I have not changed anything but inks) I do not have any special profiles set, before or after noticing the problem though one cannot rule out at this stage changes done by updates done in the background by win10 or driver's. I am currently using just ms office picture manager or photoscape (print option) with no extra colour management tweaks other than a little increased brightness in the printer properties.

That is fine for most prints and I have been using those settings for a long time. Something has changed....but what?

Neil_Jones

Cyan is blue

Another test you could do is generate some random text from a site like this:
https://www.lipsum.com/

Paste it into Word a few times, colour it Cyan/Blue and print it in high photo quality on a few sheets of normal A4 paper (which you can recycle after).

Heedtheadvice

Thanks for the follow up,Neil.

I'm sorry but you have lost me there.
What would I be looking for with the text printing and what would it show?

Neil_Jones

On most inkjet printers that stop printing a certain colour it can sometimes be corrected by printing for a while in photo/high quality mode using that particular colour.

High quality photo printing effectively goes over the same area of the paper two or three times to lay down a decent amount of ink to increase the quality of the print (as opposed to normal mode where it just squirts it out as it comes (and slings the paper back at you ninja Death Style in Eco mode)). Because you're only using the one colour it effectively saturates the head of that nozzle and performs a similar equivalent of head cleaning only without the need to do it for all heads for the sake of one.

This doesn't work all the time, but it's worked often enough for me just to get it flowing again and then one more head clean solves the problem.

Heedtheadvice

Ah! I see where you are coming from Neil.

I use a similar technique when on ink is having a problem printing that would be cleared by a head clean and all the ink that wastes! I use a drawing package to print a big rectangle of that colour.

In the current case however that is not the problem. I can print in light and dark cyan by itself no problems. Ink prints, there is no streaking etc. The issue here is a colour cast where both light and dark cyan is under printed compared to the other inks causing a colour cast.
I have also tried cleaning/flushing print heads to no avail and increasing to level 10 the amount of cyan in the printer advanced settings and that improves low to mid luminance levels but then leaves the darker and lighter levels a bit to change as blacks and whites were otherwise fine.
Also tried other settings such as ICM with and without colour corrections.

Any more thoughts?

Neil_Jones

There was one particular make of Epson printer, can't remember which one it was now, I saw where it developed a peculiar problem where it wouldn't print a particular colour in "normal" operation but it worked absolutely fine in photo/high quality mode. That may be the issue here.

Try printing something like a test page from here in normal/eco mode and then do the same again in photo/high quality (you can use normal A4 paper).
http://printatestpage.com/

If the print issue fixes itself in photo quality but reappears in normal mode it usually means the printer has developed an issue that photo mode can temporarily avert (for reasons I've already explained) but at the cost of time and using more ink.

Heedtheadvice

Thanks for the suggestion, Neil. I'll try prints in various modes and see the results.

I should have mentioned that this is happening in best photo mode but possibly it is a similar problem to what you suggest so will see if there are any differences.
.......very frustrating....I also have more cartridges (Jetplay, again) on order!

esuhl

I used compatible inks for years without any major problems. Colour accuracy wasn't quite as good, and the ink faded much quicker after a few months after being left in sunlight.

I remember setting up a printer once and being confused at the awfully drab colours. IIRC, there was a driver setting where you could select the primary colours used. I changed this setting to CMYK and the colours printed correctly.

It doesn't sound like this is the problem if only one colour is affected, but it might be worth checking.

Seenu777

When you have doubts about whether your printer is working fine or not, the first check-up that would help you out would be to print a test page. This can be extremely helpful if you have issues in printing from a particular program. The reason for getting a printer test page would be to narrow down your diagnosis of the problem.