Digital BW, The Print

Hi folks,

I'm getting very dark, oversaturated prints on a refurbished Epson
Stylus Photo 1400 (purchased directly from Epson). I'm using color
management (details below), and I'm trying to figure out what's going
wrong. For example, I printed Paul Roark's 21-Step_GG22_L5.tif (from
http://home1.gte.net/res09aij/Test-files.htm), with color management,
and the 100% to 75% swatches are all completely black -
indistinguishable from each other. I'd expect some variation given that
I'm not using a custom profile, but this seems excessive.

Normal documents printed on office paper look fine. I wonder if there's
a problem with the printer's photo modes - I've tried making two prints
in Photo RPM mode, and both have left big blotches of wet ink on the
paper.

So I have a couple of questions:

1) Is it possible that there's a problem with Photo or Photo RPM print
modes, but not with Economy/Normal/Fine?

2) Is it plausible that normal variation can account for the radical
difference between Paul's profile and my printer?

3) There have been a number of rumors of double-profiling; how can I
figure out if that's what's happening?

Here are the details of my color management process:

For color, Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy, Epson OEM ink
(shipped with the printer), Epson's "SP1400 1410 UPGP" profile
(installed with their driver).

For black and white, Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy, MIS UT-14
inks, and Paul Roark's 1400-UT14-UltraPremGlossPP-N-1-rgb.icc profile.

Initially I thought I'd use up the Epson inks and then switch to the
UT-14 ones, but the color results were so poor that I gave up and
switched early. I'm using the Epson paper mostly out of convenience -
Best Buy had it and I knew profiles were available for it.

I'm following the directions in Paul's UT-14 paper: Photoshop manages
color, with the UltraPremGlossPP profile selected. Rendering intent is
Perceptual. Black point compensation is checked. In the Epson dialog,
media type is "Ultra Premium Presentation Matte", Color is, er, Color,
print quality is set to Photo. Color management is set to off.

I'm on a Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.7, Photoshop CS3, and Lightroom
2.4. The Epson printer driver reports version 6.10. I have two Viewsonic
LCD screens; both are calibrated with an Eye-One Display 2 and Eye-One
Match 3. They're calibrated to temperature 6500, gamma 2.2, and 100
cd/m2 luminance.

Let me know if you need any other information.

Thanks!

-- 
  | Mike Acar |                                | mike at waspfactory dot org |