Digital BW, The Print

Hi, all. I'm a long-time epson group groupie, mostly just lurking 
and learning from you all for the last year or so. (Too busy 
moving and printing....) Thanks for all the great posts.

I have a problem with a sudden color shift. Any help would be 
appreciated.

 I've been using Generations inks on a 7000 to print "toned" 
black and white photographic images on Bright Cube paper for 
some time. Not an easy path, but mostly rewarding. However I've 
had two episodes of severe Epsonitis that has wreaked havoc 
with my work. I'm in the middle of one of them now.

What happens is that at the start I'm able to print a reasonably 
close greyscale using custom Photoshop curves on my RGB 
files. (So far I haven't been able to make or even edit a 
satisfactory profile, and neither have Profilecity or a couple of 
other people who have tried. But that's another story) What I get 
for neutral is not perfect, but it's close enough so that after 
"toning" with even more curves and other layers, my output looks 
pretty good. 

When the problem starts, though, my grays shift radically, all of a 
sudden becoming cyanish-green. (And of course, all my work 
grinds to a halt.) Nozzle checks look fine. All other colors are fine 
and black dithered to gray is fine--the problem is restricted to 
grays and near-neutrals printed with color inks.

The first time this happened, I made a bunch of careful new 
software adjustments to compensate, only to have the printer 
slowly return to "normal" (after quite a bit of printing). It was a 
mystery.

This time, a file that  printed fine one night printed cyan/green the 
next morning with no changes in settings. Nozzle checks are 
fine. I haven't changed any inks.

I have an Epson tech running me and the 7000 through all the 
usual hoops. We've eliminated any possible software and 
interface problems by printing through his laptop and using 
Acrobat instead of Photoshop. Results are exactly the same as 
with my setup. 

Of course Epson wants to flush out all the Generations inks and 
try Epson inks. I'll go along with that, but I see no reason why this 
kind of radical change in gray tones, with all nozzles firing, 
should be an ink issue.

Does anybody have any ideas? My best guess is that the board 
on the print head, or the printer's main board, is flakey. 

The only other thing I  can imagine is that the inks separated or 
changed in some way. I was out of town for a couple of months, 
and the machine was only turned on and off periodically during 
that time. Still, the nozzle checks have been good right from the 
start, and the first printouts I did when I returned (two weeks ago) 
were not cyanish/green. 

What would cause a sudden change like this? Any similar 
experiences out there?

Thanks for any input.

--David Stock

-----Original Message-----

From: racetratr [mailto:daviddstock@...] 
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 8:02 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] neutral color shift
 
[snip]

When the problem starts, though, my grays shift radically, all of a 
sudden becoming cyanish-green. (And of course, all my work 
grinds to a halt.) Nozzle checks look fine. All other colors are fine 
and black dithered to gray is fine--the problem is restricted to 
grays and near-neutrals printed with color inks.

Very annoying behaviour.
Sounds like the light magenta stops firing suddenly.  I have a 2000P
with Gen5 CIS inks where occasionally the light magenta just stops.
Print a horizontal gray gradient immediately after aborting the job, and
you will see what is happening. The medium to lighter grey tones are
made up of color mostly, not dithered black.
 
TigerShark


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks for the reply. Do you still get a good nozzle check when 
this happens? Have you decided what causes the problem?


> [snip]
> 
> When the problem starts, though, my grays shift radically, all of 
a 
> sudden becoming cyanish-green. (And of course, all my work 
> grinds to a halt.) Nozzle checks look fine. All other colors are 
fine 
> and black dithered to gray is fine--the problem is restricted to 
> grays and near-neutrals printed with color inks.
> 
> Very annoying behaviour.
> Sounds like the light magenta stops firing suddenly.  I have a 
2000P
> with Gen5 CIS inks where occasionally the light magenta just 
stops.
> Print a horizontal gray gradient immediately after aborting the 
job, and
> you will see what is happening. The medium to lighter grey 
tones are

> made up of color mostly, not dithered black.
>  
> TigerShark
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

No, the nozzle check fails in the light magenta when that happens.
The Windex towel trick followed by 1-3 cleaning cycles usually clears it
up for me.  I don't know what is causing it, and your case may be
different, but it is most likely a problem in that ink channel.  It
could be the head / board or a simple clogging or starving of that ink.
 
There is a more thorough cleaning / priming routine on the service disk,
but that is of course not available to us users :-(
 
TS

-----Original Message-----
From: racetratr [mailto:daviddstock@...] 
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 9:23 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] neutral color shift
 
Thanks for the reply. Do you still get a good nozzle check when 
this happens? Have you decided what causes the problem?

 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "racetratr" 
<daviddstock@e...> wrote:
<snip>

> The only other thing I  can imagine is that the inks separated or 
> changed in some way. I was out of town for a couple of months, 
> and the machine was only turned on and off periodically during 
> that time. Still, the nozzle checks have been good right from the 
> start, and the first printouts I did when I returned (two weeks ago) 
> were not cyanish/green. 
> 
> What would cause a sudden change like this? Any similar 
> experiences out there?
> 
> Thanks for any input.
> 
> --David Stock

David,

I've never used Generations, so my experience may or may not be 
helpful. About January of 2001, I had been printing with an 1160/CIS 
with the original Piezo inks for about six months. My nozzle checks 
were usually good and clogging was a minor issue. Suddenly (within a 
week) I noticed that prints I had been doing were more flat in 
midtones, more contrasty towards the shadows, and had a greenish cast. 

I went back over some prints I had done back a few months and 
discovered that it had been happening gradually for some time but on a 
very slow basis, and I had missed the gradual changes, compensating 
with curves as I did new prints. Thus as time went on, my curve 
corrections became more serious as time went on. Then it went 
exponential and the problem became obvious in a few days to a week. 
BUT, my nozzle checks were still perfect; I needed few cleaning 
cycles. 

I put Epson carts in for awhile and then put the CIS/Piezo ink back in 
and it improved, but the files I had saved in 8 bit, adjusted for the 
progression of the problem no longer gave me an even print. I had to 
correct back again with the resulting gaps in the histogram. The 
problem came back again in only ten weeks.

A lot of arguement insued over the issue, now called "DSS" or the 
"Greenies", but Jon COne now posts on his website that problem did 
exist. I put it down to ink seperation or evaporation over time, but I 
really never figured out the exact cause.
Jim H.