is this a printer problem?
2006-11-13 by Bill Hansen
The basics - Printer is Epson stylus photo R1800 - OS is Win XP Pro, processing digital images in Photoship PS CS2, color management with Spyder 2 Pro monitor calibration - printer profiles with PrintFix Pro versions 1.1 and beta 2. I've used variations of this setup for a few years now, and I've used this exact setup for several months now with excellent results.During the last several months I've made perhaps 8 or 10 paper-printer profiles for myself and I've also made a few for others, with excellent results. In the past couple of weeks I've noticed that custom profiles made a few months ago, profiles which were producing perfect prints, are waaaaaay off in terms of being far too dark. Colors remain spot on. I re-printed the targets for the printer profiles and made a couple of new paper-printer profiles, with the same results - colors spot on, "brightness" far too dark, requiring a 50% correction to get recognizable prints. This morning, even that 50% correction isn't allowing me to get acceptable prints. I don't think this is a problem with PrintFix Pro. I'm concerned that my printer is somehow slipping out of calibration, or that something else is going wrong with the printer. I think I'm going to have to send it back to Epson. Does anyone else have experience similar to this - or does anyone have thoughts on what the problem might be? Bill Hansen