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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this looks like a typical "nozzle plate delamination" case. The above incident supports this theory. If so, your printhead is not recoverable :(

Thanks for the effort! The weak performance of the black stands out to me. Any chance it measures signifcantly darker than the 106 black? Maybe Epson made a conscious compromise here...

I tried using an XP-970 with similar sponge-based cartridges and pigment ink. Result: major ink flow problems after 5 refills or so. I do have to say that those sponge cartridges don't work all that well with dye inks either.

Did you have a chance to see how the Canon red ink performs compared to the OEM inkset and your magenta + yellow mix? If you have an ICC profile we can check some numbers here as well :)

I understand @Graeme Gill's frustration here. The perceptual intent is not meant to have any BPC added to it, as it already maps source to destination black. On top of that, the BPC algorithm is not standardized...so all of this gets messy very quick. Adobe's statement: "Color conversion...

Thanks for doing the effort, @Ink stained Fingers. What also caught my eye, besides the BPC nonsense, is that the reported black point in the profile tag does not correspond to the actual max. black that the will be printed. In the last example (Hongsam ink on RC paper) the profile records a...

Very nice analysis! I expected a larger difference in implementation of the perceptual rendering intent as there is no fixed set of rules on how to do that. Interesting that both curves overlap. That being said, I do not get a few things: - Enabling BPC when using perceptual rendering should...

I can help with the Argyll stuff, but my hardware here is different (printers and spectro). As far as I can see, Argyll offers the option to focus more on neutral or darker values and apply smoothing to the measurement data. None of those makes any difference to the black point.

Thanks for the interesting comparison, @Ink stained Fingers. 2 interesting issues: 1. Enabling BPC raises the actual black point of that specific profiled printer-ink-paper combination. Shouldn´t happen, IMHO 2. There is a significant difference in black point between X-rite and Argyll.

This is exactly what I did in post #16 (using Photoshop). It would indeed be interesting to do this with ICC profiles from 2 different profile engines coming from a single target. Only when using no color management or rel. colorimetric. Enabling BPC or using the perceptual rendering intent...

Makes sense, but I guess most images contain the full printable dynamic range.

Likely for tilt adjustment of the printhead. Messing with this lever requires a calibration step in firmware as well (at least in other Epson printers), so better leave it alone.

Are both patches printed at the printer's highest quality setting? The results seem to match my observations here, minus the obvious banding in the L1800 sample which seems to be random and might be related to an ink flow or piezo actuator issue. I've seen similar banding patterns on old R3000...

Yes, and as you own a proper measurement device (ColorMunki) there is no need to invest in a standardized target. You could scan an A4 sheet with patches used for profiling your printer. As a plus, you´d already have a all the input reference data in the corresponding Argyll .ti3 file. I guess...

No, I don't have the printer and will likely never get it. The XP-15000 might end up on my desk though. A while ago I received some test prints from a forum member done with the ET-8550 at several quality settings. My conclusion: - Good, but not excellent monochrome output - Not as smooth as...

The LC & LM inks contribute as well, it seems. IMHO there are visible differences if you look at smooth gradients.

Need is a big word :) I would be happy with the ET-8550 if it would print b&w is neutral as the r3000 and if the dot pattern would be less coarse. How's your xp-15000 comparing to the ET-8550? I am on the fence...especially because I print b&w quite often + the test prints I have here (ET-8550)...

Would you mind eleborating on that? What do you mean with intense? A higher saturation at equal lightness? I would be very surprised if Epson has more than 1 set (CMYK + R?) of modified dyes. The differences you see are probably dye-carrier liquid concentration differences. I could be totally...

I had an XP-960 running on pigment inks for a while (with similar refillables). It worked for 5 refills or so before ink flow started to decline. Dye inks did better, but the original Epson cartridges are by far the most reliable. @pharmacist: do you have a dye vs pigment gamut comparison for us?

I see it clearly using the print module in Adobe Photoshop 2020, but only when using the relative colorimetric intent + BPC. While softproofing everything looks good, but the actual RGB data sent to the printer has elevated blacks. BPC should have no effect when using the perceptual intent (and...