Blacks shifting to greenish under daylight?

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answer.

I tried raising the brightness from 0(in the middle) to 11 under driver settings and printed the same test sheet, now I can see that there are more grays than the previous print, under artificial light. I am sure I will see even more grays/seperated blacks when I look under daylight(I will try that tomorrow morning/afternoon)By more grays I mean most of the colors were black or blackish in the printed test sheet when I used Matte setting but after raising the brightness level now there are more gray colors on the new test sheet and also there are more blacks which can be seperated from the surrounding black lines.

But I hope increasing the brightness level doesn't distort the other colors much(blue,red,purple...).If it does, I will try experimenting more with the setting levels(brightness and contrast)

Ink stained Fingers wrote:
The next step could be to look to the images you want to print - to look specifically to the range in the shadows , to lift those
shadows just above the level they otherwise would drain in the black. This is something you do with a photo editor, the histogram function or the program (module) you are using to print - some allow to raise the black level of an image at this point. Editors offer various functions - e.g. raising the contrast in the shadow range only, or you have a function called local contrast enhancement, you can via the histogram function raise the black point of an image slightly - just by the value of 8 you found out with the test print. Which program are you using for photo editing ?

I have Photoshop Cs4 but I am not good at it, I actually don't use it much, I didn't do much photo editing with any software.But I may try your suggestion.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

thanks for the feedback, I think you are on the right track getting more details visible in the darker areas, those details are not
draining in the black anymore. Colors are not affected by this type of adjustment, if you raise the black point much more you just may lower the overall luminance gamma slightly - in a photo editor which would keep the midtones at the same level or testing other combinations of lightness/contrast changes in the driver

 

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answer.

I did a few more tests without changing settings like brightness.I printed a picture of "black and white" clouds, they have some gray tones.It was a 8bit gray picture.I first printed using Epson Matte setting, the result was, under artificial lighting I noticed the greys(not blacks) had some purple tint.When I looked at the same picture under daylight, greys had clearly greenish tint not purplish.

I printed another picture, using Epson Matte setting.Again some of the grey clouds had purple tint.I did printer-head-cleaning 2 times but the result didn't change.I printed the same picture using Epson Premium Glossy and I couldn't notice much difference in the grey clouds, some of them had still some purple tint.

I printer another picture also, again I first used Epson Matte setting and gray clouds had purple tint again.I used Epson Premium Glossy setting and the grays were much better without purple cast.

These results really confused me.I looked at the test picture which you gave, colors from black to gray, under daylight. I think blacks are really black(using Epsn Matte setting) but I feel a bit greenish tint on the grays.When I compare the grays between the test(which you put) sheets printed with Epson Premium Glossy and Epson Matte settings, the grays printed with Epson Premium Glossy are much more obviously greenish but still I believe these is a little greenish tint using Epson Matte too, though much less.

I tried printing the test sheet which has colors from gray to white and I am not able to notice any tint,using Epson Matte setting.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think we are getting to a point where it becomes impossible to comment your printouts, grays, black level, tint etc without having those prints in front of me and making my own judgement, scanning those after print would add more variability induced by the scanner e.g. shifting the black point.
You are addressing several issues at the same time - e.g. a green tint when printing a grayscale image, that probably could be
changed by compensating that via the color adjustments in the driver, there are the issues that black looks different when printed either with the matte or glossy paper setting in the driver and there are contrast questions that darker areas don't reveal details, and you are testing with different papers which both could be run with either the glossy or matte paper setting in the driver, I cannot recommend to get an icc-profile made at this time, that may fix some of the issues but not necessarily all of them. You have the tools , test file , driver settings available to find that combination of parameters to get the best results, and those settings are different for each type of paper (and ink - if you do refill)

 

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answer.

Ink stained Fingers wrote:
I think we are getting to a point where it becomes impossible to comment your printouts, grays, black level, tint etc without having those prints in front of me and making my own judgement, scanning those after print would add more variability induced by the scanner e.g. shifting the black point.

I understand what you mean.

But after printing again the BW files which you put, I mean the file which shows colors from black to gray and the other file from gray to white, using both Glossy and Matte paper settings, onto the same glossy paper, I believe I understood what the problem is(though not the solution).

In the first file, color tones from black to gray, blacks are great using Matte setting though grays have a little greenish tint but it is little compared to the same file print using Glossy setting.Now about the "purplish tint" problem, when I printed the second file, color tones from gray to white, using Matte setting, I clearly see that many of the gray/white tones have pinkish/purplish tint compared to Glossy setting.Using Glossy setting, from gray tones to white are obviously much more accurate.

So the first file prints clearly better,more accurate using Matte setting and the second file prints cleary better,more accurate using Glossy setting...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that may get you into another round of adjustments - not brightness/contrast but colors which you have available as well in
driver via the color adjustment mode. If you think you have a pinkish tint you can try either way - reducing magenta or increasing the complementary color - adding a few steps of green = yellow + cyan. All that may become tricky now , but give it a try at least that you see what you can acheive to get a neutral print.
But you are getting to a limit with this approach - you may be able to correct the tone in the lighter grays but not in the darker grays to neutral. This would be the point where only an icm-profile would correct such problem. You can do such profiles only with a software/hardware package like the ColorMunki by XRite. But this is probably beyond the efforts you want to invest.

 

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answer.Yes, profiling software would be an overkill for my purposes.I think I will try doing adjustments using driver software or photo editor.

Just to be sure,is there a possibility that these problems caused by clogged nozzles? I had emailed with a person from Epson and he was sure that these problems were caused by clogged nozzles but 6 times head cleaning plus 1 time ink cleaning via Epson driver software didn't have an effect on the results and also a technical service which I took the printer to, could not find a problem with the printer and said that 6 ink printers print better.

 

[PeterBJ]

Here is a test image to help in adjusting the colour balance in the driver settings.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

is there a possibility that these problems caused by clogged nozzles?

That's easy for you to find out - run a nozzle check.
If one color is missing completely you get a strong color cast/shift, that strong that you cannot correct it via the color adjustments, if only a few nozzles are missing you would get colored lines in the printout.
So - run a nozzle check - and if some nozzles are missing run a cleaning cycle and a nozzle check again to check whether the situation improves , just running 6 cleaning cycles consumes ink for nothing, if the problem is somewhere else.
Printing with 6 inks - he tries to sell you a new printer

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

adjusting colors for print is a somewhat tricky action, you should not use your own pictures for that, not a scanned image but a standard test image of which you have an idea how it should look like, something like this one (there are more on the Internet)

http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html

And there is one detail complicating the matter - you may think that the print should look like the image on your screen - no - not really - your screen is most likely not calibrated, the screen has a wider contrast range, problably a higher brightness.
The image matrix mentioned above by @PeterBJ should help you go correct for a color cast in your image. You should check at the end that your own pictures are printing as well without a color cast and with good contrast