Blacks shifting to greenish under daylight?

[Joe Soap]

@Ink stained Fingers, you seem to have the Patience of a Saint, for anything relating to colour correction.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think I was asking the same questions as lots of other people do - how to get the most pleasing colors on a photo with your inkjet printer, and I went through lots of tests and experiments and detours on that route and try to help out now other people with about the same questions

 

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answers.

I printed the image recommended by PeterBJ. I thought the most neutral small pic was R 30.Then I tried adjusting the cyan slider to -25, thinking that it would mean red +25(maximum is 25). Then I printed the bw test image which was suggested by Ink stained Fingers in one of his previous posts.The image has color tones from gray to black. I printed it selecting Epson Premium Glossy setting.Although the last
tone in the printed paper was near to gray, the other ones were brown or brown-like color tones. Then I changed the configuration to default and changed the magenta to +5 because in the child's small photos M5 was
looking good too.After I printed the bw test image, the grays were greenish.

Seems like finding the right combination will not be easy.

Printing nozzle check has always had resulted in perfect since I bought this printer.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You spent quite some efforts up to this point to get good photo prints out of your printer but I get the impression that we are getting to the limits what can be achieved by the driver adjustments. They can improve prints to a degree but the limitation is that 1 setting affects all colors and does not select only the darker or lighter ranges, or only the pink areas or the middle gray ones, that would be the job of an icc-color profile in this case. You only can get to a compromise in this case .

 

[MichaelKnight]

Thanks for your answer and for all your help,time and patience, thanks.

 

[MichaelKnight]

I have been experimenting with some color adjustments using the printer driver in the last days. Increasing magenta really helps reducing greenish tint on grays, it really improves the photos I tried.Maybe I may find a good combination, without distorting other colors too much.

My concern is if there is a problem with my printer or it is a problem which can happen with any printer eventhough they are not malfunctioning.For example, in a Roland company's article it says:

"Question:
I am trying to print a neutral grey and it is printing green. What can be done to correct
this?
Answer:
This is an issue that can happen with every digital printer, no matter the manufacturer,
and can be extremely frustrating, especially if you’re trying to push that urgent job out
the door at 5pm on a Friday evening! Fortunately there are things that can be done to fix
the problem."

So my printer is not malfunctioning I think?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

as long as the nozzle check is o.k. and you don't get any banding on the prints and all colors are visible if you print something like this

your printer should be o.k. technically. The problem is that the colors are not well balanced and give a tint when the colors are
mixed together to get gray.
The next step to get a standardized color output would be the generation and use of a icm-color profile. You would need to use
a service by a company to get that. Companies selling inks and papers to more professionally oriented customers are typically offering such service - you can google for it 'icc color profile' or 'icm color profile' . 'icc' or 'icm' as the ending for such correction file just indicates the use for Mac or Windows systems , the data in the files are identical.

This profiling is not much different to what a Roland large format printer user would do.

 

[Joe Soap]

My concern is if there is a problem with my printer or it is a problem which can happen with any printer eventhough they are not malfunctioning.
So my printer is not malfunctioning I think?

You need to trust in your printer more and stop the PEBKAC solving the non-existing problems for you...

 

[MichaelKnight]

Ok,thanks again Ink stained Fingers.

 

[glasseye]

A timely thread. I've been printing monochrome images with my L805 and was astounded at the degree of metamerism apparent on print.

Prints that look fine under tungsten light are horrid green in daylight. Because of this thread, I chose "plain paper" as the media, and continued to use my normal glossy media. Essentially, I lied to my printer. The prints show less metamerism, but they are also much more contrasty. I can fix this in PS to some extent, but the tones look much less appealing. I don't know how else to describe it. Definitely darker and more contrast.

Is the increased contrast a result of the printer using black ink instead of mixing the colours to create shades of grey?