Epson R2400 with new CISS

[Anthony]

I had a quick look at the pictures in Photoshop as the lower one has a strong magenta cast. Using the grey dropper tool in a curves layer on various (apparent) white or neutral objects confirmed this and brought the colours much closer to the upper picture, albeit the lower picture still looked duller/darker - but not much.

Double profiling is one area that sometimes yields prints with a magenta cast. Perhaps this is worth checking?

Anthony.

 

[tractor]

Thanks Anthony. I am not much use with photoshop i'm afraid, but I sort of get your drift and I suppose there is only one way to learn a new tool.

I am going to contact the seller today to see if he can offer any suggestions.

A third thought though regarding the dull overcast, could it be the printer?

 

[RogerB]

Firstly, the fact that you have a magenta cast indicates that the profile is not correct for the printer/ink/paper combination that you are using. You said that the ink supplier provided the profile, but strictly speaking it will only be valid for one specific paper type. If it is intended for a photo paper then it will not be ideal for your label stock.

Secondly, the difference in colour saturation may be down to a difference in the printers, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that the 2400 is at fault. If you are printing on a real consumer level printer with dye inks, the printer driver will probably bump the saturation up automatically to make the image look "better" - but better is not neccessarily more accurate! Unless you have a known reference it's hard to tell which one is more accurate.

I suspect that if you really want the best print quality on your labels you will need to experiment a bit to get the optimum settings in the printer driver and then get a custom profifle.

 

[tractor]

Thanks Roger....I'm eliminating one variable by using photo paper only first....and then when I have that right will move onto labels.

I'm going to do some more comparisons and upload them for your comments. Is there a hobbyist in the midlands (uk) that could solve this for me easily - paid of course.

On a side note, if I was to buy a program such as prism would this be all I need to set the printer profiles up and is it any good?

 

[pharmacist]

Tractor,

I suggest to look at the instruction provided by your refill ink seller about that profile. Each profile is specifically optimized for a specific paper, specific paper settings in your printer software (for example: Premium glossy photo paper, resolution: 1440 dpi or 2880 dpi), the specific type of black (matte or photo black) and the specific printer/inkset.

So if you are using photo black to print on your labels (which is very likely a matte paper type) then you will get unsatisfying results and black will look like a pastelly dark grey instead of a deep black if you had used the matte black.

A good CISS for an Epson R2400 should have 9 external bottles, 8+1 dampers installed, so you can exchange the matte with the photo black damper easily. If your ciss has only 8 bottles, then you will never be able to change the black and most likely the black is just photo black for printing on photo printing, so results on matte and normal papers will be suboptimal at the best.

I suggest you to read the manuals written by mikling about using profiles in printing. Do a search at this website.

 

[tractor]

Thanks pharmacist.

The ink seller provided profiles for 270 gloss PSGP (?) and 270 pearl PSGP (?)....well I guess this is what is indicated by the file name.

I am currently using photo paper.....not labels.

The CISS has only eight bottles and yes it's photo black.

I will search and read the manuals this afternoon. Apologies if i'm sounding like a dummy, but it is quite new to me.

Thanks all for your help so far.

In the mean time....some more samples...this is our actual artwork...produced by a local artist/ illistrator...I have taken a small area sample as not to include any trademarks.

 

[pharmacist]

Do you actually understand that your profile is made for a specific photo paper ? So this profile works ok for photo paper X but not for photo paper Y. So I have specific profile for my Sihl-X glossy photo paper which produces disappointing results with my TPI glossy paper. So keep this in mind: every new type of photo paper needs a new profile. Sometimes you are lucky and you can use the same profile for several types of photo papers which are very similar to each other.

 

[tractor]

Yes I do now pharmacist....I just wasn't expecting it to be this far off, each type of paper used so far has had a dull pastelly finish - which is worrying.

Thanks or your help, it's appreciated. I'll go away for a bit and do a bit more research then.