I am having trouble with prints that appear to be about 2-stops too dark.
I have an Epson P800 printer with the Piezo Pro ink set installed. Nozzle check prints clean, with no gaps.
I have tried agitating the inks, but this makes no difference.
I am working on a Windows computer with a calibrated monitor and printing via QTRgui. In QTR, the printer is set to EPSON SC-P800 Series and printing model QUADP800-Pro. The darker prints have come out on Canson Baryta Paper using the P800-Canson-BarytaPhoto curves. It has ALSO come printing on Epson Velvet Fine Art paper using the P800-Hahn-PhotoRag curves.
Since it is appearing on these different papers it makes me think that there is something wrong on the computer/software end of things ??
Did you have a chance over the weekend to look for some helpful information online by searching for ‘Dark prints on P800’. I actually came across another customer who was having a similar issue with their P800 prints coming out too dark using that search.
I’m happy to try and help you troubleshoot further as well, but there might be some quick fixes already out there that others have found useful.
Thanks for getting back to me. I did see that post (and a few others). I tried some things like agitating the ink and checking my color workspace (sRGB gray gamma 2.2), doing nozzle checks etc. If there is something else I could try, please let me know.
There are a few things that could be causing this:
Profile Issues: If the prints are only dark with specific profiles, it’s possible those profiles are no longer compatible with the paper you’re using. These profiles might need to be updated. Have you purchased Piezography® Professional Edition Software Toolset v2? You can use it with a supported spectrophotometer to create new Piezography curves.
Overall Darkness: If all your prints are dark, regardless of the profile or paper, there are a few things to consider:
Calibration: Is your monitor calibrated too bright? If your screen is too bright, your prints might appear darker in comparison. Jon Cone recommends 80-100L with the 80L in dimly lit studios and the 100L in brightly lit studios.
Profile Library: In rare cases, the entire profile library might not work with your specific P800 printer due to the printer itself or age of the print head or some anomaly.
Ink Misfill: Have you refilled the ink cartridges since initially setting up this printer? It’s possible a darker ink might have been accidentally put in the wrong slot or mixed with a lighter ink in the cartridge, making everything print darker. To help diagnose the issue further, have you tried running the Calibration mode test on your printer? This will check the ink levels in each channel and give you a better idea of what’s going on. The instructions for printing a calibration mode target are in the manual and it will produce a printout of each individual channel and what shade of ink is installed. You may discover an ink issue.
Great! It sounds like you’ve systematically ruled out a few potential causes for the prints coming out consistently darker. This is very helpful in narrowing down the issue.
Since you’ve eliminated profile issues and factors like misfilled inks, and you want to explore the possibility of your calibration setup, I can get Jon involved and he can recommend specific calibration hardware that Cone Editions Press studio typically uses for Piezography printing.
What we use at the studio are hardware calibrator displays rather than use software to calibrate ordinary displays. We have a mixture of NEC, Eizo, and BenQ displays that have 12-14bit video on board and do not use software calibration (that adjusts your computer’s video board). These special displays are not as expensive as the new displays that are being sold for video editing, etc. And they are designed to display very accurate color and tonality as very low levels of brightness in order to imitate what images on paper look like rather than images being blasted through super bright displays. The least expensive right now is the BenQ SW272Q 27-inch in 2K at under $800 and you may be able to use your instrument with it - but you would want to uninstall your datacolor software calibration. You may also choose to purchase a more recent supported instrument for it. This class of monitor (calibrator display or hardware calibrated display) is connected to your computer with an additional USB cable that controls use of the instrument and uses BenQ software to actually calibrate the hardware in the display. Your older solution adjusts your video board to affect the display and that is called software calibration. Both use software, but the difference is in whether the actual display gets calibrated or your video board gets calibrated. Once you have a hardware calibrated display at the correct brightness for printing you can use Soft Proof ICC profiles to accurately display what images will print like… those same Soft Proof ICC profiles do not have the same performance when used with a software calibrated display (video board). We also put white around our images rather than the default black or dark gray of most imaging applications to better judge on the display and we work in fairly dim lighting in the studio.
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