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Epson 3880 greenish color shift

ThomasZ

Member
Hi all,

when printing on my 3880, I have a green color shift in the print. I have absolutely no idea where to locate the source of the problem. Some facts about my way to print:

* I work on a retina Macbook with a calibrated Thunderbolt display
* I print with Photoshop CS6
* Until now I had sRGB as color space
* I let Photoshop do the color management
* I select for example "Epson Stylus Pro 3880_3885_3890 PremiumGlossyPhotoPaper" as the printer profile
* In the printer settings, the "Color matching" page is greyed out
* in the printer settings, the correct paper "Premium Glossy..." is selected

The result is obviously too green. As workaround I insert a color adjustment layer that shifts
* from cyan to red +30
* from green to magenta -15
* from blue to yellow -15

That gives a better looking result. But I am sure there must be a better way to get a good looking print. But I am clueless where to look.

Any idea?
 
Last edited:

ThomasZ

Member
Until now I did not even know that a nozzle check exists :)
But I've done it and it came back without errors.

Is there any possibility that sRGB is the cause? I see many people using Adobe RGB 98.
 

Mike Z

Member
This REALLY sounds like your light magenta nozzle is clogged.
I would look at the printed nozzle check again and make sure you have two magentas printing.
The light magenta may be completely clogged.
On my 11880 the light magenta prints on the left side. If it didn't print at all you might not even notice it is missing.
Mike
 

ThomasZ

Member
I checked the nozzle test print. All areas are printed. The only conspicuousness are small scratches in the magenta area (look below). The light magenta area looks normal.

 

pflower

Member
Try a test print with printer manages colour. If that looks OK or near OK then the problem is probably not with the printer but with your workflow. I use both a 3800 and a 3880 and I don't recognise the name of the profile you quoted as a printer profile. The Epson supplied profiles (at least for the 3800 attached to this computer) are all in the format Pro 38 PGPP or Pro 38 PLPP. The Epson manual gives the names and the papers they are intended for. I am not sure what the profile you are choosing is or where it comes from. Try with one of the Epson installed profiles instead.

Are you certain you are choosing a proper icc profile designed for the 3880?
 

ThomasZ

Member
Yes I was certain that the profiles were coming with the print driver, but I will re-check that. I'm not sure atm.
 

ThomasZ

Member
I was right, the profiles were installed together with the print driver. They are named like:

Epson Stylus Pro 3880_3885_3890 PremiumGlossyPhotoPaper.icc

And I am 100% sure I selected the right profile when printing.
 

pflower

Member
Did you try a print with Printer Manages Colour? If you get the same green shift then it looks as if something is up with the printer - but if your nozzle check is OK then this is peculiar.

Have you double checked that all colour management is turned off in the Print Settings menus? I only print these days from Lightroom but I occassionally made a similar mistake in the old days when printing through Photoshop but equally I have a feeling that Colour Management is automatically turned off in later versions of OSs and PS when you select Photoshop Manages Colour.

Over many years and thousands of prints from Epson printers I have, perhaps 2 or 3 times, found weird problems that seemed to have no logical explanation. At least twice Epson support simply recommended that I delete the existing driver and download and load the latest driver from their website which solved whatever the problem was. If all else fails try that. If you are on a Mac then don't try and install the printer from the Mac OSX installation disks. Download directly from Epson.

Good luck

I was right, the profiles were installed together with the print driver. They are named like:

Epson Stylus Pro 3880_3885_3890 PremiumGlossyPhotoPaper.icc

And I am 100% sure I selected the right profile when printing.
 

ThomasZ

Member
When I print with "Printer manages colour" the output is not the same, but also shifted into the green/yellow area.
I followed your advice and contacted the Epson support. They also recommended the newest driver. I installed 9.22 and found that I'm out of (small) paper, so I can't test anymore.
Will report about the result in 2-3 days.
 

ThomasZ

Member
Unfortunately, nothing has changed, so I will continue using the color correction layer as workaround.
 

Eden

New member
Just today my Epson 7900, which had perfect nozzle checks, began printing everything with a yellow color cast. At first I couldn't tell what colors were wrong, but the prints looked weird. I ran a test print which had a full range of color and black and white images as well as black and white step wedges. When I looked at the black and white, it was very clear that yellow as the color which was mixing into the unwanted areas. I then ran a single cleaning cycle of all colors and that fixed the problem. The next test black and white step wedge I printed was pure monochrome without any other color cast.

Lynn
 
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