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I had not used my Epson R1800 printer in several months and needed to print some photos. I ran a nozzle check first and it looked normal. I then printed an 8x10 on semigloss paper and it came out almost black. I am accustomed to my printer putting out prints that look darker than my screen image but this is way beyond that. I am hoping someone will recognize this symptom as a simple correctable error and point it out for me.

Assuming that your printer/paper setup is correct with the correct paper profile selected; then I would guess from your statement that "the prints always look dark when compared to your screen", that you do not calibrate your monitor. Is that correct? If that is the case your monitor may have become much brighter than it had been previously (or if this is a new monitor). If this is what happened than your image will print very dark. To check this, look at an older image that use to print correctly (that hasn't been processed/adjusted recently) and see if it now looks brighter compared to what you remember it looking on the monitor. If the image does look brighter than your monitor brightness has changed and become brighter. There is no way to set the correct brightness level without calibrating your monitor. To get it close or at least better without calibration look at that older image and turn down the monitor brightness till it looks correct to what you remember. This is a hit and miss approach that may help with your problem. I would recommend looking into getting a calibration puck if you don't already have one. After turning down the brightness make a print. If it has improved but still is a dark, turn the monitor brightness down so more. Do another print till the brightness of the monitor and print are close. They will never be exactly the same as the print is reflected light and the monitor is transmitted light which will always look a tiny bit brighter/more intense and a tiny bit more saturated/pure in color. But you can get them close to one another.

Joe we need more info in order to help you...

Paul

Dick, thank you for your advice. I will follow through on your suggestion. I do have an Eye-One Match 3 calibration system although I haven't calibrated for some time. My screen is not new and seems no brighter than it has over the past few years. I can understand how calibration or the lack of it might create some changes in the print but the gross blackness of almost the entire print suggests some other error here. This print is so dark then I can just make out the sandpiper and the green grass is not recognizable as it is 90% black.

There is something most definitely the problem here than monitor calibration.

Paul

Here is what I am talking about:

This has nothing to do with the monitor, especially if you are printing files that you processed awhile ago and they used to / still do look fine on screen. Something in the print pipeline is seriously out of whack. Perhaps more than one thing.

You're going to need to go through the usual cast of things. You ran a nozzle check and said it's okay, so that's a good start. Make sure the ink cartridges are not hemorrhaging ink. Make sure your printer driver is configured correctly -- disable colour management (so you're not double-profiling), and select the proper media type; those are the two most important steps. Make sure you have all colour management settings correct in your app including the proper printer/paper ICC profile. Make sure you're printing on the correct side of the paper (though it looks like you are from the example photo, if this is a luster type of media).

What operating system are you printing from, and what application? Possibly the printer driver has become corrupted and needs to be deleted, reinstalled and reconfigured. This does happen on Mac OS X though I'm not particularly aware of it happening on Windows. Another Mac OS X problem is auto-installing printer drivers from Apple that break the printing pipeline. You need to make sure you're running the official Epson printer driver from Epson, not something from Apple, especially not the generic Gutenprint driver.

Have you tried a different profile Joe? Perhaps something went wrong with your normally used one for that paper. Anyways if you did try various profiles and your still getting black, you could eliminate them as a possible cause. You might try reinstalling your printer software too since that is very easy to do.

Paul

My thanks to everyone above and my apologies as well. For some inexplicable reason I failed to recognize that I had Epson Stylus Photo Printer in the profile box instead of the paper profile. All is now well.

That would do it. Glad it was an easy fix...

joseph motto wrote:My thanks to everyone above and my apologies as well. For some inexplicable reason I failed to recognize that I had Epson Stylus Photo Printer in the profile box instead of the paper profile. All is now well.

Hey...be glad it was an easy fix!
Happy printing..

Paul