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It has been a couple of years since I ran into this problem but it is back again. Admittedly my Epson Stylus Photo R1800 printer is a bit long in the tooth and granted that months go by in between usages but the last time the prints looked just fine and now they are very dark. My NEC Multisync 302W screen is older but calibrated. I process in Lightroom 6 and finish off in PS 6. As in the past I use Epson Semigloss paper and ran a printer head check that looked decent. I am including two images as they look on screen and their corresponding prints. Any advice will be most welcome.

Looks more like an ink has gone wrong. Either out or clogged. How about a test print (from printer) sample, The one that prints out those color bars. (Checking the Print Head Nozzles ??)

The nozzle check looks ok. The yellow is very faint so it is hard to see if there are "holes" in the pattern. I did a cleaning and it looks the same afterward. I had just replaced the yellow cartridge before I began to print yesterday so it is possible that this could be the culprit. I see no other abnormalities.

Joe, please post screen snips of the printer dialog boxes... If a Nozzle check is OK and youa re sure that you have properly calibrated the monitor then there is a setting that is incorrect in the printer driver.

In addition to E.J.'s question on settings, what is your operating system & version, and what version of the printer driver is running? Was anything updated with either of these recently?

Also, is there any chance these prints were made on the back side of the sheet rather that the top (printable) side?

Royce Howland wrote:Also, is there any chance these prints were made on the back side of the sheet rather that the top (printable) side?

Should have thought of that, every time I have had this phenomenon it has been that I accidentally loaded the paper wrong-side-up - it is easy to do especially on some matte papers!

In an initial panic I pulled out the prints but happily I did print them on the correct side. Then I went back to the printer dialog boxes to make printscreen shots and I see now that the printer profile on page 1 read Epson Stylus Photo R1800 instead of the paper profile for semigloss paper. I corrected the error and the print now came out just fine. Sorry I raised everyone from a restful status by my failure to see a glaring error. Thank you all for fixing it for me.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Royce Howland wrote:Also, is there any chance these prints were made on the back side of the sheet rather that the top (printable) side?

Should have thought of that, every time I have had this phenomenon it has been that I accidentally loaded the paper wrong-side-up - it is easy to do especially on some matte papers!

It's surprisingly easy to do with just about any paper that doesn't contain a watermark.