Epson R300 dark printing

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Patrick Butler

My R300 used to print just fine- in fact, excellent. Then about 3-4 months
ago it started printing very dark and the only way I could get acceptable
photos out of it was by cranking up the brightness in the printer driver by
25%. It still is nowhere near the quality as it was before some apparent
update of a program made it change. I've tried printing from two separate
computers with the same results.

Epson support said the 25% brightness setting is not unusual and they kept
saying they would come out with a new driver (that was a few months ago) and
that one of the Window's updates blew away their standard settings. I'm
wasting a lot of photo paper (Epson Premium Glossy) where in the past I
could get excellent prints on the first try. Makes no difference if I print
directly from Photoshop or from Windows print wizard.

I'm just about ready to sell this printer. Has anyone else had this problem
or know of a solution? thanks!
 
Patrick said:
My R300 used to print just fine- in fact, excellent. Then about 3-4 months
ago it started printing very dark and the only way I could get acceptable
photos out of it was by cranking up the brightness in the printer driver by
25%. It still is nowhere near the quality as it was before some apparent
update of a program made it change. I've tried printing from two separate
computers with the same results.
Click to expand...
ARE YOU USING AFTERMARKET INK
 
Patrick Butler said:
My R300 used to print just fine- in fact, excellent. Then about 3-4 months
ago it started printing very dark and the only way I could get acceptable
photos out of it was by cranking up the brightness in the printer driver by
25%. It still is nowhere near the quality as it was before some apparent
update of a program made it change. I've tried printing from two separate
computers with the same results.

Epson support said the 25% brightness setting is not unusual and they kept
saying they would come out with a new driver (that was a few months ago) and
that one of the Window's updates blew away their standard settings. I'm
wasting a lot of photo paper (Epson Premium Glossy) where in the past I
could get excellent prints on the first try. Makes no difference if I print
directly from Photoshop or from Windows print wizard.

I'm just about ready to sell this printer. Has anyone else had this problem
or know of a solution? thanks!
Click to expand...

This was actually common on Windows XP and there is a driver on the web to
help correct it (in North America)...if downloading the driver does not
correct it (contact Epson support about the settings to use as I don't
recall right now) then go into the printer properties and choose the Color
Controls and set the Gamma to 1.5 instead of the default 1.8...

This applies only if you are using XP...if you are on another operating
system then there is a good chance you have a color calibration issue with
the system or monitor...
 
Thanks Marky- the gamma setting worked perfectly! I knew that the gamma
would change the printing but wasn't sure how it interacted with the other
settings. Now it prints just fine without having to change the brightness
setting.

Pat
 
My R300 used to print just fine- in fact, excellent. Then about 3-4 months
ago it started printing very dark and the only way I could get acceptable
photos out of it was by cranking up the brightness in the printer driver by
25%. It still is nowhere near the quality as it was before some apparent
update of a program made it change. I've tried printing from two separate
computers with the same results.

Epson support said the 25% brightness setting is not unusual and they kept
saying they would come out with a new driver (that was a few months ago) and
that one of the Window's updates blew away their standard settings. I'm
wasting a lot of photo paper (Epson Premium Glossy) where in the past I
could get excellent prints on the first try. Makes no difference if I print
directly from Photoshop or from Windows print wizard.

I'm just about ready to sell this printer. Has anyone else had this problem
or know of a solution? thanks!
Click to expand...

Did you install XP SP2? This broke many of the Epson drivers. Go to the
Epson web site and get the new driver, uninstall the old, then install the
new one.
 
Did this, by chance, coincide with your installing XP SP2? If so, there
is a patch to fix it on the Epson website. It was a common problem,
and had to do with a change SP2 made to the driver's selection menu.

Art
 
I was aware that SP2 blew out the drivers and I already had installed the
newest driver, which incidently, was still from January of 2005. The gamma
setting change to 1.5 certainly helped and I was wondering if it could be
tweaked some more.

I just called Epson and they gave me a combination of settings in the color
settings preferences in Photoshop CS2 that worked perfectly. I would never
have guessed which settings to use because they are not intuitive and the
folks at Epson probably went through hundreds of sheets of photo paper as
they tried each setting. thanks for everyone's advice....

Pat
 
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