Epson 9600 Color Shift

[halsil]

Hello!
Recently, my 9600 has been printing with a reddish overtone. I'm on a mac running 10.5.8. My drivers are up to date, as well as the firmware. Nozzle check/allignment are all perfect. I have been printing for years and am well versed in color management. This issue is not a profile problem. If I attempt to make a print with my "normal" paper profile, as I have for years, I get the same same off color as I do without using any profile, or even attempting to make an awful print. It is if the printer does not even recognize ANY profile.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Hal

[prepresscolor]

Greetings hal,
Well you have quite the problem. The usual things to suspect seem to be the things you have already checked. The paper may be different. Sometime suppliers will change the makeup of their paper or their vendor which they buy from and not let the consumer know. Another thing could be a corruption of the print driver or the actual icc profiles your are using. Import new .icc profiles or just change out profiles and look for obvious changes.
You said you were schooled in color management, you may want to re-linearize and re-profile the Epson.

[michaelejahn]

"This issue is not a profile problem". well, will you agree at least that SOMETHING changed ? Okay, so, what RIP are you using, what is your workflow, need more details - have you printed and measured an IT8 target recently ? Do you have the ability to print and measure ? I would tend to disagree, as the profile controls the color conversion, if you print a greyscale image.

[halsil]

I appreciate everyone's response!
I gave in and contacted ESPON. We went back and forth with test prints. They were stumped and got me in touch with a 9600 repair tech. EPSON said I needed a new print head, along with all the accouterments....$1500 estimate! The tech and I begged to differ with EPSON. He suggested one last effort...flush the lines, and refill with a new set of inks. I did, and the problem was gone. The tech said it could have been a bad chip on a tank. The printer is up and running smoothly and neutral.
Regards,
Hal

[ColorGeek]

It could also be the ink. Are you using genuine Epson inks? Is this the Ultrachrome ink (I hope)? Also, you say you are printing out of the driver - so you probably don't have means to re-calibrate (usually a RIP function) but you could create a new ICC profile. Do you have a spectrophotometer and profiling software? The least expensive option for printer profiling software with spectrophotometer is ColorMunki Design. The bottom line is that the state of your printer has changed somewhere along the lines (for whatever reason) and you need a way to re-calibrate or re-profile.

[prepresspd]

...my 9600 has been printing with a reddish overtone. I'm on a mac running 10.5.8. My drivers are up to date, as well as the firmware.

Hal:

We have the same 9600 printer and from what I recall, 2yrs ago we got a new mac with 10.4 and I was looking for the drivers update and Epson told me that they stop doing support and driver for that particular printer.

I did some workarounds to install the newest driver that I found on their website for the printer and I end up having the same issues as you.

In order to solve the printing problems, we are using an old eMac with 10.3 with no issues at all. I dont think you have any kind of ink/print head/profiles issues, is just a driver problem with your new 10.5 computer.

Hope this info works for you.

Juan Ricart