Inkjet Printing Issues

[chrism]

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I'm about ready to take a sledge hammer to my inkjet printers. I made a photo today that was taken with a 47 year old camera and lens, using a film that was discontinued by Kodak ten years ago. By luck, or maybe just by design, it came out well, so I decided to print it. And then my troubles started...

I have three inkjet printers. The oldest is an HP 7600 that was lauded in its day, but has been relegated to reserve duty since I acquired an Epson 2400 (the recipient of a failed experiment with refillable cartridges and the QUADtone RIP) and then it's replacement, an Epson P-600. I also have an HP B210 MFC which is capable or printing directly from an iPhone or iPad, and doesn't decline to perform if printing from the computer. This photo was good enough I decided to do an experiment, and print it from all three. They all have the latest drivers for the computers they are connected to, and all have full ink cartridges.

The Epson P-600 (newest of all) apparently uses the manufacturer's trick of adding cyan to black-only monochrome prints. Plainly the result is is a blue to white mono spectrum and of no use to me. This trick is a way of using colour cartridges even when they are not needed and the printer will not function if any cartridges "need" replacing (even if it is an MFC that is just scanning). It also produced vertical lines across the prints from top to bottom of light and dark lines.

The HP B210 did something similar, with so much cyan added it was a purple-white monochrome spread.

My oldest printer, the HP 7600, made a B&W photo with no coloured ink as far as I could tell, but it was very dark, with the dark parts of the subject's hair being uniform black, and with a nasty 'jpg-compression-like' line of sudden change from dark to absolute black (absolute as far as that printer is concerned) down her neck. Looked like a poor quality jpeg with visible gradations. Since it seemed to be the only printer that made a true B&W only print, I played with its driver and tried what I could to avoid those artifacts. The driver has options for "Real Life Digital Photography" and I hope you feel as scared as I do by that name alone. Among those options are "Adaptive Lighting" and "Photo Brightening". Low, medium or high in each case. High means a print with none of the sudden JPG-like changes between light and dark areas, but no artifacts and yet it is far too light overall. Medium results in one with all the artifacts, as does low.. Yes, I wasted paper and ink testing them separately.

It seems the only printer I have that works as expected (but does not do photos) is may Brother MFC laser printer. In order to try to print an acceptable version of one photo I have wasted a dozen sheets of premium lustre photo paper, and now two of these printers are claiming they need new ink cartridges, which will cost around $50/cartridge when shipped. It would be cheaper to spend a day or two in the darkroom (which I no longer have) running multiple sheets of Ilford MG through the enlarger than to do this!

I'm about to move house I will certainly keep and take the Brother MFC. If I could take one inkjet that prints decently from macOS 12 for B&W prints, what ought it to be in your experience? Or is it the case now that a photo on the wall must be professionally made elsewhere and not at home?

 

Mods: please move this thread wherever makes sense to you!

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by chrism

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[jankap]

I use an Epson too: Stylus 1500 with the original ink cartridges. My Mac system has to stay at Mojave. Otherwise the printer does not work (neither via wlan nor via cable). I seldom print and when then colour.

The pictures are being optimized in PhotoShop for my laptop screen (no special monitor yet). To print them I lower the contrast in this way: under Image, via Adjustments to Curves. There I take the marker at the bottom left and move it upwards to 15. This is my method.🙂 

 

[chrism]

I may have done something towards sorting it out. Writing my tirade above (I was so cross!) brought to mind the QUAD Tone RIP, and I thought it would do no harm to try it again. At least I'd have control of whether any coloured ink is admixed with the blacks in the standard UltraChrome inkset of the P-600. And indeed it doesn't come out blue, having chosen a warm curve for the pK cartridge and Premium Photo Paper.

It's rather nice to rediscover this RIP. I had a bit of an expensive disaster with the 2400 and the Piezography inkset. The printer absolutely would not recognise the non-OEM cartridges and I ended up with wasting several hundred dollars and speeding the 2400's journey to the scrapheap as it self-destructed when wasted ink during cartridge changes flowed by design into a sponge pad in the bottom of the chassis and when the sponge was full the printer end-of-lifed itself. But the QUAD Tone RIP wasn't the problem and it maybe will save me now. Worth the shareware fee if it does!

[jimofnyc]

Ahh....the saga of ink jet printers.  It has been my experience that OEM cartridges work best, although they cost way more than third party cartridges.  Ink that is pigment based is different than dye based inks.  Most off brand refill cartridges are dye based inks and just do not make the correct colors when printing.  If you are having trouble getting your printer to accept them try this:  after installing the new "off brand" cartridges and while the printer is starting up with the new ink cartridges.  Pull the printer's power plug out of the wall and then repower the printer so that it can complete setting up with alien ink cartridges. It might reset and like them at that point.  Also there is a utility program for the Epson Stylus printers to reset the waste ink overflow container inside the printer.  It might then be wise to put a few paper towels under the printer just in case the waste ink reservoir is actually full.

[chrism]

I've never used off brand cartridges in the P-600 though, that was back when I had the 2400. I am tempted sometimes to try again with the refillable cartridges or bottles and tubing systems available from places like inkjetmall. But it takes a fair investment, and if they don't work it's a lot of money wasted that could have bought OEM cartridges!

What would suit me best, would be if I could leave the colour cartridges as the OEM (they almost never get used, as ordinary colour printing in this house is on a cheap HP MFC, and text-only printing is on a Brother laser MFC. The P-600 is really just for B&W photographs.) and have just the LLK, LK and PK cartridges replaced with refillables. I don't know if they can be mixed and matched that way.

[chrism]

I had a chat with inkjet mall, and they say it's fine to use refillable black cartridges for LLK, LK and PK alongside original UltrChrome Epson colour cartridges. We will see.