Thanks - That's reassuring. I'm in an awkward place. PayPal refuses to stop these charges, claiming they are initiated by me. I don't know what site would have initiated them. But that's my problem, not yours.

I'm being billed $24.60 each month, every month, for Qimage Ultimate. Is that correct? Has Q become a subscription service? If so, I'll need to find another printing application, or print directly from Photo Shop. If monthly billing is a mistake on Q's part, how to I get it to stop?

Hi Fred - Sorry for this  very delayed reply. I think I'm finally where I should be, with your good help. One of the keys was leaving ICM "not Off", as you suggested. Another was baking sure, in Edit/Preferences/Color Management/ICC that the correct printer profile was selected; the default is a Qimage RGB profile. The canned Epson printer profile for the paper selected works better, but is not perfect. Over the years, I've added a Qimage Filter to the specific profile, and that has worked very well. It takes time and trial to get that filter just right, but once I get it where I want it, , all I have to do is Save it, and then click it into existance.

I think I'm going to be okay now. Thanks for your help.

Bill

Having a terrible time posting screen shots to the Q forum. Looks like the two I sent this morning didn't come through. I'll try again, using two separate posts so I can stay below the 256KB limit.

In my verison of Q 2018.112 I do not see a Button with the word "properties". I used the path Edit/Preferences/Color Management/Printer and checked the green message "printer/driver will manage color use ICM option in driver"

If there's a differenct path I should use. I guess I need some hand holding, from start to finish, to find it.

First, the two screen shots I tired to send this morning. Now I'll try to send this

Hi Fred - Thanks for your note. I thought I had sent screen shots yesterday. Maybe they didn't come through. Trying again, with smaller shots which I hope will be easier to read. The green printing in screenshot 9 indicates to me that printer wil manage color. Is there another setting I should change? - Bill

And the second screen shot

Fred - Here's the first screen shot.

Hi Fred - It's good to see that you're still here, helping people. I was never able to get a post accepted to the Printer part of this forum. I've been away from printing for about a year due moving followed by a serious illness. Trying to return to printing with my one remaining printer, an Epson Artisan 837, I think that I'm double profiling.

Monitor was recalibrated on April17 2018 with a Spyder, settings almost the same as in Sept 2017. Using the Epson canned printer profile, which formerly would produce "perfect" prints after applying a "filter" in Qimage.

This printer produced excellent prints for a few years, but now prints are so dark I can't tell anything useful about color or contrast.Clearly I'm making some major error. No amount of Qimage "filter" corrects the print adequately. I've tried brightness +25, contrast -10, and that's not good enough. Didn't bother with color adjustment in filter

I'm going to send this without attaching images, because attempts to attach images are apparently what caused my previous posts to be refused (and then when I tried to re-post, those subsequent posts were refused because "you already posted this") - and today, I don't see any of my posts in the Printers part of the forum.

Okay - sending this - and then I'll send two further posts, each of them with a screen shot attached.

Three times in the past two days I've tried to post to the Printers discussion forum. My attempts result in an error message saying that the file size is too large, even though I know for sure it can not be too large, or even close to that. I notice that the last post to the Printer forum is almost 5 months old. So is that forum closed now? Any other help available for Qimage printing - aside from the excellent "Learn from example"??

Terry, Fred, and others - A fourth phone call to Epson support brought a different sort of reply. After running me through all the obligatory things to try (which I had already tried, of course) he agreed to send a replacement unit, a refurb. It arrived on April 9, and it worked perfectly "right out of the box". Even the printer profile supplied with the Epson driver is quite good. A few adjustments brought it up to an "essentially perfect" match between print and calibrated monitor. So - it's early days, but this third copy of the Epson 1430 looks like the charm.

Many thanks for all of your attempts to help, and especially to Terry, who nudged me into making the third and fourth phone calls to Epson support.

Bill Hansen

Tried to reply to Terrys questions yesterday but apparently the reply didn't go through. Trying again -

I much prefer to print from QU, for many reasons. But it's much easier for me to edit from LR or PS than it is from QU. This time, not having a custom printer profile (though actually the printer profile for the all-in-one is pretty good) I wanted to edit the images a little - so I loaded LR. 

As for whether I can return the printer, ~3 months after purchase, I was told by an Epson support person that they do not offer any support beyond the 30 day return period. I'm certainly going to phone them again, hoping to get a different answer.

I much prefer to print from QU, for many reasons.

However, for me, editing images in LR or PS is much easier than editing in Q or QU. Since I didn't have a custom printer profile for the all-in-one, I wanted to edit the images a little. That's why I loaded Lightroom.    As it turned out, the printer drivers supplied by Epson for the all-in-one are pretty good. Editing the images made the resulting prints a little better. 

But you're right - just for testing purposes, I could have used the drivers for the all-in-one and printed with QU.

The last time I phoned Epson about the original 1430, I was told that they do not offer support beyond the 30 day return period. If that information was incorrect, somebody please tell me, (and tell me the correct person to contact at Epson) because I surely would return the 1430.

As for consumer rights - this is America, where corporations, in addition to being "people", have all the power.

Well, as I often do, I spoke too soon. I got two additional good prints after I sent my last post, and then nothing but garbage, no matter what adjustments I made - really awful garbage.

After loading some images, profiles, and a copy of Lightroom onto it, I was able to make a few prints on my inexpensive little all-in-one printer, and those prints are very good, considering that it's only a 4 ink printer. My problem was the printer all along! Too bad - it had been doing an excellent job, for a while. It's only 3 months old, and it's probably a brick.

I have to decide whether to risk the time or  money for shipping the Epson 1430 to a service center. The nearest one to me is a four hour drive away, and they won't accept the printer if it's shipped. Labor and parts will probably come to a cost of $200 or more, and then there's the cost of gasoline for two 4 hour drives to and from the service center - total of 16 hours of driving. Ugh! Of course there's no guarantee that they could repair it.

BTW - regarding Windows updates. I always omit the optional ones, only installing the "critical" or "recommended" ones. But I now realize that the update wasn't the problem at all.

Printer driver settings have been the same, before the bad prints, during the bad prints, and now. No new software was installed during this time. The only change I see is one "critical update" from Microsoft.A single print I made before reinstalling the update was a good print.  I reinstalled that update, and prints are now unacceptable in the same way they were. I guess it's the MS update which causes this. I don't think it's safe to go without the critical update, since the computer is online via a router all the time.

I'm stuck. I think I'm sunk, as far as printing goes.

PROBLEM SOLVED - but we'll never know exactly what the problem was. I wasted a huge amount of ink and paper trying different things, and after everything else failed, I did a System Restore, to a time previous to the appearance of the awful printing problem. Everything's back to normal now, and I'm happy but still slightly anxious about how it all went wrong.


Bill