Have you tried to print with images from a real camera?


Prints too dark compared to what? The monitor? Softproof? A real print?



Monitor calibration, even though the colors are profiled, can still be too bright and usually is.
Then the prints are dark by comparison.
Can you run some tests by printing with the Epson profile for the paper you have, or set the driver to ICM and Qimage to Let Printer handle colors?

How is the White Balance of the image.?
Can you send me one?
wathree.ssz@verizon.net

Fred

Ken,
Here's what I got, and what I did!!

Received two images. One was a color chart shot using the iPhone.
The other I would guess was also from the iphone, based on the conditions of the shot, all crowded in.
I really don't know because whatever you used to create the JPG of the dog and the man completely wiped out all EXIF information.

So first thing I did was a White Balance of the dog with sunglasses (Love that shot).  It was overly blue, but hadf no effect on the print other than its camera white balance versus a reset white balance.
I made both prints. Either one is very good. There is no blue cast, and certainly not printing too dark... same as my monitor.

Next, I turned off my monitor profile and checked the gray scale ... definitely favoring the blue side.
The patches were not evenly lighted and the readings were all over the place....;/...  AND, the color chart was shot with an Iphone too.

So I don't know the light source for the color chart image, so I can only say, it prints what is on my screen

On a couple of gray patches I got, 188, 196, 209    133, 139, 151

Conclusion?
There's nothing wrong with Qimage, my monitor or printer profile.
There's really nothing wrong with the shots either... they look fine and print fine.
That leaves the culprit hiding either in your driver where you have some odd setting invoked. See screen snap, or a print filter invoked, see screen snap.
or the printer heads are clogged (blue cast) ...
I had an R 1800m prior to this R 2000, and it made gorgeous prints until the heads were bleeding over and colors were mixing.

Best I can do from here.

Sorry I took so long. I had to get my haircut.  What little I have left.

Fred

Just to follow up on this old topic, I finally bought a new Epson P600 to replace the R1800. It is producing prints that match the monitor perfectly, including the example provided to Fred. For some reason, the R1800 had been distorting colors such that there was no predictability without making several test prints for each image to be printed. Don't know if it was software or hardware, (driver had been reinstalled), but given it's age, a new printer seemed like the best way to go. So far, I'm loving the new printer!

Fred, you are probably right. The R1800 did have long periods of weeks and sometimes months of inactivity. I can easily see where there could be dried up ink blockages in various parts of the ink delivery system that were beyond the ability of Qimage unclogging and Epson cleaning routines to handle. Perhaps there is a more thorough manual cleaning process that could be done by disassembling the unit, but that seems like just too much effort. I plan to take advantage of the Qimage scheduled unclogging feature to keep the P600 in top shape. Lesson learned.

Thanks for your comments.

- Ken

I have an R2000 also, and you notice that it does the shimmy shimmy from time to shake up the inks. That probably helps.
I did have some clogging a couple of weeks ago, but I had some really outdated ink in there. Replaced a few cartridges (even though they still showed plenty of ink) and so far knock wood, going along swell.

Great Printer

Fred