Hi Guys,

After a period of time I'm back trying to solve a printing issue. So I downloaded the trial of Qimage again and set everything up. (I'm sticking with Qimage this time so be prepared for some more questions.  ).
I'm using PSPx6. No colour management.
An Epson 1410. I have turned OFF colour management.
Ilford Smooth Pearl. I have downloaded and installed the profile.

I have followed and read all of Qimage documentation!!! I think! Evreything looks fine in PSPx6 and in Quimage. Colours are fine.
So my problem is - If I print a small 6 x 4 gloss print colour is excellent but tooooo dark. If I print an A4 using the Ilford profile the print is ok with darkness but the colour is now very faded. Also vignette and blacks have a 'green' cast. My main issue is the lack of yellows. (I have installed new ink tanks).

So? My question is what has my poor brain overlooked?

Regards

I have PSP X6 also.  I haven't been too impressed with the color out of that program vs. PhotoShop CS6 or most any other.  When I open it, it takes over my monitor's calibrated profile which sort of ticks me off as I can see the screen color shift when I open it from the default.  Once out of it, I have to revert the profile back to the calibrated one.  The Corel forum has some people who have issues with color management with PSP X5 and X6.  I wish they'd fix it.  I played with their software's color screen calibrator, and the two x-rite's and they are different in the final profile result.

Offhand, I'd guess your "Too dark" glossy is maybe your monitor being too bright which seems the norm.  Your lighter "Pearl" may be a different profile that puts less ink down than say your glossy print is getting.  Problem is the Ilford generic profiles sort of fit, but I haven't found them all that accurate compared to making your own.  Some paper surfaces take ink far better and make blacks much blacker than other surfaces which compounds the problems.  Epson doesn't make it easy as they have all sorts of paper types (glossy, matte, art, luster,etc.) and trying to make one fit another manufacturer's brand can be difficult.

Personally, I'd invest in something like a "ColorMunki Photo" to make sure your monitor is within tolerance for printing, and then run your sundry papers through it to establish an ICM profile to pull up in Qimage to print with.  I just had a peek at all my ICM profiles for my printers and all the papers I use and there are 244 of them in the C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color folder.  Most all are ones I made due to the inks I use (I gave up on pigments over dyes due to the papers I use.) and different printers I call up via Qimage.

I use several hardware calibrators: "DataColor Spyder 3" (Monitor only, and now retired.), x-rite "ColorMunki Photo" ($450) which does both monitor and printer profiles, and the x-rite "i1 PhotoPro 2" ($1,500) which does monitor and printer but also accounts for optical brighteners out of some "bright white" papers and bright white canvas that excess 100+ in brightness.  The ColorMunki Photo is sort of fun to play with though whereas the i1 PhotoPro 2 can be time consuming as heck to read some 2,300 color chips.

I have one printer I use for proofing, a Canon 9000 II, that I run OCP inks in.  My refills cost about 35 cents a cartridge so the money I saved in a year by not buying the OEM $16 carts paid for the "ColorMunki Photo" which profiles those inks too.  Buy some Costco Kirkland paper ($15 for 150 sheets) and it costs me maybe 12 cents an 8"x11.5" print.  Then I can move up to the Epson later once I have the print worked the way I want it via Qimage.

I suspect if what you are seeing in Qimage is the same for your different papers on your screen yet your prints look different, then it's time to calibrate with some hardware for those different papers.

Good luck.

Mack

Sounds like Mack has you covered. The only thing I didn't hear was a "Nozzle check" / "Nozzle clean"
That's a necessary item to rule out.

Fred

Usually a color cast indicates a wrong paper selection or clogged nozzles/
For example, (as you mention) the Ilford driver settings were different either in paper selection... forgot, and the Plain Paper was selected, your other settings sometimes follow the paper selection, and quality goes down as speed comes up, plus the driver being set to NO COLOR ADJUSTMENT now depends on a profile you are using which determines the colors and cast against a plain Xerox copy paper, you could get weird results.

Another item,,,, Ilford will give you free profiles for their paper, but they always had the "code" PDF file which contains the codes for which settings go with which printer and which paper.
If I recall something like IGSP112000_EPGn     and that told you what paper to select in the driver and the settings for color adjustment etc.

It looks like this, but more extensive for each printer in the file.

You can download the PDF file from them, or maybe this link will work.

Fred
PS I just downloaded their new pdf file from this past MAY.

BINGO!

All is now well in the asylum. The problem was the paper selection. The Ilford paper is a smooth semi gloss/pearl. So my poor brain selected Epson Semi Gloss. NO. I now realize I should have selected Epson Ultra Gloss.
My logic said that semi gloss = pearl. NO. That's why it was printing faster. Now with Ultra Gloss it's printing slower. Much slower and laying down more ink.

See it pays to read ALL of the documentation and not make assumptions. 

Never too old to learn. Never too old to make mistakes. The issue is now admitting I got it wrong!!!

Thanks for the input.

regards