Odd print colours but just from a specific machine

jammy_c

jammy_c

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Name
James
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Hey guys and girls,

My wife has just got a new windows 10 laptop.
Whenever we print anything from it the colours come out awful. It's always over saturated and too bright.

The picture on the left was printed from my phone via WiFi and the colours are true to the on-screen image.
The picture on the right is the exact same image file but printed from a Windows 10 HP laptop.
It prints correctly from all our devices except for my wife 's laptop. My Mac is absolutely petfect. So it's a Windows/laptop-specific issue: the printer itself is absolutely fine.
Can't for the life of me figure out why it's doing it. It's driving me mad.
My wife needs to print from the laptop for work and the kids for school so I need to sort it.

Any ideas? I've tried all I can think of including downloading the latest print drivers.20200727_165956-01-01.jpg
 
Check all the print preferences/settings on the laptop.
 
By what method are you using to 'send to print'?

As based on your description it does look like a W10 specific issue and FWIW I have printed fine by simply right clicking an image file and then clicking print photo... .the dialogue that comes up is straightforward and the prints are good.
 
Box Brownie said:
By what method are you using to 'send to print'?

As based on your description it does look like a W10 specific issue and FWIW I have printed fine by simply right clicking an image file and then clicking print photo... .the dialogue that comes up is straightforward and the prints are good.
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I tried a few different ways. Firstly opened the image (.jpg) from the desktop in the usual windows viewer and right-clicked "print". (very few options available). Then I also tried printing directly from google chrome and finally from PowerPoint after inserting the image and all of these options gave the same outcome.
 
jammy_c said:
I tried a few different ways. Firstly opened the image (.jpg) from the desktop in the usual windows viewer and right-clicked "print". (very few options available). Then I also tried printing directly from google chrome and finally from PowerPoint after inserting the image and all of these options gave the same outcome.
Click to expand...
jammy_c said:
Yeah, I've been through them all (changed them all and changed them back again but to no avail).
Click to expand...

The only common denominator left seems to be the printer driver on the laptop.....but from what you say in answer to @Nod you have gone through the various driver settings.

A daft question? Have you tried printing an/other jpeg with the W10 laptop and/or say a pdf with embedded pictures...if so are they ok or equally 'blown'?

Oh, what make & model is the printer and is the phone fruit or robot ?

PS what is also odd is that in the print on the right. The blue and red (channels) are at max as part of the 'overexposure' and maybe the green channel is missing or at least reduced to zero. Very odd indeed....I read it that the picture when viewed on the laptop screen it looks like the printed picture on the left? If so I am now stumped/out of my depth :thinking::thinking::thinking:. If however when seen on the laptop it does look like that right hand image.........

Then maybe, though this sounds implausible as screen viewing colours should not affect prints (unless saved with odd changes), maybe the display settings have been messed up???
 
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Box Brownie said:
The only common denominator left seems to be the printer driver on the laptop.....but from what you say in answer to @Nod you have gone through the various driver settings.

A daft question? Have you tried printing an/other jpeg with the W10 laptop and/or say a pdf with embedded pictures...if so are they ok or equally 'blown'?
Click to expand...

I tried a few different images on the W10 laptop. Originally my wife tried printing some labels with a product photo on and the deep browns came out light yellow and the off-whites were not visible at all to the background. she tried the exact same document on our iMac and it worked fine. I tried another product image just onto printer paper and had the same weird effect. then this photo.

Oh, what make & model is the printer and is the phone fruit or robot ?
Click to expand...
The laptop is high-ish spec HP, and the printer is a Epson XP760. the phone is Android.

PS what is also odd is that in the print on the right. The blue and red (channels) are at max as part of the 'overexposure' and maybe the green channel is missing or at least reduced to zero. Very odd indeed....I read it that the picture when viewed on the laptop screen it looks like the printed picture on the left? If so I am now stumped/out of my depth :thinking::thinking::thinking:. If however when seen on the laptop it does look like that right hand image.........
Click to expand...
No, it looks perfectly normal on-screen. Originally I just suspected an issue with the printer/ink, but having printed from other sources it's obvious it's the laptop.

Then maybe, though this sounds implausible as screen viewing colours should not affect prints (unless saved with odd changes), maybe the display settings have been messed up???
Click to expand...
All the display settings seem normal. Maybe I'll try forcing a windows update.
 
If you have a look at page 89 of the Epson manual it talks about adjusting the colours.


This aspect is a manual adjustment......but why, if they are out of kilter, this is needed to be done in your case I know not but something is throwing the colour off.....so worth a look (as above I am thinking the Green channel is zeroed & other settings are 'wrong') if you haven't drilled down to that part of the driver settings. FWIW such settings also exist on my Canon printer but I have never had cause to access them.
 
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Do you have another printer you can use? It could be that the lappy and that particular printer don't speak nicely to each other. Might be worth trying a physical connection (USB) between the two to see if that makes any difference.

FWIW, we use a selection of printers and 'puters, some Win 8, some 10 and one 7 via wi-fi and tethered and none of them cause problems so I don't think it's an OS problem.


ETA. Might it be a colour space problem?
 
Box Brownie said:
If you have a look at page 89 of the Epson manual it talks about adjusting the colours.


This aspect is a manual adjustment......but why, if they are out of kilter, this is needed to be done in your case I know not but something is throwing the colour off.....so worth a look (as above I am thinking the Green channel is zeroed & other settings are 'wrong') if you haven't drilled down to that part of the driver settings. FWIW such settings also exist on my Canon printer but I have never had cause to access them.
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Thanks. I'll have a good look though the manual and see what's what. I could probably get it to print well from the laptop by tweaking those channels/settings but the problem then will be printing from all other devices. I don't want to start messing too much with the printer as I know it's actually behaving normally otherwise apart from the data it's processing from the laptop.
 
Nod said:
Do you have another printer you can use? It could be that the lappy and that particular printer don't speak nicely to each other. Might be worth trying a physical connection (USB) between the two to see if that makes any difference.

FWIW, we use a selection of printers and 'puters, some Win 8, some 10 and one 7 via wi-fi and tethered and none of them cause problems so I don't think it's an OS problem.


ETA. Might it be a colour space problem?
Click to expand...

Hi. I don't have another printer that I can use at home, but maybe a friend could give it a try. Thats a good shout on the physical connection. I'll try connecting via USB rather than the WiFi to see if that establishes anything. I'll try rebooting with the printer connected to see if it picks up the new hardware and does anything with the drivers.
 
jammy_c said:
Thanks. I'll have a good look though the manual and see what's what. I could probably get it to print well from the laptop by tweaking those channels/settings but the problem then will be printing from all other devices. I don't want to start messing too much with the printer as I know it's actually behaving normally otherwise apart from the data it's processing from the laptop.
Click to expand...

AFAIK making changes in the driver settings on the Windows laptop will have no effect on the success or otherwise of printing from other devices. You are merely changing the instructions that the printer will work from......the other devices are using the driver with another set of instructions.

A very loose analogy might be you and a friend are both driving to the same destination but you are in a car with manual gearbox and your friend had an auto ~ you are independent of each other in regard to getting to the destination ;)
 
When you go into the printer preferences on the Windows laptop, is the colour on the printer set to auto or manual. It should be auto but if for some strange reason it is set to manual, then change it to auto.
 
Scots_quine said:
When you go into the printer preferences on the Windows laptop, is the colour on the printer set to auto or manual. It should be auto but if for some strange reason it is set to manual, then change it to auto.
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The only options it gives is Colour or B&W.
 
Did you let the printer self install using windows 10 drivers or did you download the latest one from Epson.

Windows 10 drivers work in the main but I have to use the genuine Canon driver for my printer.
 
Definitely a driver issue. I would reinstall the latest widows 10 driver from Epson. If there is no windows 10 specific driver, or it still doesn't print correctly, you may be able to force the laptop to run the printer in a retrograde mode (e.g. windows 8) by installing the driver in compatibility mode.
 
I did install the latest driver from the Epson site but it seems as though they now only do generic drivers for all their printers rather than specific models individually. I'll give it another go, cheers guys. failing that'll contact Epson and see if they can help.
 
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