I've done some googling and there are some interesting threads out there - like this one - and so I thought to myself... Let's see how the printer handles color management, in case Photatochop has bad profiles.
The answer is: At first glance, much better. But I had better let it dry and see.
15 minutes later, it's not significantly better than the other prints: The shadows block up with an ugly greenish color.
This is disappointing. I wonder if there's any reasonable way to find out if I'm suffering from double-color management transformation...
I just did a print head alignment, which took a couple cycles of recalibration. I'll try a last color managed print and then swap in the blacks... I'm already tired of diddling around with this.
Yeah, that didn't help too much. It's still too dark. I'll let it dry down and see how the colors are.
In the meantime I'm going to get the MIS inks in there.
(Ok, I gave in to temptation and ran a copy of my brides photo. That also looks terrible - way too dark. Are the canned profiles that bad?)
Looks like this is the process:
Swap cartridges.
Now that was amusing, since the prefilled cyan cart was DOA. So I also learned how to load a cart. Hope I did it right.
Nozzle check 0
This has some gaps, so I'll check it again after the cycle.
Cleaning cycle.
Nozzle check 1
This has different gaps. So.
Cleaning cycle.
Nozzle check 2
Another gap.
Cleaning cycle.
Nozzle check 3
Another different gap.
Cleaning cycle (wow, that's used almost as much ink as I used printing...)
Nozzle check 4
Ahh, pass!
Head alignment.
And that's great.
5 pages of MIS's purge pattern.
Unfortuntately I don't have a paper suitable for the UT14s - the closest I have is the office supply junk I bought. Ohwell. I'll waste a sheet of photo anyway.