Epson printing magenta instead of blue

Why does my Ep[son print like this? I followed athread along the lines of “my printer is clogged” and the suggestion was to get it to print stuff over and over. This I did and the black loosened up and started to work. I then bought a new colour cartridge and installed it but still no blue. I created a word document and filled it with blue M’s for two pages. When I print this, it comes out Magenta. Any idea why? Can anyone help?

Try printing a full color image or a color wheel or something so see what’s really going on. Print some text in cyan to see if that color section is putting ink on the paper at all.

I just printed the Straight Dope page like you suggested and everything that was supposed to be blue came out pink! It’s got me beat. Also, how do you print a colour wheel? is it like a print test page?

OH! I thought you were trying to print a Blue’s Clues coloring page or something. Nevermind. :smiley:

Depending on the model of Epson printer you have, some have a program that cleans the print heads and then does a test print so that you can see if you are firing on all cylinders so to speak.

Try this. If your printer does not have this check the Epson support page for a similar utility. Or, do a test print if you can.

All of the newer Epson printers have this ability (I have the 700 and the 1200).

Jeffery

Your printer software may have a self test page that prints several colors. From the sound of it your cyan cartridge is not putting any ink on the page.

Here’s a color chart from Windows control panel that I captured with <alt>PrtScn and pasted into a paint program.

http://members.home.net/spad1/images/colors.jpg

Print that bad boy and see how it looks.

Also, check Control Panel/Printers/Properties and be sure that your settings are correct. Experiment with the intensity control.

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Finally, if none of this works…

Do you have a printer that uses black, cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges (All four)?

If so…make sure the magenta and blue carts aren’t switched…

(AKA the “When in doubt, check the power” rule)

Hey, run the printer self test. It prints a line of each color.

As allanadale said, printers usually use cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. Blue is agenta plus cyan, so it sounds like the cyan is not working. I’m not sure what can cause this, besides running out of cyan ink. Maybe the jets are blocked, or something is clogged, or the ink cartridge is not inserted properly.