My photo printer and I decided to have artistic differences again. I was going to call them irreconcilable differences but we have reconciled and I’m not divorcing it at this time.
Along the way to solving this issue, I learned a thing or two about photo printer care. Read on!
The short version
I need to use my photo printer once a week and if I don’t have anything to print, I need to print a test page. I also need a good print backup in case I can’t use my printer. Ordering prints at a drugstore is not good enough.
The Long Version
Due to my current creativity issues, a lot of time passed without printing any photos. I lost track of time and didn’t realize how long it had been until I wanted to print our anniversary photo.
I was worried. I knew from experience a couple years ago (albeit with a cheaper printer) that when I left the country for 2 weeks and didn’t use it, something happened and it wouldn’t print properly.
Sure enough, after a few weeks of nonuse, the anniversary photo had lines on it. Noooo! I replaced a low cartridge and cleaned the ink heads several times. After each time I printed a smaller version of the picture. It got better, but not 100%. At one point, the lines went away but then it printed blurrier than the one with the lines!
Trying not to panic, I took the printer to an authorized repair shop. He took a look at it and said he couldn’t find anything wrong with it — it was in great shape. It was as fun as thinking there’s something wrong with you but the doctor not being able to find anything. He told me to run a couple more cleaning cycles.
So I went home and cleaned it again. After a couple more cycles (I think 10 total by this time) it WORKED!
The guy at the shop told me that long periods of nonuse can cause the print heads to dry. He recommended printing something often to prevent this.
Trying Prints at Walgreens via Snapfish
In the middle of this, I really wanted to finish the anniversary page. So before it was fixed, I used Snapfish to send the photo to my local Walgreens (hoping for instant gratification). Not so much. The color was off and the quality was noticeably poor.
Download a Test Page for Your Printer
I made a PDF to print once a week if I don’t have anything else to print. The printer guy told me to print something that will use each of the cartridges. Many printers come with four cartridges (CMYK – cyan, magenta, yellow, black). My Espon printer has those plus a red and orange.
download a CMYK test page
download an Epson, 8-cartridge test page
So, if you order prints, whom do you order from? What should I use as a backup service?
Almost Never Clever 