Hi, I am having trouble printing on Moab paper. My suspicion is that the issue is not actually the paper, but I thought I would ask here.

I have a MacBook Pro, and am using the latest version of Lightroom. My printer is an Epson P400. My display is recently calibrated. Inkjet nozzle tests are good.

A couple of weeks ago I made some black and white prints of a handful of images, all of which had been soft-proofed using the ICC profile for Entrada Natural Rag 300. When printing I used this profile, set the Media Type to Ultra Premium Presentation Matte, and paper source was Sheet Feeder (all in accordance to the instructions for the ICC profile I downloaded). I then printed on the Natural Rag 300 paper.

I liked the results, the prints were pretty good.

A couple of weeks later I got a sample pack of paper from Moab and started experimenting with the same images (of course I first created virtual copies and placed them in a different folder in my Library to avoid any confusion). These new copies were soft-proofed for Entrada Bright Rag 190 and then printed on the same. I noticed a bluish cast to the lighter tones and somewhat mushy, reddish darker tones. It looked pretty much like crap.

The prints were sufficiently different enough from what I saw on my display while soft-proofing that I felt I should test further. I thus returned to the copies that I soft-proofed for Natural Rag 300 and printed them again, on the Natural Rag 300 paper (the settings HAD NOT been touched). The prints did not match my first prints. They had the same issue I had with the Rag Bright 190, they looked like crap. This happened across all the images I reprinted. I have not been able to duplicate the original good prints.

No settings (in either Print or the Development modules) had been changed that I am conscious of. I cleaned the ink jets and re-tested the nozzles. I replaced two ink jets that were low. I re-downloaded the ICC profiles, and reinstalled my printer drivers. Same results.

As I said, I don’t think this is an issue with the paper, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask here. Thoughts or suggestions? Anything would be appreciated.

Thank you,
David

David,
Thanks for all the info. I'm guessing there was a MacOS update or a Lightroom update installed between your first set of prints and your subsequent prints. What version of MacOS are you running? We are getting reports of intermittent color management issues with BigSur.

Thank you for your reply.
There was no update installed between the sets of prints. But - I did just update my Lightroom this morning. I have yet to try reprinting but I will. My OS is BigSur 11.6.2. Does intermittent color management mean that there have been sporadic issues, something that comes and goes?

Here is an additional troubleshooting process:

In Photoshop (assuming you have it installed)
Open the image you have been printing from Lightroom (you can use the external edit to get it to PS)
Select Edit>Convert to Profile
From the Destination Space pull-down menu select the Moab Entrada profile, and make sure to choose the same rendering intent you used with the original prints.
Size the image to your print size
Save this image as a TIFF

Download and install the Adobe Color Printer Utility:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/no-color-management-option-missing.html

Open your saved TIFF file in ACPU.
File>Page Setup to select your printer and paper size
File>Print to select the media setting
Print the image

ACPU bypasses all color management, but because you converted the image in PS the print profile has been embedded. This test allows us to see if there is application or OS-level color management causing your issue.