Is there any solution to this?

Question

I'd like to ask why the Epson L18050 is showing banding on dark areas in my prints. I've made sure the head & nozzles are aligned, did power cleaning, etc - still nada.
I'm printing on A3 glossy photo paper, and I made sure to turn on the thick papers & envelopes setting (I am on Mac). I also turned off Quiet Mode and Reduce Print Data Size, don't know if those options help. Bidirectional Printing is on. On the Epson Layout software, I made sure the quality is set to High. Under Colour Management, I've tried matching it with my monitor's color profile, and the default printer-managed colour. I've also tried printing using sRGB and Adobe RGB - none of those helped.


When printing images with predominantly bright content, there is no issue. Only with dark areas this really becomes an issue. Is there any solution to this?

Answer 1

I see it's been a while since you've posted, but I just want to ask—has anyone tested third-party inks with the L18050 or ET18100 to see if that affects the banding? I'm wondering if ink quality or thickness could make a difference. Also curious if anyone's tried playing with the paper feed tension or platen gap settings lately, especially when printing on glossy or thicker media.

Answer 2

I had similar banding issues and figured out that switching to high-quality media settings helped a lot, especially on glossy stock. Also, make sure you’re not running low on ink even if the levels look okay. I switched over to an epson colorworks printer for some of my labels, and interestingly, I never saw banding on dark areas with it, so the print tech might handle ink a bit differently.