Thread: Color Calibration & Inconsistent Printing

I am printing on a Xante Illumina and the results are less than pleasing. I hear it worked great before we switched to Vista (we got new computers when I came on board) but since then (3 months ago), the color calibration started off poorly and has shifted and is now horrible (sometimes too much yellow and sometimes too much magenta). Also, when we try to print a solid color on card stock, the image is splotchy and white lines appear. This problem has gotten worse after we replaced our transfer belt.

Does anyone have any advice? Any help is appreciated.

I spoke to Jennifer. Her new computer is using Vista. The short history is that the previous computer was using XP and they went through a phone install with Xante tech Support. Xante Support had the customer add a driver for the Ilumina using a PS printer driver on the XP computer. Color output was perfect until they upgraded to Vista. What I noticed is that the customer was connected using USB on Vista. In the Ilumina preferences I also noticed that the PCL printer driver was being used. This would explain why there was a huge shift in color output. Example: they will select 100% Magenta using the PCL driver and the Magenta color on output would come out muddy to where some yellow and maybe a slight amount of cyan would be added. This is due to the PCL driver. The Ilumina is designed to print using the PS driver. I had Jennifer first delete the USB PCL printer form the printer list on the Vista computer. Then she went to xante.com to download the most up-to-date driver for the Ilumina (this was easier than having her look for the cd). Added a new printer using the old USB port (001) but this time, she I had her manually select the PS driver. She noticed right away that in the printer list that the PS driver was now in the name where the printer shows. Last time PCL was there. Printed a test page and the color output was perfect, the same output they had received when using XP. The 3 month headache is due to Vista automatically selecting the PCL driver rather allowing the selection for the PS to be chosen.
Xante Tech Support...

The difference is amazing. Everyone here is so pleased with how our printing is now looking.

Great advice!

Thanks very much for posting the resolution to the problem - it will be helpful for the next person who encounters the same problem or a related issue here. Also I'm very impressed to see how helpful and thorough Xante tech support is.