Why has yellow printed as blue?

[Lorin]

I’ve been having an occasional printing problem that doesn’t directly concern Picture Window, as I use a separate printing program, but it hasn’t been possible to gain any useful knowledge on this difficulty from manufacturers, printing forums, et al and I would be grateful for any assistance in troubleshooting this problem...

Several times, (but not every time) the bright yellow at a specific luminance on a sunflower has printed as its complement (as a bright blue). Recently, the default “holiday red” of the PWP 6.0 calendar has printed as a bright green. Whenever this has happened, all other colors, including the reds and yellows print correctly.

Apart from a mechanical printer problem, which I wouldn’t ask to be within the scope of knowledge of participants on this forum, does anyone have any ideas why a color of a specific hue and luminance can print correctly most of the time, but then print as its complement at some other time (with two different papers and two different profiles) ? And how could one correct this (what steps to take) if it should happen again?

Thank you,
Lorin

[Dieter Mayr]

As you describe the effect I would not think of a mechanical problem at the printer, but a software rounding error somehow.
As it happens with very saturated colors I suppose somewhere in the calculating process that number near to the max is interpreted as a negative number, thus inverting the color to its complement.
I have no explanation why it happens not all the time, anyway.
Does the same hapen when printing from within PWP?
Did you check if there is a newer version of the printer driver, or if you have the latest already, to reinstall it ?

[jsachs]

Does not sound like a printer hardware issue - usually there is a clogged nozzle and some colors do not print.

It could be caused by a bad printer driver, a poor or corrupted printer profile, by improperly coded color management or by some other software bug.

[Lorin]

Dieter and Jonathan,

Thanks very much for your thoughts. I have reinstalled the printer driver and am working along those lines of your suggestions to troubleshoot. So far, the problem has not come up again when printing and I'm hopeful it will be ok now going forward.

Lorin