Bad quality in color printing

Recently my printer's color printing ability hasn't been printing color in very bad quality. Lines are appearing on everything that's in color, (black printing works fine) and pictures either come out with every few lines a messed up color or not at all. I tried callibrating, reinstalling, going through preferences, but can't get it to print right. Can someone help?

 

Take the cartridges out and check the heads/nozzles, there may be a build up of dried ink. To remove any dried ink, sit the cartridge on moist paper toweling for several hours, but be careful that ink will run.

When the cartridges are "parked" in the printer, the heads sit in "pots" to stop them drying out. The pots may be dirty, so check them again after testing.

Check there is no dried ink on the electronic connectors.

Matt

 

Thanks Pete, my experience with Epsons is very thin.

I am expecting head-cleaning has already been attempted. Look at the Maintenance options for the printer.

Matt

 

I have an HP deskjet 3620. I use #27 black ink and #28 color ink. I've tried replacing the cartridge but nothing happened, so I think it's a problem with the printer.

 

Some cautions when working with HP Inkjets carriages.
Using a moist, warm blotter works acceptable with single color (generally black). But with any of the HP's I've owned, the color cart has multiply color chambers in the same head. The rule with these and a warm / moist blotter is you can NOT allow the print head to be stationary on the blotter. You run the risk of ink color A seeping onto the blotter and than traveling UP into color B chamber. You may fix the plugged up nozzle, but at the expense of mixed colors in the same chamber. What I've done on a number of occasions, single or multicolored carts ....

Full piece of soft paper toweling , folded down to twice the size of the carriage.
Get paper good and moist, but not dripping.
Put moist paper into microwave, get it hot to the point you can barely touch it. Put it on a flat surface, something that you can clean up ink afterwards (flat glass is good).
Hold carriage in one hand, and gently / slowing move the print head across the the hot/moist folded towel. Do NOT exert a lot of pressure. If this is a single color cart, you can momentarily stop and start. If this is a multi-colored cart, NEVER stop and NEVER cross a previous ink trail. Do this for 2 to 3 minutes after you have good ink flow on the moist paper. Insert cart back into printer. Printer may make you run "alignment routine ", do it. Now view, run additional print tests. If not acceptable, run the same Hot/Moist process again. I've salvaged many a HP cart's this way.
I also refill carts. One major rule, when they go empty, immediately refill. If not, they dry out and they get very difficult.
I still have a HP 2610 network printer purchased less than 3 years ago. I will no longer buy Inkjet type printers. They are to problematic if they are not used on a daily / weekly printing tasks. I hope to buy a color Laser in the new future. I've used monchrome Laser printers since the early 90's and continue to use today. Use them daily, once a week, once a year ... they work as long as they powder in the the cart. I will be attempting to refill my own Laser cart in the near future. I've purchased / recycled refilled Laser carts in my laser printers for a number of years.

Additional Update
If multiple attemps on color cart continue to fail, you have one more option ... rather drastic ... this is salvage mode.
Fill a small coffee cup with water about an half inch from the top.
Put in microwave and get the water near a full boil.
Remove cup of boiling water, put it next to your flat glass surface. With a new, DRY folded piece of paper toweling in one hand, insert the just the nozzle surface of the print cartilage into the boiling water with the other hand ... for 1 to 2 seconds MAX.
Immediately put the nozzle portion onto the DRY paper toweling for 1 second... move to a clean dry spot and repeat about 3 to 5 times.
Again immerse in HOT, boiling water and back to DRY paper to blot dry nozzle area repeatly. Always using clean, dry areas. Do this cycle 5 plus times ... until you hopefully see good ink flow on your dry paper. The risk in this process is not so much in cross color contamination, but getting water into your chambers to the point of diluting your ink/color.