If your printer seems to be printing predominately in yellow, the majority of the time it is not anything to do with the yellow cartridge. What you are likely to be looking at is the absence of another colour from your prints giving this strange effect.
Why is my printer printing yellow not red?
It is most likely that your image is yellow where you were expecting it to be red and you may also notice that blue parts of the image appear turquoise instead.
Both of these effects are caused by a lack of magenta ink/toner on your prints. Magenta is added to both cyan and yellow to create these common colours. To see how the colours combine check out the colour mixing diagram below.
Why is my printer printing yellow not green?
This is a much rarer print quality problem and the results are much more subtle due to it not affecting common colours to the same extent. If your prints do not look quite right or have more pink than expected please see the image below.
Greens in your photos that look less vibrant or a strong pinky tinge to your prints is likely being caused by an absence of cyan ink/toner being printed. Other less noticeable inconsistencies are likely to also be present.
What can I do to solve this?
As discussed problems with colours not being printed accurately are likely to be caused by a single colour not being dispensed by your printer. So we can say with certainty which colour is the culprit I recommend first printing a ‘Test Print’ or ‘Nozzle Check’ from your printer to break down the 3+ colours your printer uses. From here it should be easy to identify the problem.
The method of producing these sheets and how your printer refers to them depending upon the make and model of the printer. If you struggle to locate the facility to do this I would recommend printing our very own ‘Colour Inkjet Printer Test Page’ or ‘Colour Laser Printer Test Page’.
For owners of inkjet printers I would recommend reading the short article I wrote on the subject of missing colours that you can find linked here. If however you have a laser printer all I can recommend is getting the toner cartridge replaced.
I hope you have found this article useful, if however you have any further questions, please get in touch via any of our social media platforms.
