magenta shadows

has anyone else encountered shadows going magenta when printing from photoshop 6 to an epson 1280 printer

if you work in CMYK color model you can specify a percentage of black for the shadow that will hold true.

the thing about those inkjet printers is that they sometimes try to mix black from all 4 (or 3) colors. that almost always results in a redish brown looking "black"

suggestion.... if it is REALLY critical, go to Kinko's print it dye sublimation

dye sublimation... mmm.... you know how to make me wet my pants, man... if only all printers used that method, we'd all be living in paradise, boys! :D

You need to get a proper printer profile for your epson 1280. There is no reason, outside of bad calibration, that you can't get nice black builds from that printer that should look exactly like what you see on your screen. Grayscale shadows are well inside every colorspace's gamut.