Why Won't My Printer Print In Red?

I was so close to looking on Craigslist Ads for a used but in working order printer. However, I gave Google a chance and found a YouTube guy who was able to fix his printer by printing. Who'd have thunk that one, huh?! Not me. I did a Nozzle Check and a Head Cleaning twice and the printouts were worse each time! It has been a month or so since I've noticed the printer did not print in blue or red. When I did the nozzle check, blue barely showed up and red, nor yellow showed at all. Only black was working without any issues.

I had no idea until this evening browsing the web and reading how a printer works that all a "head cleaning" really is is a "dump" into some ink reservoire. Once that bucket is full of ink, your printer will shut down, forcing the owner to buy a new printer. At that point, your printer is beyond repairable. This is what companies want you to do, hence why a clean is really a dump. I don't know how much ink I have in this "reservoire dump" but hopefully I am just in the nick of time for saving the printer all-together.

As for how to actually get your printer working right, there's a few super easy steps involved. First of all, I have an Epson Workforce 610 Printer that are notoriously known for FAILING to print in red. I didn't know that either until I myself had issues with the red ink. Other than this super common issue, I love the Epson Workforce. It has done great printing jobs and rarely jams. Also the SD card and scanning function is superb. Gotta love that!

Here is how I fixed my printer in just one hour (but if you don't have the supplies, it may take longer):

1. Print the Nozzle Check only under Maintenance Settings. Do not hit "clean" once the nozzle check is done. 
2. Notice what color is NOT printing. For me, there was no red or yellow ink on the page. There was some blue but it had streaking (where the line is not solid)
3. Make notice of your inks. Are they genuine? I had a spare CYAN ink cartridge that was genuine Epson. I noticed the original one in the cartridge was not genuine and immediately assumed that this was part of the reason my blue was not printing correctly. 
1. Once I had snapped in the new cyan cartridge into it's correct slot, the blue started working again! 
4. Place only genuine cartridges in the ink slots. If you have all OEM versions, trash them. They are not working in your printer; maybe your printer has been designed to unrecognize it... you never know how the Engineers over in Japan think...
5. Open up a Word document. Write the colors you intend on printing. Start with the basic colors. Red, Yellow, Black and Blue. Make the font large, bold and underlined. It helps to clearly see the yellow when your document prints. Go to File > Print but before hitting "okay" on the Print, select your "Printer Properties" button and choose "Best Photo" for printing. It will spill the ink onto the page rather than into an ink reservoire within the printer. 
6. It may take more than one print job to get the ink flowing but it shouldn't take more than three. Get that ink out of the printer and onto the paper. I now have 3 working colors. I just know that when my Magenta comes in (just ordered); it will work again. I know this because the two colors I was using under OEM were Red and Blue. I had a genuine blue one laying around and now used it. Blue is working again. So Magenta / Red is all I need to get the entire printer working again. 
7. Never do a head clean. It just spits junk into your printer. Only commit to a Nozzle Check when things aren't printing well. 

Hope this helps everyone!