Cartridges full. Why do cyan and magenta print faintly?

Epson printers have always been revered for their extremely high dpi resolution. This is what makes the output look so good. However, high resolution also means very small dot size, which equates to very small print head apertures. This can cause clogging and poor color distribution when it occurs. If you use you printer regularly (3-4 times a week at least), then you probably will never see the clogging issue. But is you don't use your printer very often, and especially if you turn it off after each time you use it, then you most likely are getting clogged print heads. Most newer printers want you to leave them on all the time, so that periodically, if you haven't used them is a certain time frame, they will run an auto-clean cycle to keep the print heads from clogging. Unfortunately, that also means that the unit is going thru ink at a rate that most users find unacceptable, so they resort to turning the unit off to save ink. This causes clogs, which can actually end up wasting more ink to fix than was saved by the shutting down process. It is all a way to sell more ink, since the printers themselves are usually sold at a loss. HP printers used to have ink cartridges with the print head built into it. That was nice, since if the heads clogged and could not be cleaned, you just bought another cartridge. These newer printers use a fixed print head with ink tanks. When they first came out, these tanks were cheaper than the other cartridges because they didn't need a print head in each one. But the greed of the companies eventually brought the prices up to the same level for either type. You will probably need to run one or more cleaning cycles to get the ink to work. If that fails, you should first replace the cartridges that are not working correctly. There are always some bad ones out there. If the problem persists, then repair or replacement is needed.