[Leica] odd problem with Epson 2400 and 4800

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

Last week I posted a portrait of Joyce and Otto here. Joyce wanted a print 
of it, so I went to print it on my Epson R2400, and the print was unusable. 
Big areas of her eye and cheek looked like they had huge amounts of rouge 
spread on them--blobs of solid color. I printed it on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag 
smooth

I took the print and the image file into Keeble and Shuchat and asked for 
their help. The chap was pretty scornful ("it looks like this had a JPEG 
original; no wonder you can't get a good print") but, scornful or not, he 
did take the time to help me. He printed it on their Epson R4800 on Epson 
Premium Luster paper and got more or less the same results, though not quite 
so pronounced.

I left Keeble and Shuchat and went to the Long's Drug nearby, and put the 
same CD into the Long's kiosk, and printed an 8x10 on their Fuji Frontier. 
An excellent print, showing none of the artifacts that had ruined the Epson 
print. So I know that it /can/ be printed, even if it's not a perfect 
negative.

Here's the image:
        http://reid.org/brian/misc/JoyceOttoMay2006crop2diag.jpg
Here's a low-res scan of what it looks like printed on my R2400:
        http://reid.org/brian/misc/R2400-scanned.jpg

It's a close-up from the original image, enlarged to emphasize the problem.

If you have a good inkjet printer that is NOT an Epson, would you be willing 
to print this image and tell me if the print has the same defect on your 
printer?