Color inconsistency when printing

I have an Epson 1400 printer.  Sometimes I can have good prints and other times they look bad.  I have found that Epson only likes Epson paper and inks, but there still is a problem.
I use PSE8 and if I do just the opposite of what Adobe advises, I print fine and almost any paper.  I have to shut off the PSE color management and use the printers.  Am I doing something wrong or do I just not understand all the stuff in PSE.  Appreciate any help.

First, make sure you have the Epson printer-paper profiles downloaded into your computer. The chances are good that they are because when you downloaded the printer driver, the profiles should have also loaded.
Second, in the PSE Editor, make sure you have a photo displayed that you want to print. Then, in the File menu, select Print. In the box that comes up, select More options....Then, select Color Managment. In the box to the right, in Color Handling:, select Photoshop Elements manages color. In Printer Profile: select the type of paper you're using, such as PremiumGlossyPhotopaper. This should follow the name of your printer, so one of the many choices should read something like Stylus Photo 1400 printer, PremiumGlossyPhotopaper. If you don't see your paper, then you'll need to download their profiles, either from the CD-ROM that came with your printer or from Epson's website. Assuming that you found your paper, next go to Rendering Intent: and select Relative Colorimetric. Next, click on Printer Preferences, which takes you to the printer's dialog box. Once there, select the paper you're using, such as Premium Photo Paper Glossy. Finally, be sure that No Color Adjustment or ICM appears in one of the settings boxes. Now try printing and see what happens.
The chances are good that the colors will be pretty close to what you see on your monitor, but the print may be too dark or too light (usually too dark). What you need to do next is calibrate your monitor. Perhaps the cheapest way is to buy Pantone's Huey Pro for about $90. It's a little spectrometer that you stick on your monitor and, when you activate the accompanying Huey software, it automatically makes the monitor accurately display the colors. You have to manually adjust brightness and contrast using little comparative circles that Huey displays on the monitor. Unfortunately, with today's LCD monitors, this can be pretty hard to do. However, you should be able to get into the ballpark and you can hone in of the correct brightness and contrast adjustments by making several prints until you get one that's pretty close to what you see on the monitor.
Hope this helps. Maybe someone else can chime in with a simpler explanation; I'd love to see one.

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