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Author Topic: CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets  (Read 50532 times)

Doyle Yoder

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #100 on: December 09, 2009, 07:04:55 am »

Quote from: SimonS
The problem with diagnosing this particular problem is that it is necessary to do the tests extremely meticulously, carefully documenting what settings are used, and use a known benchmark print to compare results with.  Some correspondents on this website have clearly not done this and their results, and comments, only muddy the water - unfortunately (I am not suggesting for one moment that you are one of these).

The whole situation is an awful mess !  This is much is clear.

Simon

Why do you not answer my questions, which makes it appear that you are one of these.

In my working with Canon and the documentation that I have pointed you to I think you should be able to get this working correctly. Or maybe I am mistaken and you do not print with Canon printers.

Doyle
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Mark D Segal

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #101 on: December 09, 2009, 07:39:34 am »

Quote from: SimonS
Hi Don.

Early on in this débacle, when I was still in email correspondence with Kevin Connor and Tom Attix of Adobe, I asked if - as a result of the testing they were doing, and had done - they would send me, or publish, a list of printers with which it was possible to print accurate targets without colour management.  This, along with information about the printer driver and the version, and iteration of OSX - and any other relevant details.

This they have not done, despite repeated and polite requests.

It is reasonable to surmise, therefore, that they have been unable to find a sufficiently robust workaround with CS4, and that this effects ALL printers.

............................
.

Why knock on Adobe's door about this? What makes you think it's their problem? From all I've read here - and with considerable interest in case I decide to change my O/S - it would appear to me that this is an Apple Computer Inc. problem which they need to resolve. Now interestingly, Wayne Fox says they've recognized the issue and Jeff Schewe says a number of other issues have been addressed in a "dot" release or two of Snow Leopard, so perhaps from hereon it is just a matter of waiting for the printer target "no color management" issue to be resolved and all will be well?

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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doyle Yoder

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #102 on: December 09, 2009, 07:52:30 am »

Quote from: MarkDS
Why knock on Adobe's door about this? What makes you think it's their problem? From all I've read here - and with considerable interest in case I decide to change my O/S - it would appear to me that this is an Apple Computer Inc. problem which they need to resolve. Now interestingly, Wayne Fox says they've recognized the issue and Jeff Schewe says a number of other issues have been addressed in a "dot" release or two of Snow Leopard, so perhaps from hereon it is just a matter of waiting for the printer target "no color management" issue to be resolved and all will be well?

For a lot of us this issue has been resolved. For others it could be and Don Cone is a prime example. For others it would appear they have more interest in complaining than resolving.

Doyle
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Mark D Segal

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #103 on: December 09, 2009, 08:19:59 am »

Quote from: DYP
For a lot of us this issue has been resolved. For others it could be and Don Cone is a prime example. For others it would appear they have more interest in complaining than resolving.

Doyle

When you say "it" has been resolved - do you mean by Eric Chan's (generously provided) workaround, or generically for all printers and drivers at the level of the O/S itself?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doyle Yoder

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #104 on: December 09, 2009, 08:58:42 am »

Quote from: MarkDS
When you say "it" has been resolved - do you mean by Eric Chan's (generously provided) workaround, or generically for all printers and drivers at the level of the O/S itself?

All printers and drivers no I don't believe so as some drivers still appear to have coding issues. But yes there are drivers that when installed properly work correctly. I will again point out that there are previous posts here and elsewhere of proper procedures to do this. I believe SL presents maintenance challenges that also contribute to this, such as cleaning cache files when changes are made and driver installs that for what ever reason do not properly register with ColorSync. And I have personally seen where permissions got messed up and could not be repaired creating a need to uninstall drivers and then reinstall. All of these issue can happen in previous OSs but SL seems to be more prone to this.

Also it has been widely reported that upgrades to OSs instead of a clean installs cause numerous problems with printer drivers. In most cases a complete uninstall, delete cache files and reinstall of the printer drivers fixed these problems. This is exactly what Epson is suggesting as well though I believe they have missed the deleting cache part.

As for Eric Chan's (generously provided) workaround, no this is not what I am talking about. I am referring to correctly working drivers. Eric workaround just like the ColorSync Utility workaround may be necessary for drivers that cannot function correctly. Also any application that uses the old printing path and that you can turn off color management can be used to to print unmanaged targets.

Doyle
« Last Edit: December 09, 2009, 09:06:40 am by DYP »
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Mark D Segal

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #105 on: December 09, 2009, 10:08:19 am »

Doyle, thanks for that response. It raises an interesting industry coordination issue which may be worth some discussion. To use a musical analogy, we have a conductor, the players and the audience. Let us say the OS is the conductor, the printer drivers are the players and the customers are the audience. In the final analysis the audience needs to be satisfied with the performance. This means that the orchestra needs to have its act together. In the musical world, the conductor changes some details of the performance and the players are expected to fall in line and perform. All that is supposed to happen during rehearsals, so to the greatest extent possible there are no surprises on stage during the performance, though such is known to happen. Now taking it back to operating systems and printer drivers, one really wonders why this particular orchestra seems to be doing too little fine-tuning during rehearsal and and too much during the performance, to the detriment of the customers. I might add, this is not the first time or the only context in which there have been printing issues with new software releases.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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DonCone

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #106 on: December 09, 2009, 10:32:31 am »

Quote from: SimonS
Hi Don.

Early on in this débacle, when I was still in email correspondence with Kevin Connor and Tom Attix of Adobe, I asked if - as a result of the testing they were doing, and had done - they would send me, or publish, a list of printers with which it was possible to print accurate targets without colour management.  This, along with information about the printer driver and the version, and iteration of OSX - and any other relevant details.

This they have not done, despite repeated and polite requests.

It is reasonable to surmise, therefore, that they have been unable to find a sufficiently robust workaround with CS4, and that this effects ALL printers.

I am interested in your workaround.  I recall that when I tried it with OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger) the targets were printed with some patches clipped (patches with different colours were printed identically*) and thus were not suitable for profiling.  I will, however, try it again to be absolutely sure.
* I used a target printed from PS CS2 as a benchmark.

The problem with diagnosing this particular problem is that it is necessary to do the tests extremely meticulously, carefully documenting what settings are used, and use a known benchmark print to compare results with.  Some correspondents on this website have clearly not done this and their results, and comments, only muddy the water - unfortunately (I am not suggesting for one moment that you are one of these).

The whole situation is an awful mess !  This is much is clear.

Thanks for the response Simon. I'm not surprised that you have not heard back from Adobe. Adobe can't be in the position of pointing fingers at other vendors so information on testing is not shared. This community is the best source of information on the problem because we have a diverse hardware/software base to draw from. You are correct that gathering data needs to be done meticulously but if we share what works as well as what does not work we would have information that is invaluable to developers. They do read these forums.  That is why I wanted to take the time, paper and ink to find out what DOES work.

What I did was not a "workaround" it was simply setting up each application to print bypassing Colorsync. I was able to do that successfully printing Eye-One targets. The printer driver and printer responded correctly and I got good target prints. But, others can't do that and for them Eric's "workaround" fixes the problem. That should be a BIG clue.  As I understand it, Eric uses Colorsync to apply a null correction to fix the problem. The "workaround" does not work on my system. So, what is different? The OS is the same, the applications are the same but the printers and drivers are not. Doyle has been hammering on this consistently and frankly, it makes sense. He is also correct regarding corruption of cache files and I believe that re-installing ColorMunki from the original DVD and then updating to the current version for Snow Leopard is what fixed my friends problem with ColorMunki on the Epson Pro3800.

If more users would report their successes we would be a lot farther down the road to a solution of the problem.

Don
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Doyle Yoder

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #107 on: December 09, 2009, 10:52:36 am »

Quote from: MarkDS
Doyle, thanks for that response. It raises an interesting industry coordination issue which may be worth some discussion. To use a musical analogy, we have a conductor, the players and the audience. Let us say the OS is the conductor, the printer drivers are the players and the customers are the audience. In the final analysis the audience needs to be satisfied with the performance. This means that the orchestra needs to have its act together. In the musical world, the conductor changes some details of the performance and the players are expected to fall in line and perform. All that is supposed to happen during rehearsals, so to the greatest extent possible there are no surprises on stage during the performance, though such is known to happen. Now taking it back to operating systems and printer drivers, one really wonders why this particular orchestra seems to be doing too little fine-tuning during rehearsal and and too much during the performance, to the detriment of the customers. I might add, this is not the first time or the only context in which there have been printing issues with new software releases.

Mark, that is a really great analogy.

And, I might add all three need to have some level of intelligence, and be willing to understand what is going with all their partners.

Doyle
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Wayne Fox

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #108 on: December 09, 2009, 02:24:06 pm »

Quote from: MarkDS
Why knock on Adobe's door about this? What makes you think it's their problem? From all I've read here - and with considerable interest in case I decide to change my O/S - it would appear to me that this is an Apple Computer Inc. problem which they need to resolve. Now interestingly, Wayne Fox says they've recognized the issue and Jeff Schewe says a number of other issues have been addressed in a "dot" release or two of Snow Leopard, so perhaps from hereon it is just a matter of waiting for the printer target "no color management" issue to be resolved and all will be well?
In regards to printing targets (the main issue of this thread)  I'm not sure Apple is the primary cause.  Additionally,  the issue has existed since Leopard (it was not introduced with Snow leopard although many of us were hopeful SL would fix it). Because of Mark's (and others) efforts at least some engineers at Apple are now aware of the importance of insuring there is a non-mangaged path to print targets, but it is still the driver's responsibility to manage things correctly to achieve this result.

As far as wider problems with Snow Leopard and Epson printers,  I believe most users experiencing problems with Snow Leopard are getting bit by numerous upgrades and lots of "stuff" left laying around from previous OS X and Epson driver installs.  Several have reported that fully deleting all Epson drivers and cache files followed by a reinstall of the drivers resolved their problems.  Also I know of at least one person who did a fresh install of SL on a separate partition, booted from that, installed the drivers and printed fine.  There also appears to be some users that skipped Leopard, and are now moving to snow Leopard, so they are experiencing the same issues many of us went through quite some time ago.

The issue is puzzling to say the least because many users are having no problems whatsoever.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, I did a simple install of Snow Leopard, and continued printing without any problems to my 7900.  I also have had no problems printing to my 3800 and my 11880.  What's different about my system?  I'm not sure ... I wish I knew.
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na goodman

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CS4/Leopard fix for printing targets
« Reply #109 on: December 09, 2009, 03:09:35 pm »

I also have had no problems printing to an epson 9800 and a 3800. I continue to print my targets out of CS3 for my work around even though CS4 is what I use for everything else. Just seems the easiest thing to do right now. As you and others have stated the printing of targets has been an issue for a long time, hopefully some day it will get resolved.
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Photo Op

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« Reply #110 on: December 10, 2009, 06:40:54 am »

Quote from: Wayne Fox
Several have reported that fully deleting all Epson drivers and cache files followed by a reinstall of the drivers resolved their problems.

Wayne- how does one delete appropriate cache files from 10.6.2? Where are they located. Search has proved fruitless. Thanks!
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David

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« Reply #111 on: December 10, 2009, 10:25:31 am »

I'm using a Canon iPF6100 with SL and print with custom icc profiles via ImageNest 2.0.  If I use the printer CM/colorsync route I get prints with a light gray background.  Using the Vendor CM option and no color correction prints are fine.  Screen grabs for the latter workflow shown below.




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Simon J.A. Simpson

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« Reply #112 on: December 10, 2009, 10:49:07 am »

Quote from: DYP
Simon

Why do you not answer my questions, which makes it appear that you are one of these.

In my working with Canon and the documentation that I have pointed you to I think you should be able to get this working correctly. Or maybe I am mistaken and you do not print with Canon printers.

Doyle

Doyle.

I am not sure what questions you mean.  I have several times, on other forums and posts, given you details of my set-up.  I have also invited you to test whether your set-up is, indeed, able to print accurate targets without colour management using a benchmark print from a version of Photoshop prior to CS4.  I am awaiting your results with interest - along with the details of your set-up.  If, as you and others contend, that it is the printer driver that is at fault then publishing your results, methodology, and set-up would help clarify the whole situation for a lot of people.
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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #113 on: December 10, 2009, 11:11:57 am »

Quote from: Scho
I'm using a Canon iPF6100 with SL and print with custom icc profiles via ImageNest 2.0.  If I use the printer CM/colorsync route I get prints with a light gray background.  Using the Vendor CM option and no color correction prints are fine.  Screen grabs for the latter workflow shown below.

ImageNest does not use the new printing path and that is why you have full control over the drivers. With LR and PSCS4 that use the new printing path the Color Matching dialog will be grayed out and default to ColorSync and the Main dialog under Color with be grayed out and defaulted to No Correction when PS Manages Color and when PS is set to No Color Management.

Simon

The above describes what happens with my iPF printer when No Color Management is selected in the PS print dialog. What I was asking is how does your printer driver react in comparison to what I have described here and to the documentation that I pointed you to in the advanced document?

Or here. http://www.dypinc.com/Canon/Canon_Pro9500_...anced_Guide.pdf

Doyle
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Simon J.A. Simpson

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« Reply #114 on: December 10, 2009, 11:21:56 am »

Quote from: MarkDS
Why knock on Adobe's door about this? What makes you think it's their problem? From all I've read here - and with considerable interest in case I decide to change my O/S - it would appear to me that this is an Apple Computer Inc. problem which they need to resolve. Now interestingly, Wayne Fox says they've recognized the issue and Jeff Schewe says a number of other issues have been addressed in a "dot" release or two of Snow Leopard, so perhaps from hereon it is just a matter of waiting for the printer target "no color management" issue to be resolved and all will be well?


I knocked on Apple's, Adobe's and Canon's doors.  Apple initially refused to respond quoting "business reasons" but then gave me some limited information which I cannot reveal under a non-disclosure agreement (although, really, it doesn't help much).  Canon have failed to respond at all, aside from a standard letter answering another entirely unrelated question.  Adobe, however, have spent a considerable amount of time and effort - at a very senior level - trying to help me (us) out.

From the information Adobe have given me it does appear that the origin of the problem is from Apple.  Adobe have told me that Apple changed the printing APIs such that every file sent to a printer "must" have a profile attached to it (i.e. it must be "tagged").  Thus, in the case of untagged files (our colour patch targets for profiling), the OS attempts to colour manage the file in undisclosed ways which is, of course, what we don't want it to do.

CS4 adopted these new Apple APIs, presumably in preparation for the release of Snow Leopard.  Older versions of Photoshop still use the old APIs, thus no problem.

I do not believe that it is helpful to hand-out blame to one party or another.  My own view is that Apple, Adobe, and the printer manufacturers should all get together and solve this problem and stop 'handing it over the wall' to someone else.  They all need to take responsibility for the problem and for finding a solution.  It is not as if it is going to go away of its own accord !
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #115 on: December 10, 2009, 11:40:24 am »

Interesting - and kudos to Adobe.

I fully subscribe to your closing comment on the need for better industry coordination to improve the prospects of such screw-ups not happening, and I have been making a similar point in a number of such dsicussion threads past and present. Assigning blame of course is not the object of the discussion, but that said, those involved in solving the problem need to know where it comes from. Whether they are prepared to share that information with the clients is another matter. The primary client interest is that it be resolved at the level of its fundamentals, and those responsible for doing so presumably know who they are. Forums such as this are helpful to stimulate interest in problem solving and applying consumer pressure where appropriate.

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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Wayne Fox

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« Reply #116 on: December 10, 2009, 04:01:47 pm »

Quote from: Photo Op
Wayne- how does one delete appropriate cache files from 10.6.2? Where are they located. Search has proved fruitless. Thanks!


Cache files can be found in "MacintoshHD/Library/Caches/".  There is usually a folder there named Epson ... throw the entire folder in the trash and empty the trash.
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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #117 on: December 10, 2009, 04:08:15 pm »

Quote from: SimonS
From the information Adobe have given me it does appear that the origin of the problem is from Apple.  Adobe have told me that Apple changed the printing APIs such that every file sent to a printer "must" have a profile attached to it (i.e. it must be "tagged").  Thus, in the case of untagged files (our colour patch targets for profiling), the OS attempts to colour manage the file in undisclosed ways which is, of course, what we don't want it to do.

CS4 adopted these new Apple APIs, presumably in preparation for the release of Snow Leopard.  Older versions of Photoshop still use the old APIs, thus no problem.

I do not believe that it is helpful to hand-out blame to one party or another.  My own view is that Apple, Adobe, and the printer manufacturers should all get together and solve this problem and stop 'handing it over the wall' to someone else.  They all need to take responsibility for the problem and for finding a solution.  It is not as if it is going to go away of its own accord !

These kind of comments from Adobe and others are why this issue goes round and round and why it is so frustrating. There is simple to much buck passing from everyone which does nothing but confuse people and give the parties involved an excuse to not make the effort to fix their own problems. Their statement "Thus, in the case of untagged files (our colour patch targets for profiling), the OS attempts to colour manage the file in undisclosed ways which is, of course, what we don't want it to do" is simply not true. There are printer drivers that will pass untagged files, without color management to the printer.

Simon in your case it does appear to be a printer driver problem, because it should work exactly the same as I have previously described. Check you PM.

Doyle
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DonCone

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« Reply #118 on: December 10, 2009, 04:17:23 pm »

Quote from: SimonS
From the information Adobe have given me it does appear that the origin of the problem is from Apple.  Adobe have told me that Apple changed the printing APIs such that every file sent to a printer "must" have a profile attached to it (i.e. it must be "tagged").  Thus, in the case of untagged files (our colour patch targets for profiling), the OS attempts to colour manage the file in undisclosed ways which is, of course, what we don't want it to do.

Hmm, it makes me wonder Simon. If Apple's APIs require that all files sent to a printer MUST be tagged then how can I possibly send an untagged target file directly to the printer by just choosing to not use Colorsync? It would seem that either Apple has changed the API or Adobe is misinformed. In the tests this week, I did this from 3 different applications and the output was identical. I wish there were some logical explanation for why some systems have a problem and some don't.

Don
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Wayne Fox

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« Reply #119 on: December 10, 2009, 04:18:30 pm »

Quote from: SimonS
From the information Adobe have given me it does appear that the origin of the problem is from Apple.  Adobe have told me that Apple changed the printing APIs such that every file sent to a printer "must" have a profile attached to it (i.e. it must be "tagged").  Thus, in the case of untagged files (our colour patch targets for profiling), the OS attempts to colour manage the file in undisclosed ways which is, of course, what we don't want it to do.
I've talked directly with a couple of people that are pretty involved in the non-mamanged workflow issue now, and they firmly believe the drivers can be fixed to resolve the problem.  I also prefer to keep my sources anonymous.  While Apple may have "caused" the problems with changes to the OS (which certainly is their right) , at this point things can work.  According to them, it appears some changes to the printer drivers are in order at this point.

I'm surprised at all of the discussion of a problem that has existed since October of 2007. Printing of non managed targets is not a Snow Leopard issue.  It's easy to work around it (at least 3 or 4 different ways to do this).
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