Snow Leopard/Epson 3880/Photoshop or Lightroom Debacle

[dlc43]

This post follows up on the "Solution" posted on LL:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/solving.shtml

Any news about a more solid solution?

I am not trying to print targets for profiling; I just want to print color photos with little to no hassle and I am using Epson supplied profiles.

I am using Snow Leopard, the new Epson 3880 with latest Epson drivers (6.60, I believe), and trying to print from Adobe Lightroom.

The colors look terrible.

B&W is fine.

Colorbyte, producers of Imageprint, claim they will have no problems since they bypass the color management collisions above--BUT they do not yet have a finished version for the 3880 available.

I may be stuck for a while printing just in B&W.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Photo Op]

When Andrew Rodney posts a thread asking questions about the situation, there seems to me to be little doubt there are problems AND NO ONE has a clue how to correct them!

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....c=40202&hl=

[Wayne Fox]

This post follows up on the "Solution" posted on LL:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/solving.shtml

Any news about a more solid solution?

I am not trying to print targets for profiling; I just want to print color photos with little to no hassle and I am using Epson supplied profiles.

I am using Snow Leopard, the new Epson 3880 with latest Epson drivers (6.60, I believe), and trying to print from Adobe Lightroom.

The colors look terrible.

B&W is fine.

Colorbyte, producers of Imageprint, claim they will have no problems since they bypass the color management collisions above--BUT they do not yet have a finished version for the 3880 available.

I may be stuck for a while printing just in B&W.

Any help would be appreciated!

Just curious by what you mean by the colors look terrible ... washed out, dark, muddy, just wrong colors.  What printer did you use before the 3880?  Did you upgrade to SL at the same time you added the 3880 or had you already moved to SL?

This should work fine, and has nothing to do with the article you linked.  Most are not having problems with standard printing from LR and PS using Snow Leopard, but for those having challenges there doesn't seem to be one right answer.  Problems like this have been going on for some time with all printers and OS's, but suddenly SL is getting blamed for everything.

Currently the recommended troubleshooting procedure is a complete uninstall of all Epson Drivers and deletion of all Epson cache files.  This isn't quite as easy to do as it sounds, a good document decribing this process can be found here ...

After completing the uninstall, you should probably do two additional steps.  In your main Library Folder on your hard drive is a folder called Caches.  If there is an Epson folder inside of that folder discard it.  Finally after you restart and empty the trash, use disk utility to repair permissions.  At that point, reinstall the Epson drivers.  This has worked for several people with problems.

Unfortunately it hasn't worked for everyone. I know of one other person that did a brand new  install of  Snow Leopard on a second partition which resolved the problem.  He said he as going to do an archive an install of his main startup drive, but I never heard back if this fixed the problem as well.

When Andrew Rodney posts a thread asking questions about the situation, there seems to me to be little doubt there are problems AND NO ONE has a clue how to correct them!

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....c=40202&hl=

This is referring to the challenge of printing targets, not the OP problem if just standard printing.  There has been little doubt about this problem for over a year now.  As to whether or not anyone has a clue, you might be right there.  However, the workarounds are not challenging and making profiles is not a problem.

[dlc43]

I probably overstated the problem somewhat; the colors are not truly terrible, just not right.
The colors are somewhat inaccurate as to hue, very slightly muddy, and also appear more saturated than on screen.
I have wondered about whether they are being double color-managed even before I read the thread referred to above.

I also had to correct for prints that seemed darker than they appeared on screen.
I read a thread somewhere that suggesting the luminance of my monitor screen might be the problem, brightness dialed up too high, so that all my post-processing decisions were off with respect to brightness. As a fix, I dialed down the brightness of my screen and this has helped some.

As for the order of implementing my system, I was printing OK with the Epson 3880 (with the previous Epson drivers) for a few days on my "old" Mac, a recent iMac running Leopard. Then I received my new 27 inch, up-to-date iMac, which was pre-loaded with 10.6. On connecting the new iMac to the Epson 3880, I discovered that the print results were less than satisfactory. That is why the thread I referred to above seemed so meaningful as it addressed the overlap (collision?) of three different codes, Apple OS, Epson drivers and Adobe PS/LR. Downloading the latest Epson drivers has not changed much so far. That's why I became interested in Imageprint.

[digitaldog]

When Andrew Rodney posts a thread asking questions about the situation, there seems to me to be little doubt there are problems AND NO ONE has a clue how to correct them!

My question is specific to printing targets from the host applications (ColorMunki and EyeOne Match). I do all my work through either PROFILER or ProfileMaker Pro, printing the targets as suggested by Eric or using Preview. But in playing with ColorMunki, bad results. So the questions were directed at users of that application to a 3880 or 2880 as you have zero options to print any other way.

[Wayne Fox]

I probably overstated the problem somewhat; the colors are not truly terrible, just not right.
The colors are somewhat inaccurate as to hue, very slightly muddy, and also appear more saturated than on screen.
I have wondered about whether they are being double color-managed even before I read the thread referred to above.

I also had to correct for prints that seemed darker than they appeared on screen.
I read a thread somewhere that suggesting the luminance of my monitor screen might be the problem, brightness dialed up too high, so that all my post-processing decisions were off with respect to brightness. As a fix, I dialed down the brightness of my screen and this has helped some.

As for the order of implementing my system, I was printing OK with the Epson 3880 (with the previous Epson drivers) for a few days on my "old" Mac, a recent iMac running Leopard. Then I received my new 27 inch, up-to-date iMac, which was pre-loaded with 10.6. On connecting the new iMac to the Epson 3880, I discovered that the print results were less than satisfactory. That is why the thread I referred to above seemed so meaningful as it addressed the overlap (collision?) of three different codes, Apple OS, Epson drivers and Adobe PS/LR. Downloading the latest Epson drivers has not changed much so far. That's why I became interested in Imageprint.

So I would ask how you are calibrating this new iMac, and did you calibrate the previous display. matching a display can be pretty challenging, perhaps the real problem isn't the printer or the driver.  your mentioning that your luminance was off sort of implies you aren't actually calibrating the display, since that's a critical step in calibrating.  In fact an imac at correct working luminance will probably only be about 45-55% of of the brightness slider in the display preference pane.

I recommend printing a known test file.  The one from Outback Photo, which is a derivitive of the one made by Bill Atkinson is a good one.  You can download it here

Make sure your Photoshop working space is ProPhotoRGB, or if not, tell Photoshop to use the image space and not the working space when opening the file (assuming you have the Ask When Opening profile mismatches set to on in the Color Settings dialog box).  Print the image using your normal workflow (PS manages color, select correct profile, and make sure the printer color management is turned off).


this is a pretty basic first step in troubleshooting color management issues when printing.  after this you will have a better idea of what steps might help.

You do not need Imageprint to get great results from an Epson printer.

[feethea]

So far I have had nothing but great prints when printing through Snow Leopard, CS4 or LR2, via my Epson 3880. Am I that lucky? Really?

Barry

[dlc43]

Thanks for your comments.
FYI: I have definitely calibrated my monitor already.
I will revisit the basic steps as you recommend and see what happens.

[digitaldog]

So far I have had nothing but great prints when printing through Snow Leopard, CS4 or LR2, via my Epson 3880. Am I that lucky? Really?

No because the issue isn’t getting great prints once a good profile is built. The issue is printing the untagged targets to build the profiles. Those who do this are in an iffy position but anyone else, anyone using existing provided profiles will be fine so this is being a bit blown out of proportion.

If every 3880 user had printing issues, you’d hear a much louder collective scream from end users. This issue, while a pain, is a pain for very few users and there is a workaround.

[Wayne Fox]

So far I have had nothing but great prints when printing through Snow Leopard, CS4 or LR2, via my Epson 3880. Am I that lucky? Really?

Barry

No, actually quite typical.  A few it seems have been unlucky, the most common symptom appears like double profiling ... but then I've seen threads about this problem and epson printers for years, so not sure how SL fits into the equation.

I've even tried to replicate the problem using my 3800 ... nothing I have done so far has affected the results.

Ever since Mark's article it seems any challenges printing from CS4/LR to an Epson printer using SL is blamed on SL, even though as Andrew mentioned that article had nothing to do with normal printing.

[dlc43]

So far I have had nothing but great prints when printing through Snow Leopard, CS4 or LR2, via my Epson 3880. Am I that lucky? Really?

Barry

Can I ask: Are you using Lightroom to color manage or are you using the Epson driver?

[feethea]

As per my PM to you, I select 'Managed by printer' under the 'Colour management' tab

Barry

Can I ask: Are you using Lightroom to color manage or are you using the Epson driver?