dark prints using ABW

[briphoto]

Hello,
I've been useing Eric Chan's Epson 3800 ABW profiles with great results for a couple of years on my 2008 Mac Pro running Leopard and Photoshop CS3.{Thank's Eric}.A few weeks ago I upgraded to the latest version of Snow Leopard, updated my Epson 3800 driver's. Now my B&W prints using the same ABW profiles and the same images are very dark, almost no shadow detail. I don't mean dark compared to my monitor, I mean dark compared to the same image printed days before the upgrade using the same paper, ABW profiles, and driver settings. I've read here about selecting AdobeRGB as the profile in order to send a gamma 2.2 file to the ABW driver. That did lighten the image some, but no where near the quality I was getting with Eric's profiles. I also selected gray gamma 2.2 and Srgb instead of Eric's profile, these selections also made the print lighter but not as good as Eric's profile. I've printed a few color images and they appear to be the same as color images printed before I updated, maybe just a little darker. I do my b&w conversions in LR3, final editing and printing in Photshop CS3. I've sent the image to the printer as RGB grayscale and also converted the RGB grayscale to "grayscale" in photshop and it made no difference. Anyone else experience this?
Thanks,
Brian

[briphoto]

Forgot to mention I also did "no color management" and "printer controls color". These selections as with the other things I tried did lighten the print but not with the same quality and shadow separation as using the ABW  profiles.

[Vuurtoren]

Hallo Brian, I do not think I can help much, it seems that the problem lies with the recent changes in the updates.  Logically this should not be.

But, just to clarify something, I print a lot of B/W on Ilford gold silk and hahnemuehle Rag baryta and pearl.  I also use only eric chan's profiles for these.  My prints come out always spot on with the screen and never had problems (apple mac 10.4.11 Tiger epson 3800).  I convert always to B/W in Camera Raw and bring into CS3 in the Gamma2.2 working space, and then edit everything within the PROOF icc ABW profile for the paper that I am going to print on..

Maybe something here my kick in if the update is not the problem? 

[briphoto]

Yes, I'm sure its the updates. I know I can create an adjustment curve layer or use the screen mode to lighten the image before printing but I was hoping someone here had found some other solution.

[Vuurtoren]

Yes, I'm sure its the updates. I know I can create an adjustment curve layer or use the screen mode to lighten the image before printing but I was hoping someone here had found some other solution.

I could be mistaken here - but over the last few months surfing the web in printing and papers and imaging stories I came accross some very disgruntled people who were obviously not happy with the combination of Snow leopard with ICC profiles and colour management.  Now I was not looking for these things, but in passing did notice these sort of stories.  If nobody else answers your query maybe you should get onto the web and type in something like "Colour management problem upgrade snow leopard" and target your search for possible upgrade problems in this way.

[briphoto]

I've looked on the internet for more info on this. It appears lots of folks are having the "dark print" issue after upgrading to snow leopard and latest epson driver for the 3800. My situation differs somewhat in that color printing is normal, no dark prints. ABW  printing is giving me the problem. When I print through photshop cs3 using "no color management" results are better but the shadow separation is still poor. I didn't realize how good Eric Chans's ABW  profiles were until trying to print without them. It almost seems that the profile is not being applied even though I've selected it. I found another source of a few ABW profiles on the web which I will try this weekend. I also plan on trying a couple of his new ABW 3880 profiles on my 3800 as an experiment. If any of this fixes the problem I will report here.
Thanks,
Brian 

[elolaugesen]

Hi:  I too have had numerous problems with dark prints using PSE 6 testing lightroom and trying to print with snow leopard.  I therefore did all my work with Snow leopard and the printing on my old powerbook using 10.5.8  and driver 6.57.

I finally decided to see what the problem might be.  I had tested CS5 back in my 10.5.8 days with leopard and did not find it gave me any features that I did not have with PSE6.  Then PSE8 came out and Adobe had removed many of the nice printing features and made it useless for me.  But I also wanted snow leopard and move on.

I borrowed a version of CS5, ran tests with OSX 10.6.4  epson 3800 driver 6.57(from the UK site) and applied the common updater 7.0 (from the us Epson site).   Guess what? the colours using the same old ICC profiles are identical to the eye and my wife and artist with a perfect eye for colours could not see any difference. In fact she thinks the prints are clearer and better.  (i used same unsharp procedures as before)
I have been testing the system for 3-4 days and it still works. none of the other programs work right   only CS5???

I check by printer using a small purge page using all 8 colours every day to make sure colours are still ok.

cheers      if anyone can explain?  Maybe Adobe did it right?