Is Snow Leopard debugged for printing with PS?

[uaiomex]

I'm about to purchase a brand new iMac. I've read here and somewhere else that a lot of folks were having problems printing from PS CS4 with Epson printers under SnowLeopard . This posts claimed that prints didn't match monitor because of some bug with the profiles causing conflicts. So, I'm worried.

I'm currently using a MBP with Leopard (10.5) and printing to an Epson 7880 using "Photoshop Manages Colors" with CS4. My prints match my profiled monitor.

First question:     Mac OSX 10.6 - PS CS4 - Epson Pro Printer:   Is this problem solved already?
Second question: Mac OSX 10.6 - PS CS5 - Epson Pro Printer:   Do this problem repeat under this setup?

Thanks so much for your help, comments and suggestions.
Eduardo

[tomrock]

I print from OS X 10.6 to an Epson 3880 and don't have any problems. I usually print from Lightroom but I use PS CS5 when I have to.

I think the problem had to do with printing targets that you'd use to make a profile. I could be wrong about that. I don't know if that issue has been solved.

[Jeff Magidson]

"First question:     Mac OSX 10.6 - PS CS4 - Epson Pro Printer:   Is this problem solved already?"
No. Your images will print too dark.

"Second question: Mac OSX 10.6 - PS CS5 - Epson Pro Printer:   Do this problem repeat under this setup?"
Your images will print fine with PS CS5 or Lightroom as long as you are using Version 2 print profiles NOT version 4 print profiles . You can use the Mac Colorsyc Utility to determine what version your profiles are. 

~ Jeff

http://artslidesboston.com

[MHMG]

Your images will print fine with PS CS5 or Lightroom as long as you are using Version 2 print profiles NOT version 4 print profiles . You can use the Mac Colorsyc Utility to determine what version your profiles are. 

~ Jeff

http://artslidesboston.com

Ditto... for other apps as well. Just built a version 2 and version 4 profile using PM5 and same data set. Then printed a page from Apple's "Pages" using the colorsync workflow in the latest Epson 3880 driver (version 6.6.). Pure Image whites printed white and identically with both profile versions, but the page white areas outside the image printed with a pale blue color cast using the V4 profile and as pure white (like it should) with V2.  I think the V4 profile weirdness is thus more of system wide issue with Snow Leopard at the current time.

[Wayne Fox]

"First question:     Mac OSX 10.6 - PS CS4 - Epson Pro Printer:   Is this problem solved already?"
No. Your images will print too dark.

http://artslidesboston.com

This is not accurate.  Printing from a CS4 via OS X 10.6.4 with a correctly installed Espon print driver works fine.  If the prints are too dark there is another problem with your setup or driver installation.

Regarding version 2 vs version 4 profiles, this can be problematic, but I'm not aware of any paper manufacturer that is supplying version 4 profiles fro their papers.  If you make your own profiles be sure to have the software generate a version 2 profile.

[digitaldog]

I think the problem had to do with printing targets that you'd use to make a profile. I could be wrong about that. I don't know if that issue has been solved.

Correct.

As for V4 printer profiles (V4 profiles in general), best to wait, not ready for prime time due to OS and other software issues.

[uaiomex]

Tom:
As I said, I have no problems of any kind using Leopard (10.5). My concern is about getting a new iMac with SnowLeopard. But is nice to know you have no printing problems using OSX 10.6. But heard of so many with problems! Kind of scary. I want to keep my printing a fun experience.

Jeff:
I checked my profiles with Color Sync as you suggested. They all seems to be v2 or version 2.0, 2.x, ...

Mhmg:
I don't built my own profiles. I use those downloaded from paper manufacturers and Epson. They all seem to work fine for me with my current setup.

Wayne:
It seems to me that you are saying this publicly known problem was just a matter of incorrectly installed Epson print driver? Is there a certain way to make sure one installs the Epson driver properly? - My computer literacy is limited. I used to print from a 7600 before and I did it without issues for years. Same story with the 7880.

Rodney: Thanks for chiming in. All my profiles seem to be v2. So, what should I expect printing from SnowLeopard with CS4?. It seems to me that the simplest way (not the cheapest, since I wanted to skip CS5) is to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 once I get the new iMac

Thanks all for your help. Any more comments anyone?
Eduardo

P.S. I hope the rumor about Microsoft buying Adobe never ever happens. Disturbing to say the least. I have nothing against MS, but oh boy!

[Wayne Fox]

Wayne:
It seems to me that you are saying this publicly known problem was just a matter of incorrectly installed Epson print driver? Is there a certain way to make sure one installs the Epson driver properly? - My computer literacy is limited. I used to print from a 7600 before and I did it without issues for years. Same story with the 7880.

Not sure I classify this as a "publicly known problem".  It isn't like everyone who switched to snow leopard suddenly had very dark prints and could no longer match their display, and while it certainly hit a few people it wasn't the majority. If you are buying a new iMac, installing the driver should suffice.  I'd be more worried about a machine that has been upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 and then to 10.6, with multiple epson printer drivers installed over the same period of time.  This is where I have seen a few people with problems.

The issue of printing unmanaged targets for profiles with CS4 is a bug introduced with 10.5, not Snow Leopard,  and was well documented on threads here in LuLa in early 2009. But it wasn't widely recognized as an issue until Mark Dubovoy documented the problem and was able to get Apple, Adobe, and Epson to listen to him.  Since this happened after Snow Leopard was introduced, the bug has been mistakenly tagged to Snow Leopard.  In fact I believe the current version of Snow Leopard has resolved the problem, but CS5 no longer allows printing of unmanaged documents.  No biggie since the work around is simple and straightforward.

[uaiomex]

Wayne:
Thanks so much for your very explainatory post. It all seems more clear and demistified. I feel more confident to buy the iMac.
Thanks so much
Best
Eduardo

Not sure I classify this as a "publicly known problem".  It isn't like everyone who switched to snow leopard suddenly had very dark prints and could no longer match their display, and while it certainly hit a few people it wasn't the majority. If you are buying a new iMac, installing the driver should suffice.  I'd be more worried about a machine that has been upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 and then to 10.6, with multiple epson printer drivers installed over the same period of time.  This is where I have seen a few people with problems.

The issue of printing unmanaged targets for profiles with CS4 is a bug introduced with 10.5, not Snow Leopard,  and was well documented on threads here in LuLa in early 2009. But it wasn't widely recognized as an issue until Mark Dubovoy documented the problem and was able to get Apple, Adobe, and Epson to listen to him.  Since this happened after Snow Leopard was introduced, the bug has been mistakenly tagged to Snow Leopard.  In fact I believe the current version of Snow Leopard has resolved the problem, but CS5 no longer allows printing of unmanaged documents.  No biggie since the work around is simple and straightforward.

[briphoto]

I'm still fighting the "dark print" problem. I've done the driver installation as per Wayne's suggestion, Loyd Chambers suggestion and other suggestions I've found on the web. I'm printing from a MacPro to an epson 3800 using Snow Leopard and Photoshop CS3. Everything was working fine with "Leopard and Photoshop CS3. I downloaded Photoshop CS5 trial to print with and my color prints are almost as good as before but my B&W prints using the abw driver and Eric Chan's abw profiles are still very dark. I'm going to try networking an old Mac G4 I have running the "Tiger" OS to see if that fixes everything.

[MHMG]

I'm printing from a MacPro to an epson 3800 using Snow Leopard and Photoshop CS3. Everything was working fine with "Leopard and Photoshop CS3. I downloaded Photoshop CS5 trial to print with and my color prints are almost as good as before but my B&W prints using the abw driver and Eric Chan's abw profiles are still very dark. I'm going to try networking an old Mac G4 I have running the "Tiger" OS to see if that fixes everything.

At this point I've run into so many quirks with Snow Leopard and various printer drivers (e.g., Epson 3880 and Canon ipF8110), that I'm struggling to remember which problem occurred where. Suffice to say that upon upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard, PSCS3 wasn't playing nice for me anymore, either, and so I bit the bullet and also upgraded to the CS5 suite. That fixed some issues and broke others. At this point in time, I'm getting more predictable color printing out of Indesign CS5 than PSCS5 which is a bit ironic since PS has always been a very dependable print output path throughout this past decade of ups and downs in "color managed" workflows... Maybe Adobe's software teams should get together and exchange notes on the current differences in the printing pipeline for Indd and PS.

[tomrock]

Tom:
As I said, I have no problems of any kind using Leopard (10.5). My concern is about getting a new iMac with SnowLeopard. But is nice to know you have no printing problems using OSX 10.6. But heard of so many with problems! Kind of scary. I want to keep my printing a fun experience.

10.6 IS Snow Leopard.

[Doyle Yoder]

At this point I've run into so many quirks with Snow Leopard and various printer drivers (e.g., Epson 3880 and Canon ipF8110), that I'm struggling to remember which problem occurred where. Suffice to say that upon upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard, PSCS3 wasn't playing nice for me anymore, either, and so I bit the bullet and also upgraded to the CS5 suite. That fixed some issues and broke others. At this point in time, I'm getting more predictable color printing out of Indesign CS5 than PSCS5 which is a bit ironic since PS has always been a very dependable print output path throughout this past decade of ups and downs in "color managed" workflows... Maybe Adobe's software teams should get together and exchange notes on the current differences in the printing pipeline for Indd and PS.

What problems are you having with the IPF8100?

Doyle

[madmanchan]

Also, make sure you're using the latest version of Snow Leopard (10.6.4) instead of earlier versions (e.g., 10.6.2)

[MHMG]

What problems are you having with the IPF8100?

Doyle

I'm on latest versions of everything, but Canon's 8100 driver for the Mac is a little old at this point.  Printing from PSCS5 to the 8100 driver results in pale color cast over the page white areas (not in the image white areas). Doesn't happen when printing from InDD CS5. May be an ICC V4 versus V2 issue, that hadn't occurred to me to check at the time, but printing from InddCS5 rather than PSCS5 fixed the issue. I also haven't tried the 16 bit PS plugin as Canon is apparently close to release an updated one for CS5. I'm aware that some users have simply copied the CS3/4 version into the CS5 folder to be able to use it but I'm not sure whether these users are also on Snow Leopard. Anyway, now that Snow leopard is able to handle 16 bit files through the regular driver path (i.e., 16 bit plugin not totally necessary anymore) I prefer at this time to use the "free layout" feature of the regular Canon driver. But to make that work I have to print through InDesign and not PSCS5. Two steps forward, two steps back... it has been going on for over a decade in color managed workflows!

[uaiomex]

I did it!
This afternoon I bought an i5 iMac. It will be several days till I start printing. I'll keep you posted how it goes.
Any last hour suggestions?
Thanks
Eduardo

[uaiomex]

Good news.

After carefully downloading fresh profiles and such to PSCs5 with my new iMac OSX10.6.4 I'm happy to announced that my prints look as good as those I print from Leopard OSX10.5x to the 7880.

Getting used to the glossy screen was a matter of minutes. Only catch was, I had to re-arranged the position of my desk a bit to avoid reflections from a window. The 27" screen is awesome. So happy with Mac I just pre-ordered a 11" MBAir. Of course, for other purposes.

Best
Eduardo