Lost control of my Epson 3880

[robgo2]

I have been happily printing with my 3880 for about 2 years.  All of a sudden, something has gone haywire with the driver.  I am printing out of CS5.  For some reason, in the Print Settings > Printer Settings dialog, both the Print Mode and Color Mode menus are grayed out, meaning that I am unable to make a selection.  I am using "Photoshop manages color," but the same is true if I select "Printer manages color."

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the latest 3880 driver.  I have deleted the printer and added it back to the printer list, but nothing seems to work.

I am using a Mac running OS 10.6.8.

Help, please.

Rob  

P.S.  Where is the Epson driver located on a Mac?

[degrub]

i have heard of people having file or folder permission issues under OSx causing issues like this in other applications. Not a Mac user, but i think there was a utility to repair the file permissions ?

Wayne also had this about OSx installing the wrong driver  -

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=58294.0



Frank

[robgo2]

i have heard of people having file or folder permission issues under OSx causing issues like this in other applications. Not a Mac user, but i think there was a utility to repair the file permissions ?

Wayne also had this about OSx installing the wrong driver  -

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=58294.0



Frank

Frank, thanks for pointing me to that thread, but it does not seem that any resolution to the problem was reached.  I have a feeling that there is a bug in this new driver that makes it incompatible with some Macs.  I hope that I am wrong.

Rob

[Dana Buswell]

Man this has been driving me crazy for days! I'm having the same problem. Printing from Lightroom 3.6 or CS5.1 on Mac OSX Lion. When trying to use Eric Chans ABW profiles I can't set tone to darker because the selection area is greyed out.

[Dana Buswell]

Reading this post helped me make sense of it finally http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=59889.0

[Schewe]

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the latest 3880 driver.

And that's where your problem started...the current most recent Mac drivers for Epson disable the ability to make any changes in the driver when you have Managed by Photoshop selected. If you want to change the print driver options on Mac with the current Epson drivers you will need to select Managed by Printer. This was done o avoid double color managements issues but had the unintended impact of altering the ability to use Managed by Photoshop in conjunction with the Advanced B&W done of the Epson driver. To get to the ABW mode you will HAVE to have the color managements in the Print dlog set to Printer Manages Color.

You can thank Apple Colorsync for this change in behavior (and no, there's nothing you can do about this other than revert to an older print driver).

[robgo2]

And that's where your problem started...the current most recent Mac drivers for Epson disable the ability to make any changes in the driver when you have Managed by Photoshop selected. If you want to change the print driver options on Mac with the current Epson drivers you will need to select Managed by Printer. This was done o avoid double color managements issues but had the unintended impact of altering the ability to use Managed by Photoshop in conjunction with the Advanced B&W done of the Epson driver. To get to the ABW mode you will HAVE to have the color managements in the Print dlog set to Printer Manages Color.

You can thank Apple Colorsync for this change in behavior (and no, there's nothing you can do about this other than revert to an older print driver).

I think that you may be right.  If I choose "Printer manages color" and then go to Color Matching and select "Epson manages color," the menu options are available.  This is fine, unless one has one of Eric Chan's ABW profiles, which require "Photoshop manages color." 

Might it be possible to restore the old driver by using the Time Machine to revert to the day before I made the change?  Maybe a better idea would be to contact Epson's technical support to see if they can get me a copy of the old driver, which has been removed from their website.  If I cannot get the problem solved, I think that I might prefer to print B&W images as RGB color, using custom profiles, so as to get the proper tonality.

Rob

  

[howardm]

check the Epson European website; maybe the older driver is still online there.

[robgo2]

check the Epson European website; maybe the older driver is still online there.

I have been in contact with Epson's Preferred Technical Support.  They are going to try to find the previous driver that works on OS 10.6.

Ultimately, I may end up using ImageNest for my printing.  It does not have these issues, and the latest Beta version has new uprezzing algorithms that are supposedly superior.  Still has some bugs to work out, though.

Rob

[robgo2]

I had started a similar thread on Dpreview, and one of the respondents suggested that I try to find the .dmg of the previous driver for OS 10.6 on my computer.  I was able to locate it in my Downloads folder.  After installing the driver, I am back in business.  I do not know if the Snow Leopard driver will work in Lion, but if it does, some people may want to hang onto it.

Rob

[John R Smith]

If your workflow is good - and your profiles are OK - and editing your images is running smoothly - and your prints are looking great -

NEVER UPGRADE ANYTHING ! ! !

  It's just an invitation to disaster . . . .

John

[howardm]

Amen to that unless you have good full backups and a few days to kill.

I am that other respondent 

I don't know where you looked on the Epson site but I just wandered over and found the older 3880 driver (pre-v8.64)
(along w/ the Common Updater) on their 3880 Downloads page.  They tend not to remove older versions from the website.

[Oldfox]

I was able to locate it in my Downloads folder.

I have also a habit saving the downloads. Most of them are never used, but a couple of times I found it very useful. The amount of disk space is not that big.

Here is a snapshot some of old downloads. There are some 'gems', like ws_ftp_le and winamp ;-)

/fox

[robgo2]

Amen to that unless you have good full backups and a few days to kill.

I am that other respondent 

I don't know where you looked on the Epson site but I just wandered over and found the older 3880 driver (pre-v8.64)
(along w/ the Common Updater) on their 3880 Downloads page.  They tend not to remove older versions from the website.

Howard,

The older driver on Epson's website is for OS 10.5.  It does not work on OS 10.6.  I tried it myself, and this fact was confirmed by Epson's technical support staff.  The reason that they removed the 10.6 driver is that the latest driver, V8.64, also works on 10.6, although it is, in some ways, more confining.  So, for the way that I use ABW, I need the older version.

Rob

[howardm]

Interesting.  Well, it seems to be different for the 3880.  On my 3800, the older driver worked fine w/ 10.6 (although I think it required the Common Updater but who remembers).

[robgo2]

Interesting.  Well, it seems to be different for the 3880.  On my 3800, the older driver worked fine w/ 10.6 (although I think it required the Common Updater but who remembers).

Yes, the driver for the 3880 is different.

Rob