ColorMunki, Mavericks, and Epson Fine Art Papers on the 3880.

[rajahornstein]

I've seen lots of out-of-date, confused, and simply wrong answers to this question and have had a hard time sorting through what might be right. Here's the situation. In ColorMunki, when you are calibrating a printer, you get a print dialog box. In older versions of the Mac OS, within the print dialog there was a way to access the Page Setup window; in Mavericks, there isn't. To select any of the Epson Fine Art Papers for use on the Epson 3880, you have to access Page Setup so you can set it to use the rear feed. Since you can't get to the Page Setup from within ColorMunki, you apparently can't create a printer profile for those papers (or any papers that use one of those paper types for setup, like Hahnemühle Matte papers). I'm sure there are workarounds, but I can't find one that works. I'm assuming one of the ways would be to create a PDF and print it with photoshop and then measure it with the ColorMunki, but how to be sure about whether or not that PDF is being color managed correctly or not at all and which would be the correct approach. Any help is appreciated.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

I don't have Mavericks so I may be wrong on this, but I don't think you need the Page Setup to access the options for printing feeds.

When you go to the Print dialogue is there a drop-down menu option which may will have “Layout” or perhaps “ColorMunki” and two small triangle, one pointing up and one down ?  If you click on this box you should get a menu in which you will find “Quality & Media”.  Click on this and you will get another dialogue which will give you the option to select the “Paper source”.

However, there is a known problem with printing without colour management from ColorMunki and I don't know whether this is fixed.  You will find instructions how to print via a PDF and using Adobe's ‘Color Printer Utility’ on the URL below (the post at the bottom of the page).

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=85810.0

[rajahornstein]

I think you may have inadvertently solved the problem, part of which is specific to the 3880 driver and Mavericks. In many applications updated for Mavericks, page setup is included in the print dialog. For example, this is true for Photoshop CC. ColorMunki didn't update so page setup isn't available when you go to print. But the Print Dialog does include an option for Paper Handling. In that dialog you can select scaling and then you get the menu for suggested paper size and then you can pick the rear feed and you're set to select the Epson Fine Art Papers.
As far as the second question about printing with no color management, I think there may be some confusion about this. If you choose Epson Color instead of ColorSync in the Color Matching panel, then in the Printer Settings panel you can select No Color Management. People are trying to select ColorSync and then there is not way to choose no color management other than attempts to figure out which ICC profile selected under ColorSync is equivalent to No Color Management. In my testing, choosing the Epson Color setting and then No Color Management produced a small but noticeable improvement over Epson's own paper profiles, so I think it is the right way to do this.

Thanks for your help on discovering how to bypass Page Setup. And if anyone has thoughts about what I think is the way to get no color management, I would appreciate it.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Printing colour managed images from Photoshop et al works as described (we think !).  But printing targets for profiling without colour management is something of a nightmare on an Apple Mac.  I am not convinced that printing the targets from the ColourMunki application is not introducing some interaction with Apple's operating system/s which, in turn, is introducing some element of colour management.

Take a look at this thread:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=85810.0

[rajahornstein]

I saw that thread, along with others addressing the issue. All I am saying is that selecting Epson Color and then No Color Management in Mavericks print dialog with ColorMunki produces a paper profile that when used produces a print that matches my calibrated monitor better than anything I've used before. And now I've done it with two papers. Is it a perfect match? I don't know how I would objectively compare my monitor to a print, but it's better than good enough subjectively. If there's a better way, or a clear confirmation from ColorMunki about what is the right way, I'd like to know.

[RachelleK]

I saw that thread, along with others addressing the issue. All I am saying is that selecting Epson Color and then No Color Management in Mavericks print dialog with ColorMunki produces a paper profile that when used produces a print that matches my calibrated monitor better than anything I've used before. And now I've done it with two papers. Is it a perfect match? I don't know how I would objectively compare my monitor to a print, but it's better than good enough subjectively. If there's a better way, or a clear confirmation from ColorMunki about what is the right way, I'd like to know.

This has been my experience too.  The links go back to 2012 and lots of things may have changed since then.

[digitaldog]

But printing targets for profiling without colour management is something of a nightmare on an Apple Mac. 

It isn't if you use the correct software for that task. The ColorMunki software is responsible for this and should do it correctly. But you can't use Photoshop or Lightroom and many other products that could open a TIFF and make a print. You have to use the correct software. In this case it should be from X-rite. That they don't have their share of bugs depending on the product and the OS version. I haven't printed using the Munki software in Mavericks. In i1Profiler, it works exactly as it should, no nightmare.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

It isn't if you use the correct software for that task. The ColorMunki software is responsible for this and should do it correctly. But you can't use Photoshop or Lightroom and many other products that could open a TIFF and make a print. You have to use the correct software. In this case it should be from X-rite. That they don't have their share of bugs depending on the product and the OS version. I haven't printed using the Munki software in Mavericks. In i1Profiler, it works exactly as it should, no nightmare.

Agreed, Andrew, on all points.  But given that X–Rite have NOT updated their ColorMunki software to print targets correctly the workaround is tortuous, to say the least.  And their European Technical Support were giving misleading advice (to use the null transform method which no longer works with newer versions of Photoshop and/or Mac OSX).  Perhaps “nightmare” was over stating it a bit since I no longer wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat; but it would be awfully nice if we could make this work without having to save the file from ColorMunki as a PDF, opening it in Photoshop, adjusting the alignment, adding the correct text, saving it as a TIFF, opening it in Adobe's Color Printing Utility, printing it – and then doing the whole thing two more times over again to build a profile (plus waiting for the prints to dry in between times).

Did I pay good money to endure this ?  What a mug !

[digitaldog]

Obviously X-rite should fix the bugs or at least get you a copy of i1Profiler to print them correctly. They have a lot of bugs and work to do with glacial progress in that respect.

You can use the ColorSync utility as mentioned to print the targets. You could use ACPU too and on the Mac, the 'scaling bug' doesn't seem to be much an issue and that normally is a big problem for auto Spectrophotometer's like my iSis. With the Munki it should work. But again, the culprit here and the responsible party is X-rite. You did pay them for a product that's now broken and you and all other ColorMunki customers should focus that back on X-rite. I can't believe they can't fix this in no time at all, kind of inexcusable considering how long Mavericks has been out. But I should go on record as saying I haven't printed with ColorMunki under 10.9 and don't know the specific problems with the software.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

BTW, I checked, the ColorMunki software was last updated for the Mac in October 2009.

Andrew, I think you've prompted me into writing to X–Rite.  It is about time they fixed this.

[digitaldog]

BTW, I checked, the ColorMunki software was last updated for the Mac in October 2009.
Andrew, I think you've prompted me into writing to X–Rite.  It is about time they fixed this.

1.1.1 seems to be the last version I see on 'my download's' page on X-rite's site and dated 2009. Let them know the issues just in case it's news to them (shouldn't be). Maybe there are fellow ColorMunki users who can help gang up on them about this. You could also post on the ColorSync list which might get their attention. I have zero idea these days who's the product manager for their products or what kind of updating of software they're working on (if any).

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Have just posted a letter to the CEO of X–Rite.  It'll take a little while to cross the pond, even by airmail.

Quaint, I know.

I'll put any reply I get up on Lula.