Let us stick with the Epson case alone for a moment. Epson's driver includes separate profiles for each of the Epson papers that said Epson printer model can use. And let us recall we are dealing with a huge range of papers from the widest gamut luster to the narrowest gamut matte, different finishes, textures, ink receiving characteristics, and what not. Therefore, for the printer just to know how much ink to lay down on the paper and what recipe to use for optimizing printed gamut, it MUST use a separate profile or equivalent for each paper the user selects under Printer Color Management.
Yes, indeed, more ammo that this article is either aimed at photographers who prefer to shoot JPEG and sRGB mindset or the author is not doing his due diligence.
I can only speak of my own experiences based on what I'd think is better testing methodology. I produced three prints from the P600, two variations I've tested on my 3880 (I didn't try
Printer Manages Color using Ctein's settings for so many obvious reasons). In both cases, using reference images designed to test what a profile does, the custom profile was vastly, visually superior to the canned profile. Unlike Ctein, I've actually provided photo's (albeit not ideal) to illustrate the differences. I've also pointed out that using his now preferred process (
Printer Manages Color), we clip to Adobe RGB (1998) on a printer we both know exceeds that gamut and we can't soft proof. So this '
technique' is probably well suited to the '
just shoot JPEG in sRGB' crowed. That's fine if you fall into that camp.
Ctein either needs someone to build him a much better custom profile and/or provide him much better test files for detecting problems with output profiles. I'm using essentially the same printers he mentions so the disconnect in our findings isn't due to that.
I'd be happy to photograph the same blue ball using his suggestions compared to my custom profile, or show the entire print. But better, each person should do their own testing and view the prints with their own eyes. The differences I see between the three possible print processes are not at all subtle.