Profiles for Epson Surecolor P6000 AWOL

[teddillard]

I'm baffled. 

I installed a P6000 for a friend, and the thing ships with a roll of Doubleweight Matte paper for the alignment etc as usual.  However, it does not install profiles for Doubleweight Matte, or a whole bunch of other current and legacy, standard Epson papers.  Not only that, I can't find anything online that even mentions this. 

I've looked here, and found nothing - forgive me if I've overlooked something, but can anyone fill me in?  Short of contacting Epson Tech Support (and wading through that mess) I'm just going to build my own profiles, but that just seems ridiculous. 

I've tried a few of the profiles that should print fairly well, and they look like crap.  Dark, saturated, totally unacceptable.  I can't help but think I'm missing a setting for matte paper, but I've done everything I know how to do, even read the instructions such as they are, and it prints beautifully on Premium Luster (or as we say in Boston, Lustah  )

Any advice (short of returning it and buying a Canon) appreciated.   

edit: He's running OSX 10.9 and a recent version of Photoshop - not sure which.

[Mark D Segal]

For all Epson drivers that I know about, all of their profiles are buried deep inside the file structure of the driver and they should come up automatically in the Print Module of Photoshop - and other printing applications. If you are not finding these drivers, it's possible that you accidentally fell into the Airprint driver installation rather than the Series driver. This happens without one being aware. Unless you already know for sure otherwise, please check your driver version - whether it says Airprint or Series. Make sure it is Series. Other than that, you can unpack the driver to locate the profiles (if you are on Mac, you can Pacifist to do that), then copy and paste them all into your Profiles folder in your operating system. That way they become accessible to any print application that can reach your profiles folder.

[teddillard]

Thanks, Mark - it did install some profiles which were specifically for the p6000/p8000 and are being seen by Photoshop, so I'm thinking they did install correctly, unless legacy media profiles are cordoned off in some other place.  I can check, though. 

[digitaldog]

Thanks, Mark - it did install some profiles which were specifically for the p6000/p8000 and are being seen by Photoshop, so I'm thinking they did install correctly, unless legacy media profiles are cordoned off in some other place.  I can check, though.

IF Photoshop and other ICC aware applications see them and you can select them, that's it; you're done. You'll have to search elsewhere for others you desire.

[teddillard]

OK so it's safe to assume Epson is not providing profiles for the paper they ship with the printer?   

[digitaldog]

OK so it's safe to assume Epson is not providing profiles for the paper they ship with the printer?   

That is possible considering the role of some of the paper provided.

[teddillard]

OK, I found the page for Singleweight Matte: https://epson.com/m/S041746

With this:

"Profile Information
Supplied with Standard Epson Driver."

I was trying to see exactly what Epson is offering for current papers. 

...so, yeah, something seems like it's not installing correctly, or Epson's not providing support for all their current products.  Am I really the only one who's brought this up?

[Mark D Segal]

Ted's original post says that he could not find profiles for a bunch of current and previous Epson papers. Assuming those papers are meant to be printed on, that is not normal. I would also be inclined to believe that the roll the printer shipped with is also meant to be printed on. I think it may be useful for Ted to call Epson Prographics support, tell them specifically which profiles he thinks are missing and see what they say.

[teddillard]

Thanks, Mark - just did exactly that.  Here's my response:

"Dyroza B.: Ok, not a problem. I just checked and confirmed that we do not offer a profile for Singleweight Matte

Dyroza B.: Profiles are usually created for more premium paper types"

So yeah, guess it's time to drag out the i1 and build some paper profiles (wait, WHAT year is this again?)  I've got to assume the other stocks I'm missing aren't supported either.  Good times.  Canon's def. looking like something I should have looked in to.   

[Mark D Segal]

Instead of guessing, why not ask them about the specific papers for which you want to know whether profiles are supposed to show-up in the driver, because you are not seeing them?

[teddillard]

Because it would take less time to simply build them?  Sorry, waiting on support chat for a response I'm pretty confident is going to be not what I want to hear isn't my cup of tea.   

In any case, the Singleweight Matte is the one he likes and wants, and I'm not even convinced it's a profile issue to be honest.  There's way too much ink on that print. 

Thanks for your help - again, I'm surprised I'm the first person to mention this.  This SureColor line has been out a couple of years, hasn't it? 

[Mark D Segal]

If it's single weight matte, I'm thinking that if you used the Enhanced Matte-MK profile the results should be fine - unless as you suspect, the over-inking has nothing to do with the profiling.

[teddillard]

Yup, that's exactly what I tried. There's def. a profile issue along with the over-inking... figured the first step was to make sure the driver was installed correctly and I was using the right profile, then I could go from there.  Actually, based on his response, I'm going to try the plain paper selection and see if that works for the inking issues.

So, then I'd have to conclude that the driver settings for my Matte papers is somehow wonky and over-inking?  I can't remember what Matte paper selections the driver had (not at his workstation), but there were a few for Matte, that, in my experience, should have worked fine.  Thus my wondering if I'm missing some setting.  (I selected 720, which in my experience should be fine.)

[Mark D Segal]

There are also settings in the driver itself to verify: for example, the selection of Media Type (does it cohere with the profile?), and in the Advanced Paper settings whether the paper thickness setting is correct for the weight of the paper. This should self-select correctly once the Media Type is chosen, and is correct, but worth verifying. If all the software side looks good, one may then begin to think hardware; for example there have been reports of inking issues arising from the ink-switching mechanism, but an unusual problem.

[teddillard]

Cool.  Yes, verified all that stuff.  It may be worth trying a supported Epson matte paper that's more of a premium paper I guess, to see if it's a problem that applies to anything with Matte Black ink. 

o Joy. 

[teddillard]

Not for nothin' (as we say up here in Boston), can anyone post up a screenshot of the profiles they have installed for their P6000/P8000 for me?  It'd same me a lot of time.

[teddillard]

Alrighty then...  here's the deal. 

Here's the list of profiles that install with the P6000/P8000:



As you can see, there are profiles for Archival Matte, Enhanced Matte paper and board, and nothing for Singleweight or Doubleweight Matte.  Then there's this "Standard" profile, highlighted in this shot. 

This is what Doubleweight Matte paper (supplied with the printer) prints like using the Enhanced Matte or the Archival Matte profile:



...as a dear, yet indelicate friend is fond of saying: "Ass".

I saw a random profile labeled "Standard", and figured it was worth a shot using that, with Plain Paper settings, to see if we were over-inking or not.  The color was much better, indicating it was a good profile, and there was no over-inking.

The driver has options for both Singelweight and Doubleweight Matte, and the printer also allows you to select either as your media when you load it, so we selected Singleweight Matte in the driver and on the printer, sent the print using the "Standard" profile, and it printed like a dream.  Side-by-side with the Premium Luster print, it looked just as I'd expect on any of the Matte papers - Archival, Enhanced, Single, Double, even Ink Jet Photo paper (whatever happened to that?  I loved that stuff for proofing...) 

The ironic and humorous thing here is that I've taught for years that you don't "pick and choose", and "try out" profiles.  You use the profile built for the printer/ink/paper, yet picking and choosing is exactly how I determined this was the correct (or "usable") profile.

My take-away:

• For some reason, the Archival Matte and Enhanced Matte profiles are junk.
• For some other reason, the Standard profile can be used instead of the above junk.
• For yet another reason, Tech Support at Epson is unaware of this, and has absolutely no ability to direct users to a workable profile.
• ...and, finally, there is not only NO documentation online, but there is CONTRARY documentation stating that profiles exist for this paper/printer, and are installed with it. 

Pathetic, for a printer that's supposedly "Professional", replacing the Stylus Pro line, and been on the market for a couple of years, and papers that have long been standard issue.