“Filter failed” problem: what worked for me

[peterwgallagher]

I know this is a problem a lot of people seem to have. In my case the solution was resolution (ugh... a rhyme!).

I had a shock when I first tried to print at A2 size on my Epson SC-P800 printer: every time I tried, the printer thought about it for a few minutes then laboriously printed about half a sheet before I got the dread “filter failed” error on my Mac. “Filter!? What filter??”

I updated all the drivers; reset the printing system; tried using a USB connection in place of the WiFi connection & traipsed through a dozen websites that gave me no useful advice (except that those things apparently worked for someone else). After four or five sheets of Ilford Gold Fibre Silk paper half-filled with an image I had run out of ideas and was beginning to wonder if I’d have to enter repair-shop hell.

I found it especially frustrating that Apple offered no information on the CAUSE of the ‘filter failed’ error to help with self-diagnosis: only a few general nostrums for printing problems that were useless in my case. Nor does the error seem to appear in the system logs anywhere: most I could find were some irrelevant CUPS messages (Mac OS being *NIX based builds its printing system on top of CUPS).

Turned out the problem was likely related to something in the print path running out of memory or patience or maybe significant digits — whether on the Mac side or the Epson side I don’t know for sure but I suspect the former. I was printing a cropped M43 image with a final pixel size of about 3900 * 5200. This fits to an A2 paper size at about 280dpi. But I was trying to use the (printer-native) 1440dpi print which gives a lovely density on the Ilford paper. So I set “print resolution” in the LR Print module to 1440 and ignored the warning from LR.

Yes, I know now... foolish.  I could have saved myself a lot of pointless frustration by paying more attention to that warning notice. Finally, I tried unchecking the “print resolution” setting so that I had an image with 280 PPI printing at 1440 DPI. Success; sort of. It printed immediately and finished the job with no complaint. But I wasn’t very happy with the quality (density) of the print. So I experimented with the LR resolution “upsampling” again but this time staying below the “warning” level. The best result was setting the output in LR to 480 PPI which is, conveniently, exactly 1/3 of the 1440 DPI setting in the printer. I think I read somewhere in researching this problem that this helps with the printer’s own interpolation.

This story would have been shorter if Apple provided more meaningful error messages. It is just for the record in case it helps. Best wishes...

[Mike Guilbault]

I've had a "filter failed" error on my 9900 for a few years now and still have not found out why. It only happens when I use sheet paper. Roll paper is fine. Even a print test on sheet paper is fine, but as soon as I try to print an image, from anything, "filter failed". I spent two days on the phone with Epson, Adobe, and Apple... and each blamed the other. Looks like I'll be upgrading my computer soon, so I'm hoping that'll fix it.