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Ed Foster, Jr.

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Epson 4000 color problem
« Reply #20 on: January 02, 2007, 03:52:44 pm »

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Ed,
I share your concerns about the "Generic RGB" trick. But what still puzzles me is that in Adobe Lightroom, everything is fine! If I choose one of my custom printer profiles and choose No Color Management in the print dialog, it comes fine wether the factory printer profile is selected with the ColorSync utility or not (set to Generic RGB in this case). This shows in the summary field of the print panel and on finally the prints.

So, is it a bug in Photoshop CS 2 & CS 3? What's your opinion? The Epson driver seems to do its job correctly.

My second point of concern is that this issue hasn't been made "public". I could find only a few references on the ColorSync list.
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Francois,
Happy New Year!  Sorry for the delay in replying, but I was out of town on holidays and joyfully without an internet connection.

Time is my enemy in attempting to pinpoint the actual culprit here from a scientific basis.  We have to remember that there are three players, so to speak; Apple (ColorSync), Adobe (Photoshop et al), and Epson.  And, at least for me, the 3 have not played well together in all respects.   I replaced my Epson 7600 with a 7800, and while using Mac OS 10.3.9, installed the driver for the 7800.  Printing from Photoshop (PS) was right on.  A week or two later, I installed OS 10.4 and still had no problem printing from PS.  However, when I attempted to print from InDesign (ID), I had a problem selecting the printer in sheet versus roll mode.  After much frustration, the only workaround I could devise was to install a second printer (7800 driver).  Now, in order to switch to the correct paper mode, I have to choose the switch to the other printer in order to be able to select sheet paper.  Strange, but it is not a matter of having one preset because it doesn't matter which of the two 7800 printers I choose, but I just have to manually make the switch in the ID print dialog in order to make the paper feed selection.  I don't have this problem in PS, only in ID.  Go figure - here is a conflict between Adobe and Epson.

With that resolved, prints between ID and PS did not match and I had the "ghosting" and "salmon" problems only when printing from ID.  That is when I started to dig deeper and found that colorsync or epson had set (or reset) the current printer profile to the Epson Standard - but only when printing from ID, not from PS - again go figure.

Keeping in mind both Steve Upton's and Chris Murphy's comments (both on the colorsync list that I have participated in for nearly 8 years) and that of others here is what I am inclined to believe:

1.    Adobe applications (perhaps excluding Lightroom as it is a ground up application) do not include a profile in the print stream when the adobe application does the conversion or when the conversion is accomplished manually in the application.  That is, the data stream has already been converted prior to being sent to the printer driver.

2.    On a Mac there is no way in reality to fully bypass colorsync, so the OS considers this untagged data as Generic RGB, and when Generic RGB is set for the current device profile there is no conversion.

3.    Up to OS 10.4, printer drivers were registered properly and ColorSync would correctly set the current profile for the device as Generic RGB, however, starting with 10.4 and early versions, CS did not properly set the current profile  - OR- Epson's driver installation prevented that from happening.

However, I believe that we can expect such things to happen as software upgrades keep growing and are built upon previous code and routines, which may be the reason that Lightroom does not exhibit the same printing problem as it is essentially new code.

I have not used Epson's canned profiles and bypassed Adobe's color conversion and used the color management features in the printer driver.  If I had the time, I would experiment with that to see the ramifications.

So, I am not necessarily inclined to believe it is a PS bug, but a situation where Apple and Adobe have different opinions on how color management functions should be handled, coupled with how Epson believes print data should be handed off.

Over the years in order to simplify color management for the masses, the coding and interactions have become more complex, thus problems such as this seem to arise from "under the hood".

Best Regards,
Ed
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« Reply #21 on: January 02, 2007, 04:02:18 pm »

There is the Edmund Ronald workaround (which I posted at the time on the Colorsync list):

Revert to the original CS2 install (9.0)
AFAIK it has never had any printing problems, and I have never seen any major issues ith 9.0. If needed you can always download and install the latest ACR plugin.

Edmund
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Ed Foster, Jr.

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« Reply #22 on: January 02, 2007, 04:17:56 pm »

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There is the Edmund Ronald workaround (which I posted at the time on the Colorsync list):

Revert to the original CS2 install (9.0)
AFAIK it has never had any printing problems, and I have never seen any major issues ith 9.0. If needed you can always download and install the latest ACR plugin.

Edmund
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Edmund,

Indeed that might be a viable workaround for PS users.  However, as noted in my posts, my problem was never with PS, but with InDesign, version 2 and I purchased InDesign CS2 (Version 4) and the problem persisted until I dug deeper to correct the problem at its root.

Regards,
Ed
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« Reply #23 on: January 02, 2007, 04:59:03 pm »

Urk! I apologize.
One thing that intrigues me though was that in the various places these things are discussed in the net (colorsync list mainly) printing from Indesign was given as a workaround for PS users.

Edmund

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Edmund,

Indeed that might be a viable workaround for PS users.  However, as noted in my posts, my problem was never with PS, but with InDesign, version 2 and I purchased InDesign CS2 (Version 4) and the problem persisted until I dug deeper to correct the problem at its root.

Regards,
Ed
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francois

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Epson 4000 color problem
« Reply #24 on: January 03, 2007, 07:11:40 am »

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Francois,
Happy New Year!  Sorry for the delay in replying, but I was out of town on holidays and joyfully without an internet connection.

<snip>Time is my enemy in attempting to pinpoint the actual culprit here from a scientific basis.  We have to remember that there are three players, so to speak; Apple (ColorSync), Adobe (Photoshop et al), and Epson.  And, at least for me, the 3 have not played well together in all respects.  </snip>
Ed,
Thanks for you reply. Actually, I spent a few hours to test again. I talked to Andrew Rodney and finally sent a report to Adobe. I don't think that this issue is a bug in either Apple, Adobe or Epson software but as you write, the interaction between those three pieces of software is not working perfectly.

I'll keep you posted if I get some feedback from Adobe.

The interesting info is that while I have the salmon issue with Photoshop (without changing the default printer profile to "Generic RGB"), Lightroom 1.0 b4 prints correctly all the time (with or without the "Generic RGB" change in ColorSync utility).

Happy New year to you Ed!
« Last Edit: January 03, 2007, 07:13:03 am by francois »
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Epson 4000 color problem
« Reply #25 on: January 03, 2007, 07:22:59 am »

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Edmund,

Indeed that might be a viable workaround for PS users.  However, as noted in my posts, my problem was never with PS, but with InDesign, version 2 and I purchased InDesign CS2 (Version 4) and the problem persisted until I dug deeper to correct the problem at its root.

Regards,
Ed
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Edmund,
My salmon issue was/is present with Photoshop CS, CS 2 and the beta version of CS 3. I have no more Mac running Panther (10.3) to perform tests. The issue is every similar in aspect to the halo issue caused by Photoshop 9.01 and Mac OS X 10.4.7. As said above, Lightroom doesn't  present the salmon issue.
Below, I enclosed screenshots of the print dialogs (summary tab). One can clearly see that profiles are different. Only Lightroom seems to enclose the profile I chose when I printed. With Photoshop, the profile is the one selected in the system (can be changed using the ColorSync utility).
« Last Edit: January 03, 2007, 07:26:30 am by francois »
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« Reply #26 on: February 03, 2007, 04:25:11 pm »

Ed. Your fix seems to have worked for me as well on my 3800. I'd be curious if reverting back to the original profile selected causes the issue to reappear as I did this and now can't duplicate the issue (weird).

Also, despite the fact we have set everything for No Color Management, its clear that ColorSync IS doing stuff to the data and in fact, I got emails from Adobe indicating this (even using Let Printer Manage color). There's some mysterious interaction that only Apple and Adobe engineers seem to understand (partially <g>). What is odd was that when I printed out of Lightroom or InDesign, no issues. Only Photoshop caused this aliasing.
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Ed Foster, Jr.

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« Reply #27 on: February 03, 2007, 10:40:49 pm »

Andrew,
As the problem affected your output from PS, did you make a profile for the 3800 before or after you discovered (and corrected for) the aliasing problem?  Or, did you test it with a factory profile?

Ed
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digitaldog

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« Reply #28 on: February 04, 2007, 10:43:07 am »

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Andrew,
As the problem affected your output from PS, did you make a profile for the 3800 before or after you discovered (and corrected for) the aliasing problem?  Or, did you test it with a factory profile?

Ed
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I used both an existing profile and a custom profile, no difference.
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francois

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« Reply #29 on: February 04, 2007, 12:18:00 pm »

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...What is odd was that when I printed out of Lightroom or InDesign, no issues. Only Photoshop caused this aliasing....
Andrew,
You can easily see that Lightroom (and other Adobe applications) tags the printed file with the correct printer profile. Photoshop, on the other hand, tags with the Standard Device profile. See the screenshots I posted above. The one on the right is the Lightroom summary dialog.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2007, 12:19:00 pm by francois »
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« Reply #30 on: February 26, 2007, 12:57:08 pm »

Today I setup a new 4800 printer. Printed targets for profiles and saw odd red issues we've discussed. I got an email from Epson that this is a bug in OS X and the fix is to ensure that in Printer Utility, the printer you're using with no color management is default (in bold within the list). Printed out the target again with identical settings. No banding.

In short:
There is a standing bug within OS X that forces the printer driver ICC profile into a "Default" ICC whenever you turn OFF color management within the printer driver.

The fix is to ensure the printer driver is the DEFAULTED driver with the Printer Setup Utility.  It should be BOLD in the window.

Then OS X does not replace the driver ICC with a default one if you turn OFF color management within our driver.
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« Reply #31 on: February 26, 2007, 02:08:25 pm »

There's that other posted fix (see copy and paste below). It does fix the issue but introduces a potentially bigger issue. There's a difference in what comes out of the device depending on if you pick Generic RGB or any other RGB space here. I tried Generic and ProPhoto and there's a major difference in output. So what makes Generic RGB right?

With the other fix, you're using the Default profile (Factory profile) which is associated with an Epson profile in this case. But you have to keep each printer set to Default in Print Utility and I have 3 different ink jets to juggle.

- run the colorsync utility
- select devices
- find the list of profiles for the printer you are having problems with
- the default profile will have a blue dot beside it.
- click on the name of default profile
- you will now see "factory profile" and "current profile" listed for the default
- change "current profile" to point to /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic RGB Profile.icc

It's this last step that seems iffy (it works but what is the right profile?).
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Ed Foster, Jr.

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« Reply #32 on: February 27, 2007, 10:46:13 am »

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I tried Generic and ProPhoto and there's a major difference in output. So what makes Generic RGB right?
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Andrew,

Exactly - remember at the advent of OSX, simply you cannot bypass colorsync.  I recall you and Chris Murphy had a tirade of exchanges with John of Apple on this and Generic RGB.  So, in order for the data stream to "bypass" a conversion at the system level, it had to be "tagged" with the same profile, thus creating no conversion.  Adobe would need to confirm this, but perhaps that was how their print module was able to properly "play" with the OS and printer driver at that time when the conversion was handled at the application level.

With all due to respect to Epson's response, I noticed also (as Francois noted aboe) that when printing from Lightroom, the profile in the dialog "Summary" is the same as that selected in LR's print module.  The results print the same this way, as they do from PS, with the Generic RGB profile.   Again, fortifying that no conversion occurs when the data stream is tagged with a matching profile as is passes through the system.  So, Generic RGB is only correct when the print stream is identified as such, otherwise, in the case of the LR print module, Generic RGB would be incorrect and a transform would occur, NCA selected or not.

Now, the question is:  how is it that when printing from LR, the driver recognizes or is somehow triggered to match the correct profile applied at the application level?  Then, when switching back, and printing from PS, it recognizes Generic RGB.

Quote
It's this last step that seems iffy (it works but what is the right profile?).
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The right profile at this point is the one that matches in identity to the print stream, thus causing no further conversion at the system level.

As for juggling 3 printers at the moment, I guess its kinda like color management.  There really is no completely automated, push one button solution. Some level of human interaction, education, and thinking are still needed. And that really is a good thing, otherwise no one (individuals and manufacturers) would need the expertise that people like yourself bring to the table.

Best Regards,
Ed
« Last Edit: February 27, 2007, 10:48:19 am by Ed Foster, Jr. »
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« Reply #33 on: February 27, 2007, 11:18:46 am »

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The right profile at this point is the one that matches in identity to the print stream, thus causing no further conversion at the system level.
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Still confused (and I piggned Karl Lang about this and he too is confused). Anyway, there appears to be two fixes and one requires alteration of the profile that Epson selects as the Factory Profile (in this case 4800 Standard). The other fix involves leaving that alone and simply ensuring that the current printer is set to default. Both are real odd fixes <g>! I'm more inclined to leave the Factory profile alone and do the default switch after seeing how setting Generic RGB and ProPhoto RGB alter the final output.

I wonder if everyone on a Mac with more than one printer is setting this issue with reds when the current printer isn't selected as Default in Printer Utility.
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francois

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« Reply #34 on: February 27, 2007, 11:45:54 am »

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<snip>
With all due to respect to Epson's response, I noticed also (as Francois noted aboe) that when printing from Lightroom, the profile in the dialog "Summary" is the same as that selected in LR's print module. The results print the same this way, as they do from PS, with the Generic RGB profile. Again, fortifying that no conversion occurs when the data stream is tagged with a matching profile as is passes through the system. So, Generic RGB is only correct when the print stream is identified as such, otherwise, in the case of the LR print module, Generic RGB would be incorrect and a transform would occur, NCA selected or not.

Now, the question is:  how is it that when printing from LR, the driver recognizes or is somehow triggered to match the correct profile applied at the application level?  Then, when switching back, and printing from PS, it recognizes Generic RGB.
The right profile at this point is the one that matches in identity to the print stream, thus causing no further conversion at the system level.
</snip>

Ed and Andrew,
Is Lightroom the only Adobe application that tags the output with the correct printer profile?
After re-reading my developer notes, I can confirm that ColorSync cannot be bypassed - at least by standard printer drivers. The developers in charge of printing on the Photoshop team should ask their colleagues from the Lightroom team how they handle printing.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2007, 11:56:37 am by francois »
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« Reply #35 on: February 27, 2007, 11:55:14 am »

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Ed and Andrew,
Is Lightroom the only Adobe application that tags the output with the correct printer profile?
After re-reading my developer notes, I can confirm that ColorSync cannot be bypassed - at least by standard printer drivers.
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My understanding is using Let Printer Color manage is the mechanism whereby if the stars align just right, a source (output) is provided but what the driver does at this point is up to debate based on the driver itself. The last time I used LR and tried 'Let Printer' do the job with an Epson and using the Advanded B&W, it worked fine. But I want to test this again using a newer 4800.

There are a lot of LR users complaining about poor color prints but I haven't seen that yet. It matches Photoshop.

I agree that ColorSync cannot be bypassed which in itself is very interesting....
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francois

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« Reply #36 on: February 27, 2007, 12:00:40 pm »

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<snip>There are a lot of LR users complaining about poor color prints but I haven't seen that yet. It matches Photoshop.
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Yes, this matches my experience too (printing with Epson printers only, but I'll try a on large format HP next week).
« Last Edit: February 27, 2007, 12:00:51 pm by francois »
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« Reply #37 on: February 27, 2007, 02:47:03 pm »

On another machine, I tried the trick of associating the Generic RGB profile in the Colorsync utility, made a print (no banding), then reapplied the original Epson Standard profile and kept the 4800 from being the Default printer. No banding. Anyone else?
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francois

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« Reply #38 on: February 27, 2007, 03:54:01 pm »

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On another machine, I tried the trick of associating the Generic RGB profile in the Colorsync utility, made a print (no banding), then reapplied the original Epson Standard profile and kept the 4800 from being the Default printer. No banding. Anyone else?
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Actually, my Epson printer is not the default printer and is affected by salmon issue if the Epson Default profile is set. I've gone through many "cycles" of Generic RGB and Epson Default profile and always had banding when Epson Default was selected with the CS utility. Did I understand the "default printer" correctly?
« Last Edit: February 27, 2007, 03:54:54 pm by francois »
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« Reply #39 on: February 27, 2007, 04:01:01 pm »

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Actually, my Epson printer is not the default printer and is affected by salmon issue if the Epson Default profile is set. I've gone through many "cycles" of Generic RGB and Epson Default profile and always had banding when Epson Default was selected with the CS utility. Did I understand the "default printer" correctly?
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It either needs to be the default printer to remove the banding OR you need to associate a different profile (not Epson Standard) in the ColorSync utility.

My question is, if you do this from the utility and go back to the Epson Standard, does the banding disappear even if you are not using Default Printer?

The Default bit is going into Print Utility and ensuring the printer you are using is bold (set to default). But I'm trying to determine if you do the switch-a-row with the profiles, you can print without being the default printer (and get no banding).
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