My thanks to all those here who helped me make the right choice and buy a Stylus Pro 3800. The small beast arrived yesterday and I'm having some problems with color output, mainly the prints being much darker than expected.
I've been using Spyder 3 Elite for several months now to calibrate the LCD screen of my 20" iMac. I've recalibrated just before doing my first test prints. I received a box of Super A3 Premium Luster Photo Paper (S041785) with the 3800, but I couldn't find such a paper in the printer's driver settings. I had to fall back on "Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster", which was the closest one I could find. I'm not sure this is the reason for the dark prints, though.
I've tried printing both from PS CS4 and from Lightroom (on Leopard 10.5.
, using Printer Manages Colors every time. Two color prints were made with the default settings, and one B&W print with the ABW mode of the driver. Colors were almost spot on, however both color and B&W prints were much darker than what was on my screen. Histograms for all three files were nicely spread out, no blown highlights or crushed blacks. I just don't understand what's wrong.
When in PS CS4, I tried Soft Proof and chose the PLPP profile. The Soft Proof seemed to simulate correctly the printed output, since the result (on the screen) was also much darker. However, I'm not sure it's dependable since the colors were somewhat off.
Any ideas would be much welcome. I'm a little but underwhelmed by what many people described as a "fire and forget" printer when the default settings are used with a calibrated display. I don't mind messing with settings, on the contrary, but there are quite a few parameters involved and I'd like to waste as little ink as possible when testing.
Thanks.