Snow Leopard, Epson 2880/3880 and ColorMunki

[digitaldog]

For fun, instead of using ProfileMaker or PROFILER, I tried using ColorMunki 1.1.1 under 10.6 to both an Epson 2880 and 3880, the targets are not printing correctly as discussed elsewhere. Just wondering why I’m not seeing or hearing more from users with this combo and want to make sure its not an isolated issue.

I suspect this is also an issue printing the untagged targets out of EyeOne Match. They are too light. However, this product provides a TIFF allowing me to print out of Photoshop. Using No Color Management, printing the untagged target as we’ve done in the past, its far darker and probably OK (didn’t measure or build a profile).

X-Rite seems to be saying its Epson’s problem due to the driver. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the 2880 but instead the host application. Before I send off more data to X-Rite, I’m wondering if anyone else is either successful or not, printing from the host applications to either of these printers under 10.6.2.

Thanks.

[Photo Op]

I’m wondering if anyone else is either successful or not, printing from the host applications to either of these printers under 10.6.2.

Andrew- I've given up trying to profile the 2880 using Spyder3. On 10.6.2, I calibrated using ColorEyes. The print results were not good. I've read the article by Mark Dubovoy and tried the solution by Eric Chan. I've settled on using the canned profiles from Ilford and Red River.   Some day it may be resolved, but I'm not holding my breath. Wish you could give us an update to the situation, but obviously if YOU are having problems, there's NO hope for me.

[DonCone]

Before I send off more data to X-Rite, I’m wondering if anyone else is either successful or not, printing from the host applications to either of these printers under 10.6.2.

Thanks.

Andrew, I'll share my Colormunki experience with you. My friend has a 3800 with Snow Leopard and was having serious problems profiling with Colormunkl. When I first looked at it, the Colormunki software had not been updated to 1.1.1. I updated it and the problem continued. A call to Xrite also brought on comments about the Epson driver and SL. Several "workarounds" were suggested to no avail. While I was there, I also tried Eye-One Match and could not make a decent profile but that later turned out to be a plugged nozzle. In his frustration, my friend trashed the Colornunki program and re-installed from the original DVD. Then, he could make an accurate profile but all of the prints using it had a medium grey boarder around them. I went again and installed the updated 1.1.1 and everything was perfect.

When I ask myself what got fixed when my friend re-installed from the original DVD, I have to think it may have been corrupted cache files. You might see if you cam duplicate this scenario.

Don

[digitaldog]

Andrew, I'll share my Colormunki experience with you. My friend has a 3800 with Snow Leopard and was having serious problems profiling with Colormunkl. When I first looked at it, the Colormunki software had not been updated to 1.1.1. I updated it and the problem continued. A call to Xrite also brought on comments about the Epson driver and SL. Several "workarounds" were suggested to no avail. While I was there, I also tried Eye-One Match and could not make a decent profile but that later turned out to be a plugged nozzle. In his frustration, my friend trashed the Colornunki program and re-installed from the original DVD. Then, he could make an accurate profile but all of the prints using it had a medium grey boarder around them. I went again and installed the updated 1.1.1 and everything was perfect.

When I ask myself what got fixed when my friend re-installed from the original DVD, I have to think it may have been corrupted cache files. You might see if you cam duplicate this scenario.

Don

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll give it a try. Emails to X-Rite didn’t wash IMHO, telling me that there was no “official” driver for the 2880 and 3880, and that’s not correct for the later. I don’t use the product but was testing it out so I just wanted X-Rite to be aware of this situation if indeed they have a bug to fix (which I suspect). I was told to follow this link: http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx...;SupportID=4662

Their fix, setting Epson Color Controls but NO Color Adjustment is a new one for me. Bottom line is, printing using this “fix”, or using the normal process produces two different results but worse, if I try this using a target I can actually open in Photoshop, I get a third result. I’m not sure which is “correct” but the problem is, we can’t get access to the ColorMunki targets (the 2nd has to be generated from the first set of data measured). I asked for a TIFF of page one so I can print it out of Photoshop using Eric’s fix to see which of the three versions is “correct”.

It would be real useful if there were some back door to output the targets as TIFFs so you were not forced to print through the application in these cases.

[Doyle Yoder]

When I ask myself what got fixed when my friend re-installed from the original DVD, I have to think it may have been corrupted cache files. You might see if you cam duplicate this scenario.

Don

When I first installed SL and saw things that were happening I was afraid of this. Cache files are not being cleaned properly, which caused a hugh problem with the open and saved dialogs relating to fonts and their cache files. I have since realized there is another big problem with permission becoming not correct and Disk Utility's Repair Permission being unable to correct them. I am still looking into whether 3rd party utilities that can repair permissions can do any better.

But this cache problem seems to be a serious bug in SL.

Doyle

[Doyle Yoder]

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll give it a try. Emails to X-Rite didn’t wash IMHO, telling me that there was no “official” driver for the 2880 and 3880, and that’s not correct for the later. I don’t use the product but was testing it out so I just wanted X-Rite to be aware of this situation if indeed they have a bug to fix (which I suspect). I was told to follow this link: http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx...;SupportID=4662

Their fix, setting Epson Color Controls but NO Color Adjustment is a new one for me. Bottom line is, printing using this “fix”, or using the normal process produces two different results but worse, if I try this using a target I can actually open in Photoshop, I get a third result. I’m not sure which is “correct” but the problem is, we can’t get access to the ColorMunki targets (the 2nd has to be generated from the first set of data measured). I asked for a TIFF of page one so I can print it out of Photoshop using Eric’s fix to see which of the three versions is “correct”.

It would be real useful if there were some back door to output the targets as TIFFs so you were not forced to print through the application in these cases.

Their setting Epson Color Controls but NO Color Adjustment should be the way it is done as I do not believe that ColorMunki uses the new printing path or the very least it would be the same as selecting Printer Manages Color in PS.

Correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure ColorMunki uses the old printing path.

As for printing ColorMunki target from another application, what happens if you create a pdf or go to preview in the print dialog?

Doyle

[DonCone]

It would be real useful if there were some back door to output the targets as TIFFs so you were not forced to print through the application in these cases.

Andrew, I ran into the same issue. I thought I should be able to simply print the Colormunki targets from another application but they are not available.

About cache cleaning - there is a shareware utility that I think might be useful in this situation. www.northernsoftworks.com/snowleopardcachecleaner.html

My son uses this often when things get a little messed up on his system and if my friend gets in trouble with Colormunki again I will try to use it to correct the problem. It seems to be a powerful tool but if you go whole hog and do maximum cleaning you may have to redo a lot of other stuff that gets wiped out in other areas.

I think the painless approach would be to try a re-install of Colormunki and update to 1.1.1 first.

Don

[digitaldog]

As for printing ColorMunki target from another application, what happens if you create a pdf or go to preview in the print dialog?

The problem is you can’t print the Munki targets from anything but the host application. The first page is a set target but I can’t find it in the software package. Worse in a way, the 2nd target is built upon the measured data from the first so there’s simply no way to fully profile a printer using an outside utility to print the targets. In the future, it might be possible for X-Rite to put some kind of “export target to TIFF” file which would allow us to try other packages for printing.

[digitaldog]

About cache cleaning - there is a shareware utility that I think might be useful in this situation. www.northernsoftworks.com/snowleopardcachecleaner.html

Cocktail and Onyx are two to name a few do this. But the system should as well I think, usually at something like 2am if the Mac is on.

[Doyle Yoder]

Cocktail and Onyx are two to name a few do this. But the system should as well I think, usually at something like 2am if the Mac is on.

That 2am thing is only cron scripts.

Back to the printing targets, as some have reported printing unmanaged targets from Preview I am just wondering if in the printer dialog when printing from ColorMunki is it possible to select Open PDF in Preview and print from there. It certainly is with Eye-One Match.

Doyle

[digitaldog]

Back to the printing targets, as some have reported printing unmanaged targets from Preview I am just wondering if in the printer dialog when printing from ColorMunki is it possible to select Open PDF in Preview and print from there. It certainly is with Eye-One Match.

I was successful using Preview. Got that tip from the product manager of Epson Pro printers. That itself indicates that those who say the issue is solely an Epson driver issue are off a bit. If it was always a snow leopard/Epson driver issue, Preview shouldn’t work but it does. So it seems to be a combination of specific applications, drivers and 10.6. That would explain why CS3 seems immune. There’s code spread among all kinds of products here and unfortunately, depending on the phases of the moon, you either luck out or you don’t when printing these untagged targets.

The print driver that pops from ColorMunki does provide the ability to save off a PDF or open in Preview, that’s a great idea I’ll try next.

[Doyle Yoder]

I was successful using Preview. Got that tip from the product manager of Epson Pro printers. That itself indicates that those who say the issue is solely an Epson driver issue are off a bit. If it was always a snow leopard/Epson driver issue, Preview shouldn’t work but it does. So it seems to be a combination of specific applications, drivers and 10.6. That would explain why CS3 seems immune. There’s code spread among all kinds of products here and unfortunately, depending on the phases of the moon, you either luck out or you don’t when printing these untagged targets.

That brings up a real interesting point about Preview allowing full control of the driver when as you may recall I had a hugh argument with Adobe about this very thing when double profiling was discovered with LR at that time printing to the new printing path where we were forced to ColorSync instead of no CM.  With those at Adobe insisting they had to do it that way. And now that I think about what is even more crazy is that if Print Setting is chosen in LR before any other print option you have full control over the driver. I wonder how telling is that.

After the debacle with LR3 Beta printing I have very little confidence in Adobe having gotten this right at this point.

Ok, but I checked Aperture's behavior, if I choose System Manages Color I have full control over the driver, if I choose a printer profile in Aperture then the driver default to no CM. So does that mean that Preview is using System Manages Color, probably, the same as when Printer Manages Color in LR or PS is selected.  So I don't think my first paragraph above means anything but I will let it in to provoke thought as that is still my biggest gripe with Apple's new printing path. I just want all the controls of the printer driver available to me like we had with the old path.

Doyle

[DonCone]

Back to the printing targets, as some have reported printing unmanaged targets from Preview I am just wondering if in the printer dialog when printing from ColorMunki is it possible to select Open PDF in Preview and print from there. It certainly is with Eye-One Match.

Doyle

That's a good idea Doyle. I'll remember it.

I'm not sure what Xrite did in the version of Eye-One Match they released for Snow Leopard but it seems to work normally. At least printing from the application is no problem because it has access to the "Colorsync/Epson controls color" switch in the printer driver. I don't know if that is the case for older printers without updated drivers.

Don

[digitaldog]

That's a good idea Doyle. I'll remember it.

That didn’t work for me. The profiles are better but still suck pretty bad which in itself is odd.

I’m going to boot into 10.5 and try again just to see that there isn’t an issue with the hardware.

[DonCone]

That didn’t work for me. The profiles are better but still suck pretty bad which in itself is odd.

I’m going to boot into 10.5 and try again just to see that there isn’t an issue with the hardware.

Let us know what happens Andrew. I just saw a post from a local friend who is having problems with Snow Leopard, CS4 and his Epson 7600. I hope to talk with him soon  and see what his experience has been. I got in trouble with Eye-One Match on my system because I forgot to do a nozzle check before profiling and wound up with a bad result. I won't do that again ;=).

[Jonathan Wienke]

Somebody needs to kidnap an engineer or two each from Adobe, Apple, Epson, and X-Rite, lock them in a room full of assorted Mac hardware, and then flog them all daily until they get over the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and find the problems and fix them.

[tvalleau]

Ref the gray borders....There seems to be an issue with CS4; 10.6.2 and version 4 profiles for some folks. I've detailed what I've found, and how I fixed it, here:

http://www.tracyvalleau.com/blog/?p=62

As it now stands, my 3800 and ColorMunki profiles (both color and B&W) are working together just fine, using 10.6.2; PS CS4.

hth

Tracy

[jjlphoto]

Ref the gray borders....There seems to be an issue with CS4; 10.6.2 and version 4 profiles for some folks. I've detailed what I've found, and how I fixed it, here:

Tracy-

I've a 3800, and last summer I had a problem that may be similar. The prints had a tone, albeit faint, outside of the image area right up to the sheets max printable area. Close to 254/254/254. Even if my image was just a plain empty file, 255/255/255, the image area on the paper would correctly be totally devoid of any tone at all, but at the edges of the image area, that nasty tone would appear right up to the max printable area. Made no difference if it was a 16x20 image on 17x22 paper, or a 4x5 image on a 17x22 paper. I posted to numerous forums with no success. My only solution was to make the image's canvas size the exact same size as the papers max printable area. Then the problem went away when I upgraded to CS4 in September.

[tvalleau]

You know, that rings a faint bell with me too, but what we're seeing (those of us that do see it) is pretty much a straight dump from the light black cartridge... somewhere in the neighborhood of 18% gray, or thereabouts.  I did consider doing as you suggested, briefly... and then, once I found the fixes, just decided to redo my profiles in version 2 (for color) and use the other QTR script for B&W. Fortunately, I kept my targets, so it was mostly scanning...and, honestly, I didn't do them all... just the ones I use the most.

Happy holidays!

[Doyle Yoder]

That didn’t work for me. The profiles are better but still suck pretty bad which in itself is odd.

I’m going to boot into 10.5 and try again just to see that there isn’t an issue with the hardware.

I did a test for creating profiles using Canon PS print plugin using Eye-One Match which has unmanaged tiff files that comes with it.

Here is the only way I could get the exact match in color values when printing a target from Eye-One Match and the supplied tif targets. When going to print from Eye-One Match I selected "Save PDF to Folder as Tiff". Then open in Photoshop with the color setting set to "Ask When Opening". When opening the tif file it will come up a sRGB as the default but you can chose "Discard the embedded profile (don't color manage)". Make sure your default settings RGB setting is not sRGB or PS won't ask.

Since the rasterizing PDF or PS files does not allow you to not color manage, PDF and PS files will not work this way.

Creating targets from ColorMunki to print from the PS plug-in or other application that can be set to no color management should work correctly this way.

Doyle