Epson 7600 and Snow Leopard printing woes and solution

[therider]

I just got an used 7600 but got bummed by the dark prints problem due to double profiling thanks to the ColorSync bug. After spending 2 days on it and working till 4:30am I finally found a trick that worked for me. Sharing it here from my blog post: http://joydutta.com/blog/2010/09/29/epson-7600-and-snow-leopard-printing-woes-and-solution/

---------------------------------------
I followed the standard process. Photoshop manages colors, with Bill Atkinson’s 9600 Premium Luster paper profile (9600PLU1), with Relative Colorimetric intent and Black point compensation turned on. Also NCA (no color adjustment) in the printer driver. Each and every print came out darker as if shadows quickly rushed to blackness. Also the black and white images seemed warm.

From numerous sources on the web I found out that the root cause is “double profiling” due to a bug in the print workflow. What happens exactly is that when we apply a profile in the print dialog in PS, and then go to printer driver dialog, the “Color Matching” section shows that “ColorSync” is automatically selected and is greyed out. This is not desired because ColorSync itself applies another profile depending on the paper, in my case, 7600-Premium-Luster-PK. the NCA option is also greyed out. This double profiling screws up the prints.

Many people have fixed it by pointing the default ColorSync profiles to “Generic RGB” as if it is a null profile. But it did not work for me.

Another source said to convert the image to the paper profile, then choose “Printer manages colors”, and NCA in printer driver. Very strangely, the printer just won’t print anything with this configuration.

Then I found out a very interesting fact that in Lightroom the application print dialog and the print driver dialog are on separate buttons. I had to choose the NCA on the driver dialog first (clicking “Print Settings…”), making sure that Color Matching is “Epson color controls”, the only alternative to “ColorSync”. Then I chose the paper profile on the right side pane before clicking “Print one”, and not “Print…”. If you click the latter, the color matching will be reset to “ColorSync” and you have to undo it by choosing “Printer manages color” instead of the paper profile and click “Print…” again.

The print finally showed shadow details as desired and perfectly neutral black and white.

It will still be a PITA to prepare images in PS and print via LR, but at least the prints will be right. CS4 or CS5 might have this particular bug fixed, but not sure.
------------------------------------------

Hope it helps somebody out there.

[Doyle Yoder]

All this trouble when you could just "properly" install the 8.19 drivers and use the current OS?

[Pat Herold]

Good work! And thanks for sharing this.

In our experience the pointing of profiles to "Generic RGB" is for Mac OS Leopard and earlier.  If you are running Snow Leopard, this same work around still works, but you must use "sRGB.icc" instead.  More details on this are found the Tech Notes of one of our newsletters:
https://www2.chromix.com/colorsmarts/smartNote.cxsa?snid=50114

[Doyle Yoder]

If you are running Snow Leopard, this same work around still works, but you must use "sRGB.icc" instead.

Yes, but why would anyone still want to use the old drivers and have to go through this workaround?

[therider]

@Doyle: I did install the 8.19 driver. Can you please explain what you meant by "properly"? Maybe I missed some other trick, but I think I tried every idea mentioned by people, short of downgrading to an older driver or OS.

@pherold: Good idea about the "sRGB.icc" for Snow Leopard. I can see "sRGB Profile.icc" in /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles. I will give it a try and update my blog post with findings. Will it work with the latest 8.19 driver? Thanks!

[Doyle Yoder]

@Doyle: I did install the 8.19 driver. Can you please explain what you meant by "properly"? Maybe I missed some other trick, but I think I tried every idea mentioned by people, short of downgrading to an older driver or OS.

Did you completely remove all traces of older Epson drivers?  Like the /Library/Printers/Epson folder etc.

[therider]

Actually I removed the EPSON folder today morning only since my 2200 gave driver troubles. The 2200 is now working but I have not checked if the 7600 still needs the Lightroom trick to print correctly. Are you saying that I will be able to choose "Epson color controls" instead of "ColorSync" in "Color Matching" menu when printing with the paper profile and NCA in driver ?

[Doyle Yoder]

Actually I removed the EPSON folder today morning only since my 2200 gave driver troubles. The 2200 is now working but I have not checked if the 7600 still needs the Lightroom trick to print correctly. Are you saying that I will be able to choose "Epson color controls" instead of "ColorSync" in "Color Matching" menu when printing with the paper profile and NCA in driver ?

The way it now works in Apple's new printing path with apps that use that path is that when choosing application manages color, Color Matching will be set to Colorsync and grayed out. With properly codes drivers (8.19 driver is on of them) CM in the driver will then be set to "Color Settings: Off (No Color Adjustment). Any apps that use the old printing path will allow you to make a selection in Color Matching. What PSCS3 will do is anybodies guess as it seemed to be a strange mixture of carbon and cocoa printing APIs.

With apps that use the new printing path (cocoa APIs) the only way you will be able to choose anything in Color Matching is if you set in the apps printing dialog to Printer Manages Color.

[therider]

It could be a PS CS3 issue as well. When ColorSync is chosen and grayed out, NCA is also chosen and grayed out, but double profiling still happens. I will try tonight again to confirm. If it does not work, I will see if "sRGB Profile.icc" trick in ColorSync tool works. Otherwise I will stick to my Lightroom method for now.

Thanks a lot anyway.

[Doyle Yoder]

Then I found out a very interesting fact that in Lightroom the application print dialog and the print driver dialog are on separate buttons. I had to choose the NCA on the driver dialog first (clicking “Print Settings…”), making sure that Color Matching is “Epson color controls”, the only alternative to “ColorSync”. Then I chose the paper profile on the right side pane before clicking “Print one”, and not “Print…”. If you click the latter, the color matching will be reset to “ColorSync” and you have to undo it by choosing “Printer manages color” instead of the paper profile and click “Print…” again.

The print finally showed shadow details as desired and perfectly neutral black and white.

It will still be a PITA to prepare images in PS and print via LR, but at least the prints will be right. CS4 or CS5 might have this particular bug fixed, but not sure.

Lightroom 2.x, 3.x and (it may be that an 2.0-2.2 had a problem) CS4 and CS5 work correctly with the 8.x Epson drivers. In LR Print Settings the only way you can make a selection in Color Matching of the driver is if you have Printer Manages Color selected. And Print Settings is really only needed for saving driver settings in presets. Once you choose to have LR manage color those setting will be negated as now when choosing Print the driver should work properly and default to no NCA. It may be that the strange behavior of Print One will still do something different as we did use it as a workaround before some drivers were properly update to Apple's new printing path. The first time you choose Print One anyway. But that should not be necessary and is not when printing to my 9600 with the 8.12 driver at least with LR 2.7 and 3.2.

[therider]

I tried again with 8.19 driver and with ColorSync on, no improvement. Tried to point to sRGB in ColorSync for the paper profile, no luck. I am sticking to the LR trick for now.

Thanks all.