Sounds as if the printer is fine and that there is a colour management problem somewhere in the colour management pipeline between the CMS and Photoshop (are you Colorsync [Mac] or ICM [Windows]?) . If you have Lightroom, try printing the same image out of Lightroom and see what happens. If you are on Mac greater than Snow Leopard, go to the PrinTao website of LaserSoft Imaging and download a free demo of PrinTao, and try printing the same photo from that, because it does not use Colorsync. If you are getting good prints from the non-Photoshop alternatives, it would suggest there is a corrupted Photoshop setting that somehow crept in.
Thanks. For your help.
I'm on a Mac Running Mountain Lion. I have not been using Colorsynch. Normally, I give color control to Photoshop and specify an icc profile for it to use. IU've had better luck making my own profiles that using any of the manufacturers.
Since I started having this problem, I had some success turning color control over to Epson during printing, for which it seemed to used a generic sRGB or Adobe RGB profile. As I said in my original post, the results were much better letting Epson control things than printing with a profile through Photoshop, though this takes away my option of using an icc profile (other than whatever default Epson uses). I also tried giving color control to colorsynch and specifying a profile and got really bad results. There seems to be a bit of confusion in the driver somewhere about who is controlling what, as, when I believe I had things set for colorsynch, the driver complained that there might be a conflict in who is controlling the color.
Per your suggestion, I just spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to use PrintTao8. I can't figure out how he is getting anyone to pay $500 for the software. It won't even let me specify the size of my sheet, seemingly limiting paper to standard commercial sizes. I had to track down some paper scraps and cut then to his specifications.
The only place I can see to tell the software what profile to use is in the media manager, but then, after saving that "media" I found no way to select that profile in any printer interface.
I also couldn't figure out how to get it to print. Went through and selected a bunch of stuff (which all seems to be the Epson driver interface stuck into new windows in a confusing way) and clicked on print (even though I could find nowhere to select a printer profile). In response to that, the software went through a quick process in a window that looked like it was sending something to the printer, but nothing ended up in the printer queue nor came out of the printer.
The media manager is odd as he keeps downloading stuff from paper manufacturers none of which is any help to me. It seems like one of those "What me worry?" kind of programs.
Go figure.
I like your approach of eliminating pieces of the process to see which is causing the problem. Given that it puts out a better print giving Epson control of the printing, I would think that this probably indicates that Photoshop is the culprit. It would be nice to try another method (e.g. PrinTao8) if I could get it to work.
At any rate, I have no idea how to get Photoshop to knuckle under either. Do I re-install it??? Is there some preference file somewhere that needs deleting??
I feel clueless clueless???
I do have a copy of Lightroom, though I don't use it regularly. I actually use Aperture to organize my images (I am printing original artwork and artwork reproductions), but have never found printing from it to be as straightforward as Photoshop. It is a bit like PrinTao8 as it seems to rename all the parts of the printing process, I suppose, thinking that it is dealing with humans that don't want to know what is going on. For me, not knowing what is going on just makes things more confusing.
I will report any further developments.
Any further thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
--Kenoli