Known Participant

Question

Epson P900 Drivers for use with Sonoma

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 20, 2023
7 replies
2966 views

I have installed Sonoma a couple of weeks ago. Normally I wait 2 months before doing such a large upgrade, but this time I had a reason to get it. That was a mistake!

I'll not discuss Sonoma in particular, but rather the Epson P900 driver update for Sonoma.

I went to the Epson P900 site and found the downloads for macOS 14.x (Sonoma). It looks like there is something there, but after much consternation and several 'chats' with Epson I realised that the downloads actually don't include any new print drivers. That was after two long online chats with Epson that turned out to be with 2 imcompetent advisors. I finally got a phone number from them and got hold of an advisor who actually knew what was going on and didn't just send me references to the user manual. I'd already looked carefully at that.

The phoned advisor confirmed what I'd already found out. That is that Epson hasn't caught up yet on the Sonoma update and the updated Epson Print Drivers will be coming soon. I had already figured that out and gone back to reloading the Epson P900 drivers for Ventura (13.x). They work as they should phoned advisor advised me that I did the right thing and apolgised for the inconvenience.

I commented to the Epson advisor that it would have saved me about 3 hours of my time if Epson had put a qualification note on the P900-Sonoma version shown on their drivers page. She agree with me and said she would send a note to the appropriate people.

Generally I've found the first level support from Epson to be hopeless for someone like myself who is fairly technical. I'm sure they help those who are less technically inclined.

By the way, before I first went to update to the P900 Sonoma drivers I did a full uninstal usig the Uninstal application from Epson. If you don't do that you probably won't run into the challenges that I found. I did that because, knowing that Sonoma was a significant upgrade, I didn't want any earlier macOS leftovers hiding somewhere in my system.

macOS

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Håkan222615052p1u

Participant

Interesting. I have the same problem now, six months later.

BobChadwick

Participant

And almost a year later, I'm having the same issue.

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Community Expert

@BobChadwick there are updated drivers available dated Nov 2024 have you tried installing those?

G

groozan

Participant

It is absolutely incredible they don't come up with a Driver as a first task rather than 5 different apps that do so many useless things. And yes, so often the technical advice is level 1 out of 10 so it doesn't help. I got caught in horror movie buying the new mac studio and changing my old Epson 4880 series where everything was working really smoot. So under Sonoma there is no way to get the printer (from LR or Photoshop) to not manage Colors so you end up printing on 2 color profiles most of the time and as a result the prints are awful. I ended up installing an older driver but every once in a while it gets corrupted and you have to install it again.

I hope we can all push and make epson launch a proper driver.

All the best

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@groozan I hope so too, but the 4880 is a deprecated printer now, no parts have been available for quite a few years, sadly this may mean Epson decided not to support it on the latest macOS. Frustrating I know.

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

Typically you should just do an in-place install and not worry about updating things like printer drivers unless you have a problem. Apple didn't make any big changes to printing so Epson probably won't do an updates or just minor things.

J

Jackve6aAuthor

Known Participant

I don't know what an "in place instal" is. Will you give a short explanation? Thanks.

Wee Jacky.

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

Don't change anything with your existing system. Just install the upgrade.

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default7dylpkhp9h4v

Participant

My husband found your article after we both had been searching for hours for an answer to not get airprint on. Thank you for giving us this much needed info.

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Wayne Fox

Inspiring

It's Jan 17th, and I ran into this problem. I've been printing fine with my new MacBook Pro under Sonoma, sunddenly I could no longer get the correct dialog boxes, and when I tried to print the printer queue box said software was not loaded and to contact the printer manufacturer. I tried everything, include the "epson Enema" that I've done a video about, still wouldn't load. Finally resorted to looking over on Epson EU, and they've had a Sonoma compatible driver available since Novemeber and maybe earlier. Downloaded that, installed it, and everything back to normal. I've seen this before where Epson US is really slow to make these updates available.

J

Jackve6aAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you for posting this, Wayne. I'll definitely have a look at that.

It makes no sense to me that the American/Canadian site takes so long to get such drivers available. Sonoma has been operational since October and here we are 3+ months later without the proper drivers that are properly aligned with Sonoma.

I have an office jet Epson printer and that driver was available back in October. Why we folks with the P900, 800, 700 have to 'get by' with older driver packages is beyond me.

As I noted earlier, I tend to favour papers other than Epson and they work great. I will say that the quality of the images I print with my P900 are better than with my old 3880 and I sure like the automation in the P900.

I purchased the roll paper unit with my P900 and think it words very well (again....not using Epson paper). I can now print panoramas up to the limitation of 17" high at a fraction of the price that I used to have to pay a printing consultant.

I'm not sure who else might be experiencing this, but I seem to go through the grey ink cartridge faster than the rest. Not a worry, just interesting.

Cheers,

Wee Jacky.

W

Wayne Fox

Inspiring

It's quite normal to consume more grey than other colors as grey is used in the dithering of almost all medium tone colors to control the saturation. The introduction of grey inks went a long way to increase the color gamut of inkjet printing.

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Jackve6a does the Ventura driver not work?

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

M

Michael26318657hr8g

Participant

Has anyone heard about a solution yet? The amount of paper and inks I'm flushing down the drain is killing me.