Printing too dark in CS4

Eric, glad to have you chime in here. It sounds like my initial impression is correct, that printing in CS4 is broken, and we need to wait for the update. My workflow now is to work on the files in CS4, flatten and save as a duplicate, and print that from CS3.

For files destined for print I use either Adobe RGB or ProPhoto for color spaces, including for b/w.

The lack of responses to that question seems to be the answer to it.

Again I am going to ask.

Does anybody know of any Printer/Driver combinations that actually work correctly with CS4 and Leopard?

>> No Color Management is probably the easiest option

Hmm... I went back and looked at my Epson 7880 manual for the Adv BW instructions (I used this option once before under CS3-Ps-10.4x and got good results).

Outside of Ps, Epson manual recommends:

PRINT SETTINGS
set Media Type
set Adv BW
uncheck High Speed

PRINTER COLOR MANAGEMENT
Color Toning (Neutral/Warm/Cool, ect)
Tone: Darker/Lighter

Inside of Ps, Epson notes:

"If you are printing from Photoshop, make sure you do not use Photoshop's color management settings when using Adv BW Photo mode. There are no profiles associated with this screening and color management technology."

I seemed to recall setting "Printer Manages Color" on my job -- but Eric is recommending selecting "No Color Management" in the Ps dialog we get after hitting Command+P in Photoshop?

++++++++

I am still printing out of CS3/10.4.11, but have to admit I don't understand what's going on...

To make a very long story short, this is a matter currently being investigated jointly by Adobe and Epson. With CS4 on the Mac, Adobe has switched to using the newer printing interfaces supplied by Apple (ultimately a requirement moving forward), with the side effect of going through different driver paths than CS3 did.

In the meantime, if you are printing from Tiger to the ABW driver, as you are Doug, using No Color Management is probably the easiest option. (However, note that this will not work under Leopard ...)

BTW, what are your RGB and Gray working spaces in CS4's Color Settings?

Incidentally, you might want to take note of this post in another thread:

Eric Chan, "Printer Dialog Box in CS4 - Printing Grayscale Images" #26, 4 Dec 2008 8:57 pm

Eric Chan - 8:57pm Dec 4, 08 PST (#26 of 26)

Camera Raw Engineer

That's a good idea. Unfortunately, that still doesn't work correctly under Leopard. (i.e., the results from that effort will not match the results from printing under Tiger, or from printing under Windows with CS4, nor match the results from printing under Leopard with CS3).

Which is yet another reason why I'm happy with Tiger.

Doug,

Thank you for clarifying the issue with your screen shot. For some reason, I was under the (mistaken) impression you were referring to a setting in the printer driver, not the Photoshop print dialog box.

The only time I would choose No Color Management in Photoshop's print dialog is when printing a target to create a printer profile.

There is one issue, illustrated by two workflows. When I let Photoshop manage colors, prints are dark. When I don't, they aren't.

>Everything there works fine. "Darker" gives me the print density I want,

then what's the problem? By the tile of the thread You don't want to print darker?

pardon me, doesn't the epson manual specifically tell you not to use Let Photoshop Manage Color when using their Advanced Black and White driver -- what is the problem