Color Printing Issues with Photoshop Manages Colors Using Epson P20000

[Rodger Hudson Klein]

Reaching Out to Andrew. Rodney / The Digital Dog or anyone else out there who has advice

Andrew, I have been following you for a long time. I have watched all of your color management videos and spent lots of time on your website. I've followed your suggestions for color management and also have read Jeff Schewe's book on color management

Here is my issue: Colors not close to matching when using Photoshop Manages Colors. Perfect Colors when using Epson Color Management

Photoshop 2024 v. 25.3, Mac OS Sonoma, Mac Studio Max, BenQ SW2722, Palette Master Ultimate Profiler, Epson Sure Color P20000

I have followed all of your recommendations for color managment and even used your color managed print test files from your website Files: Color Space = ProPhoto,

Relative Colormetric, Printer Profile=Correct icc profile the correct paper stock (testing with Epson

Premium Luster), Soft Proof Complete. 

Epson printer heads clean, ink levels ok, correct paper stock listed in printer driver.

Files are 16bit /ProPhoto/Tif or 8bit jpg. 

What is confusing is that when Photoshop Manages Color the prints are way off. When printing the same image with the either of the 2 Epson Printer driver options, Epson Color or Color Match ( where I can select an icc profile) the prints are perfect, almost exact match to the color Calibrated BenQ monitor. Why would this happen? The only things that have changed is a new OS, Sonoma, and a new version of Photoshop v25.3,

Do you have any thought? I've followed your directions perfectly so I'm totally stumped.

Hoping you can help,

Regards,

Rod Klein

(Personal details removed by moderator)

[NB, colourmanagement]

@Rodger Hudson Klein I don't think Andrew Digitaldog is contributing here any more. Perhaps you can contact him via his website? Anyhoo, let's see if I can help

Here is my issue: Colors not close to matching when using Photoshop Manages Colors. Perfect Colors when using Epson Color Management    Photoshop 2024 v. 25.3, Mac OS Sonoma, Mac Studio Max, BenQ SW2722, Palette Master Ultimate Profiler, Epson Sure Color P20000

If, when using Photoshop manages Color you are definitely using the correct [Epson supplied] media profile for your specific printer and have selected the media by name in printer settings then I agree, there's no reason why the 2 print methods should not match pretty well. When you select Printer Manages Color the Epson driver calls up an ICC profile related to the selected media name in print settings. 

When printing a ProPhoto colourspace image you might like to try Perceptual. A ProPhoto image potentially contains a LOT of data outside the gamut of the printer colourspace and RelCol could clip that, have you tried looking at the "gamut warning"? .  

You mentioned:

with the either of the 2 Epson Printer driver options, Epson Color or Color Match ( where I can select an icc profile) the prints are perfect

By "Color Match" do you mean Colorsync?

You're selecting the exact same ICC profile here as you would in Photoshop manages Color?

Do you see actual Epson media names in the print driver? Like "Premium Luster Photo paper"? 

BTW: On Mac it's important not to select Airprint under "use" when adding the printer in settings/print & fax. Select the actual printer by name in that dropdown.

Have you downloaded (from Epson) and installed the latest Epson driver software?  

You could do a test with this reference image: please go here and download the Adobe RGB testimage: https://www.colourmanagement.net/index.php/downloads_listing/

Do the colours look natural? I'm no big fan of benQ's pallete master SW as too many clients have seen issues using it. 

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
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

[Rodger Hudson Klein]

Neal, thank you very much for taking the time to address my issue. It has
taken me until now to reply since I was looking for solutions.

As it turns out the fix was simple: After contacting Epson I was directed
to their website where there was an updated printer driver for the P20000.
Unfortunately their latest driver is only for Mac OS V13. There is no
current driver, yet, for Mac Sonoma. The installed printer driver was for
Mac OS V10 so it was quite old.

Epson suggested I do a complete driver uninstall, system reboot and install
the new driver, which I did. After rebooting again I reprinted my color
managed tiff files ( originally downloaded from the Digital Dog website )
and they were a perfect match to my BenQ calibrated monitor. So all is good
now.

Epson tech support was very helpful but it is unfortunate that Epson is so
slow in getting new driver releases available for Mac OS, and their website
is not totally user friendly in locating the right drivers and other
utilities.

You mentioned issues with BenQ Palette Master software. Once I was able to
get it "properly installed" on a new Mac Studio Max I have not had any
issues. However, getting it to work properly was a very harrowing
experience. After installing the software on the new system all my attempts
at calibration gave me "Failed" results. Their tech support is totally
inept and they have so many products, monitors, projectors, etc, that even
the level 2 support is pretty much useless. Luckily they have a
relationship with a tech influencer Art Suwansang who has a very helpful
YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ArtIsRight

There he reviews all things BenQ, hardware & software, along with other
similar products. Out of desperation I messaged him via his channel and he
responded surprisingly fast. His first question was "did I use a time
machine backup to install my applications and files on the new Mac Studio.
I said yes. His advice: make a new Volume of the Mac OS on the Mac Studio
main drive and install Palette Master Ultimate there and try to calibrate.
If it works then the problem would be many of the extraneous files that
come over from the time machine backup causing Palette Master to fail.

I did as he advised and... it worked...I was able to calibrate the BenQ
using it on the separate OS volume. So at this point whenever I want to
calibrate the monitor I have to log out of the main startup drive and log
back in on the new volume. It was either that or reinstall all my
applications and files, etc from scratch on the new system. No one at BenQ
had ever figured this out and it certainly shows a flaw in their software.
I thought I would throw this out in case anyone out there has similar
issues.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to reply and hopefully this might
be of help to someone else out there.


Regards,

Rod Klein
www.rhkuw.com

[NB, colourmanagement]

@Rodger Hudson Klein "hopefully this might be of help to someone else out there."

I'd imagine it will, thanks for your appreciation and for the full reply, especially the pallete master tips. I thought (hoped) those old SW clash issues had gone away with Mac OS 9 and its extensions. SO many people update macOS and many from a TM backup, I do it often myself. It's rather disappointing that benQ can't solve this in their SW and that their tech support is so poor. 

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
Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.
Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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