Inspiring

Question

Printing magenta/red with CS5

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
July 11, 2010
12 replies
34482 views

OK, I have a bizarre situation, and I'm sure I"m missing something obvious.......

I've been using Photoshop for ages, and my Epson 2200 likewise, for ages. Everything is calibrated and my prints have been good, again for ages... I converted to Windows 7 Professional last October, recalibrated, everything fine.

In April I upgraded from CS4 to CS5. Club year was over so I didn't need to print anything for a little while. Several weeks ago I printed some images and they came out magenta. I ignored it and got caught up in other stuff. More recently I needed to print an image I've printed before, and again, it came out quite magenta.......

I KNOW, back in the "old" days, this was an indication that I was managing color in both Photoshop and the printer. But, by any figuring I can do, I'm ABSOLUTELY not doing the printing any differently than I was in CS4. I"m setting the color management in Photoshop, and when I get to the printer dialog I'm ABSOLUTELY telling it to use ICM and NO COLOR MANAGEMENT........ I've tried different settings, different images, and different papers,

and things are still magenta. I've done a nozzle check, which was perfect. I've even CLEANED the print head, even though things looked fine. I've rebooted the computer, cycled the printer on and off, said incantations, searched (in vain) for a virgin to sacrifice, and even PRINTED DIRECTLY from Lightroom V3, just to see if that'd many a difference. I'm out of ideas.......

Does ANYBODY know of something that's bizarrely different in CS5 that'd cause this situation?

I"m about to reinstall CS4, just ot see if I get magenta prints there too, even though I never have before........

This topic has been closed for replies.

Anonymous

I hasd PS 7 for many years and printed without any problems whatsoever using a Canon i960, in fact it worked "out of the box and I never gave it much thought. The Canon PixmaPro 9000 worked as well and as easily. I upgraded first to CS3, then hearing about how much better CS5 was I recently "upgraded" to CS5. That's when my printing woes started. (I posted "Colour profiles have me baffled" in this forum.) I didn't have a colour cast, but the prints were dark and dingy, sunlit scenes which looked right in the preview printed as though taken in deep shade. I ran out of paper trying to get it right, and would have run out of money too if I'd kept at it. In the end the only way to get "reasonably acceptable prints was to get CS5 out of the loop and let the printer handle everything. If I'd known what was in store I'd never have upgraded.

David (the old one)

paul675

Participating Frequently

They call it progress but, as so often happens, it seems to be two steps forward and one step back.

Paul

gunnerholmes

Participant

Had the same problem that I have just spent the last 4 days trying to correct. Didn't know it was a problem until I tried to print a known "good" image file.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Mine not only had color correction problems, but at one point I didn't have a print driver at all. I even followed some links in Epsons Web Site for 10.6 and that didn't work. So I did what I have cut n'pasted into this post.

One other thing that help me to get verrry close to monitor color is to always use the Image>Proof Setup>sRGB12345678, and then go to the next choice down the pull-down menu to "Proof Colors" and select that. Once I get to the print window I then insure that I have the following settings in place:

Printer, Epson Stylus Photo

Color Management, Proof

Color Handling, Photoshop handles color

Printer Profile, SP2200 Premuim Glossy

Proof Setup, sRGB12345678

That gets me so close as to be near perfect. On some images I need to tweak my contrast on the monitor, maybe it's my old eyes or something. I will be 75 in February.

I talked with Epson Tech Support and they were quite helpful and took all the time I needed which was considerably since he didn't speck with good enough enunciation for my slightly hard of hearing obstacle.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Having said all that I am going to cut n'paste what he said to me and also followed up with in an email F.Y.I. Please notice what driver version he told me to download compared to the version I had before my Printer Driver was v8.27. Now it's v8.12.

"Thank you for taking the time to contact Epson. It is my pleasure to respond to your inquiry.

Here are the steps to resolve your issue:

1. Go to System Preference > Print & Fax.

2. Highlight the Epson printer and click - to delete.

3. Go to MAC HD > Library > Printers.

4. Drag the whole Epson Folder to the trash.

5. Go to Epson.com and download the Printer Driver v8.12 from your printer's support site.

6. Install the driver.

7. Once installed restart the computer.

8. Once restarted, make sure the printer is on and connected. Go to System Preference > Print & Fax.

9. Make sure the printer is on the list.

Try printing again."

One other thing that he told me about was how to reset the printing system. It goes something like this:

It just involves going into System Prefs. and select the PRINT & FAX control panel. Then while holding down the mouse over the printer name in the left hand "chooser" column press the "control" key. As you have that combination held down a text balloon comes up giving one options, such as "Rest the printing system" or "Make default."

I think that after doing that one will need to go thru the re-choosing of the printer bit as above, as well, as reboot, always reboot.

I hope that this helps someone along the way.

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Dave & Dave in MN (from a former Minnesotan! ) & others following the saga --

Well, it looks like our magenta issue was resolved with the re-install/update of our Epson driver. Prints from both LR3 and PS CS5 XT have come out as expected. Still get our magenta print previews but the prints are turning out fine.

So at this point it looks like it's possibly a separate issue than your's Dave. I also noted (I think?) that you showed magenta when having the print driver controlling CM (printer manages colors) which is different from what we'd seen initially -- in our case the print driver managing color gave reasonable (tho not optimal) color without the tinge.

We thought of another possible test that may help to isolate the issue -- of course with Dave from Arden Hills offering troubleshooting assistance this is probably already considered. Anyway, it may be worthwhile just connecting up with another computer to see if that other computer gets reasonable prints through your SP2200 or if something triggered a color management meltdown/failure of some sort in the printer's code or it's translation of the information being sent to it. That might explain a situation where we both see a magenta problem, but in your printer's case the problem caused a printer logic/CM failure. Just a thought.

We're interested too in whatever is determined to be the culprit to hopefully avoid a similar scenario or a repeat of what we've experienced.

Jeff -- you mention the "Epson Common Updater" -- to clarify, that's just for Mac isn't it? It doesn't ring a bell for us with Windows (Vista) & the SP2200 and a quick google seems to point that direction. Just want to make sure we're not missing out on an easier way for keeping the driver updated.

Hope that more light is shining on the issue for those still experiencing magenta...

- Bonnie

Jeff Schewe

Participating Frequently

NWphotodev wrote:
Jeff -- you mention the "Epson Common Updater" -- to clarify, that's just for Mac isn't it? It doesn't ring a bell for us with Windows (Vista) & the SP2200 and a quick google seems to point that direction. Just want to make sure we're not missing out on an easier way for keeping the driver updated.

Correct...that was for the Mac guy complaining. Epson released the Epson Common Updater both as a stand alone installer as well as part of I believe the OS X 10.6.3 update. Sorry, that won't help your issue (although it does seem to address 76/9600 and 2200 Mac users).

Which is actually a point I was trying to make...trying to interject platform in a single thread really interferes with ability to keep thread on topic (not to mention that rants help nobody).

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Well, after all this thrashing about, having basically given up on printing from LR3 & CS5, on a break from re-configuring (and ending up rebuilding) our file server into a file & print server (...don't ask! what a mess!) I decided to see if I could see anythng in the registry for the Vista machine we'd been printing from that looked like a color management setting or Epson driver setting -- wondering if there was something there that would have impacted the printing.

After lots of looking I noticed the Epson print driver name referred to in one of the keys was "Epson Stylus Photo 2000P ESC/P". That seemed odd to me, so I decided after all this to go ahead and download & reinstall the driver.

I downloaded the driver from Epson -- http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?oid=14402&prodoid=20306147

This is driver version 5.91 (top of the list for Windows Vista 32-bit).

I went ahead and double-clicked the file after download to install it ( filename = epson13484.exe ), which ended "successfully".

Then I went back to the test image in PS CS5 XT, set:

PS print dialog -- CM ON, chose the desired printer profile
Printer dialog -- ICM, no color management

As usual the print preview was magenta tinged. No surprises there.

The print, however, -- after all the searching -- showed NO magenta tinge.

I don't consider this the final test since I have not tested LR3 nor have I tested on different papers/profiles, but it is promising.

Though others have suggested several things, let me note some things I did *NOT* do during this saga (thusfar):

printer was NOT uninstalled
preferences for PS & OS were NOT dumped
registry was NOT changed directly (only changes would have been the install of PS5, LR3 & reinstall of Epson driver, & regular windows Vista updates)
CS5, LR3, and the OS were not uninstalled or reinstalled or 'repaired'

Basically the only change in terms of install/reinstall was to reinstall the print driver. Other earlier tests were made just changing settings made in LR3, PS5, and print driver dialogs during print.

This doesn't answer why the driver was somehow corrupted or even if it was the driver or something else that is installed/reset/set duirng print driver installation But, so far the tests I've done no longer show the magenta tinge in the print when PS manages color.

My lesson learned -- if this has finally resolved the problem -- first reinstall the driver!

At the same time, it also makes us very wary of being an early (relatively) adopter of new photography/workflow/printing software. This saga has cost us significant time, $, and possibly customers. Not a good experience, except in that we now have the experience of troubleshooting this particular issue.

Here's hoping this has resolved the issue and that it may help others as well.

- Bonnie

DavePinMinnAuthor

Inspiring

I"m glad it worked for you. I tried the same thing early on. Installed the 64-bit 5.91 driver (which I already had) for Windows 7, but things are still magenta. At this point the equipment is unusable and I'm going to have to get everything printed commercially.

From the recent finger-pointing and statements, I figure Adobe's given this one the big kiss-off. Its not going to get fixed unless by accident or as a byproduct of some other fix. Unfortunately, regardless of who they point at, it's pretty simple here:

It worked.

It DOESN'T work.

WHAT CHANGED....... The ONLY change was CS5 and LR3.

I'm wondering if it may be time for the sledgehammer approach... Go into the registry and blow away every instance of ANYTHING with the word "epson" in it. Then try again....... Can't get a whole lot more screwed up than things are now.

DavePinMinnAuthor

Inspiring

Well, t'was worth a try........ Uninstalled printer and drivers. Deleted every reference to Epson in the registry. Rebooted. Installed 5.91 again....

Magenta......

LeWando Images

Participating Frequently

Why couldn`t CS5 be (in some cases) corrupting the print driver. So it sticks even when using CS 3 or 4. So yes it would be a driver problem....but caused by Adobe. So who is responsible ?

Anonymous

Yes!!! Think you are on the right track!

Barbara Ann Castelloe

<link removed>

NWphotodev

Known Participant

For anyone interested in the 'geeky' end of Windows (Vista or Windows7) communication w/ print drivers...

Though somewhat dated this may be of interest http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/print/xps/color-drv.mspx as it delves into how the information is supposed to flow from the OS to the driver.

Chris --

Is there a path that Adobe typically uses when debugging/addressing issues like this?

I guess what I'm asking is -- does Adobe escalate these things back to Epson & Microsoft itself? And, as a follow-on question -- has that already been done in this case?

I already have a query in to Epson, but one query doesn't provide much of a tipping point toward resolution.

Thanks.

- Bonnie

p.s.

Even though we'd like to resolve this issue, at this point we're looking at setting up a separate boot partition OS as XP and installing PS CS3 on it for printing then altering our workflow to send only TIFs or JPGs to that setup for print. No internet connection & no updates for that setup to avoid similar downtime in the future. What a shame. It would be nice to print from the new apps and take advantage of some of the new features in them, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards right now.

Chris Cox

Legend

Yes, we try to escalate things with Epson and Microsoft.

But we can't talk much about it because of NDAs with each company.

In this particular case - we're not seeing the problem ourselves, so we don't have any evidence to present.

It may be that we don't have the exact model/OS combination that you do, or some history of drivers, etc. that triggers the problem.

debersf

Participant

We are also having printing problems since installation of CS5 and Lightroom 3 with our Epson 4800 printer. Immediately prior to

installation, we printed numerous prints for a show using CS4. Beautiful. After installation, all prints are too dark, magenta, and horrible. Even printing from the same file. Another show coming up! Help!

Rainer 1957

Participant

Noel --

I was talking about the print preview of the printer driver, not the preview of PS.

I just gave it a try with CS5:

WIN XP SP3

Epson Stylus Photo R2400

Photoshop manages Colors

Printer driver:

No Color management

Print preview: OFF

---> Print matches monitor colors

WIN XP SP3

Epson Stylus Photo R2400

Photoshop manages Colors

Printer driver:

No Color management

Print preview: ON

---> Colors generally ok, but completely washed out. However, colors match the print preview of the printer driver

This is not as bad as it used to be with CS3 where I had the same issue (magenta colors) as Dave and Bonnie if "Print preview" was ON.

Rainer

DavePinMinnAuthor

Inspiring

Chris, I had Windows 7 on this box a LONG time before CS5. It worked perfectly with CS4. Once CS5 was installed (and LR3 since I didn't do any printing after CS5 and before LR3), things stopped working. Leaving CS5 on, and reinstalling CS4 didn't help. The print driver wasn't changed (presuming a Windows 7 update didn't change it). The profiles weren't changed. The status monitor wasn't changed. NOTHING was knowingly done to alter the way the printer functions. No other products were installed on the box. The only change was installing Adobe products.

Chris Cox

Legend

The only change was installing Adobe products.

But installing and running CS5 cannot change the behavior of previous versions' printing.

CS4 didn't change it's code when CS5 was installed.

Rainer 1957

Participant

Hi Bonnie,

I'm talking of the print itself. It only happened when PS managed the colors, not when the printer did it. Turning off the print preview solved the problem for me. However, I'm still using CS3, so it may be a different problem in your case. But you might give it a try.

Rainer

Edit: I just had another look at your screenshot: "Printer manages colors" is activated. So may be we are talking about different things here.

Anonymous

I do use the print preview and haven't tried turning it off yet.

Barbara Ann Castelloe

<link removed>

Rainer 1957

Participant

Hi Dave,

I don't know if this is your problem, but the screenshot that Bonnie posted earlier shows where the problem might be: For Epson Printers (at least up to the R2400) you have to turn off teh print preview. Otherwise the colors will be completely wrong. It took me ages to figure that out!

May be this helps

Greetings from Germany

Rainer

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Rainier --

That's odd.

Prior to the current issues, we've gotten good color prints (matching as best they can given gamuts) using print preview on the same OS, CS3 & LR2.7 -- all with the funky Epson 2200 print preview ON -- even though it (the preview) displays a magenta cast.

Are you talking about the print itself or the print preview?

Thanks.

- Bonnie

Anonymous

The print. And the preview, not so much compare to the print. Printing

was fine until I brought in CS5 products. But I guess it's worth trying to

print from a computer that I haven't upgraded Adobe on yet just to be sure

it isn't the printer. I was so terrorized by the prints I didn't think to

try another computer. Will try to do that today.

And, I forgot to mention that I'm working with Windows XP. Seems like

everyone with the same problems have Visa and 7.

I really appreciate everyone's input.

Thanks,

Barbara Ann Castelloe

<link removed>

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Still digging to find a solution.

From this thread -- http://forums.adobe.com/message/2917421 -- and Chris Cox's (adobe employee) comments on June 2nd, plus our experiences it appears that adobe has a broader issue to deal with than those comments indicate.

From those posts, it appears that the problem would only affect CS5 prints. Obviously either its not the same issue -- or -- it's a far wider reaching problem for *all* adobe products including older versions.

The tie in to coordination w/ Microsoft is what had me looking into a possible windows update issue since Windows 7 & Vista use Microsoft's new color management system. If something changed with a windows update which didn't honor the adobe product's settings -- or -- something that CS5/LR3 installs/updates for all adobe apps did to not mesh with the windows CM system or Epson drivers it would seem that the effect would be to have *all* adobe/Epson printing fail. From our magenta results its as if the profile is applied twice.

I suppose proof of the adobe apps being the culprit would be to print from a color managed application that isn't using adobe's color management. I don't think we have one here.

Back to digging.

-Bonnie

Noel Carboni

Legend

I don't know if it can help anyone to actually SEE the effect, but I seem to be able to duplicate it on my old HP 932c inkjet printer.

In my case, if I instruct Photoshop to allow the printer to manage colors, then instruct the printer drivers to do the ICM "In the Printer", I get a magenta looking image. On the other hand, if I instruct Photoshop to manage colors, and turn off color management in the printer drivers, it looks okay.

Is it possible that with some drivers it's impossible to instruct them to NOT do color management?

The original image in this case is an sRGB image.

Ignore the noise; I printed it in draft mode and photographed the prints. I think the paper fibers reflected the flash or something, because the actual prints don't look this noisy.

-Noel

DavePinMinnAuthor

Inspiring

Regression testing Photoshop doesn't do anything to fix buggy drivers, or user error.

So far all the problems but one are due to buggy drivers or user error - and that one is due to issues with the Vista/Win7 printing APIs not working with older drivers (and we're working around it).

>Regression testing Photoshop doesn't do anything to fix buggy drivers, or user error.

>So far all the problems but one are due to buggy drivers or user error

Uh, huh........

System:

i7 920 with 12GB 1600 MHz memory; ATI 5770 video calibrated with Colorvision Spyder II; 4, 1TB drives for images; 250GB drive for Window 7 Professional 64-bit, and applications. W7 has been on since 11/10/2009 with no problems in Photoshop CS4.

Epson 2200 5.91 driver for Windows 7 64-bit (downloaded and reinstalled 7/23/2010)

Currently PS CS5 12.0.1 (using 64-bit)

Bridge 4.0.2.1 (?)

ACR 6.1

Absolutely NO problems with color on prints using CS4, installed shortly after the system was built for Windows 7. Clean install of all products.

Also had Lightroom 2 (probably something like 2.1 or so at the time. Various upgrades through 2.6 while on CS4). Again, absolutely no problem with the color of prints.

Installed CS5 within a week of release. At that time the system had Lightroom V3 Beta 2 on it. Unfortunately, I didn't need to print anything so I do not know if the installation of the released version of Lightroom V3 had any impact, or if the color problems would have occurred with CS5 and LR 2.7.

Installed Lightroom V3 shortly after release.

Printing configurations:

CS5 doing CM, printer CM off - magenta

CS5 NOT doing CM - magenta

CS5 NOT doing CM, printer CM off - not magenta - not great, but at least not magenta

Printing from LR 3, LR doing CM, printer CM off - magenta

Reinstalled CS4 - CS4 doing CM, printer CM off - MAGENTA (NOTE: this problem was NOT present when cs4 was the only version of PS on the system)

Uninstalled CS4 after testing, uninstalled Epson drivers, color monitor, and as many other Epson files as I could find. Re-downloaded and reinstalled drivers and all Epson paper profiles.

No change.

-----------------------------------

Just for giggles, I connect the laptop to the Epson 2200. Laptop is an i7 with Windows 7 64-bit Home (not Professional). It ALSO has CS5 in the same versions as the desktop, and LR3. Printed. Magenta.

I don't know if it's the printer driver or something in CS5, and I can't get a comparison from friends with 2400 and 2880 printers since none of them will even TRY CS5 because of fears they'll also be unable to print.

JJMack

Community Expert

I had a problem like that with my Epson 4800 printing with a red cast a couple of times in CS3. Both time I had to recreate my Photoshop Prreferences to clear up the problem. Now I'm still on XP Professional SP3 and know Microsoft change the location of where users settings are saved. On a XP system they are in "C:\Documents and Settings\Userid\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5" on your systen fine where they are. Open a DOS wibdow and enter the following: Echo %appdata% and press enter that should tell where you data is to the add "\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5" exit Photoshop then rename that folder to "\Adobe Photoshop CS5 Old" and start Photoshop try printing. If that does not fix you problem you can exit photoshop delete the new preferences and rename the old folder back to recover all you old settings.

JJMack

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Thanks all for the inputs in trying to sort this out.

I've got a couple tests to run to see what additional light can be shed on the problem:

print from Camera Raw - to see if ACR is involved somehow
change CS5 prefs as suggested & print a known good print on a known good profile - this should ID if the profile is somehow involved

In an earlier test I tried to eliminate the MuseoMAX_Epson2200.icm profile from the potential problem points by doing a print on Epson Premium Luster with a profile we've successfully used in CS3 (pre-CS5 & LR3 install). That print also showed the magenta/pink/red cast. So at this point it seems not to be profile related though that's definitely a place to check. In one instance we had done a new paper profile only to find our old one worked better even though our eye-one process "seemed" to go a bit more smoothly (go figure) -- so that was one thing I tried to eliminate early on.

One thing that makes me wonder about the prefs as being the issue is that when I peek into the prefs ( C:\Users\-- username --\AppData\Roaming\Adobe or C:\Users\-- username --\AppData\Local\Adobe ) and look for possible common components -- since all 3 apps (CS5, CS3, LR3) produce similar casts -- I see PS has discrete sets of prefs for CS3 and CS5 which leads me to think that the culprit is likely not in those preference values but in another common file/set of files/setting. The Local\Adobe\Color\Profiles has 2 icc profiles (wsRGB.icc & wscRGB.icc) with the date of my last PS use but I'm thinking these probably are for the default source & convert to RGB profiles that appear when I go to 'edit > convert to profile'. Digging around a bit more in the Roaming\Adobe directory I see color and camera raw directories but nothing that looks like a potential culprit. Not that I'm not missing something of course. I guess I'm thinking that the problem should be with something that's a common setting for all 3 apps, that's not an individual app preference -- or if it is for the individual apps, there should be a file(s) in prefs that were changed as of the date of the CS5 or LR3 install. Could be, but I'm not seeing it.

So I guess for now I've convinced myself to do the camera raw test and keep puzzling about the prefs -- though it sure sounds like a good test to do and a good result... Hmmm...

Our option of going to COSTCO for prints isn't a viable long-term solution and doesn't work for our notecards. Really would be nice if it were a "whatzit" setting!

This has me wondering if the profile target I printed from i1Match actually did it without color managing. That also raises another thought - perhaps a setting within Vista that handles color management? Hmmm, another thing to check I guess...

-Bonnie

p.s. Dave -- I've also come to think of that weird magenta in the Epson 2200 print preview as being a 'warm fuzzy' that things were going to print 'okay'. Though having an 'accurate' depiction of the print (within the limits of the monitor) would be better.

EDIT: The wsRGB & wscRGB are sRGB & scRGB Windows Color System Device Profiles. Not sure if they factor in for this issue (haven't read/dug that far). Checking into Vista's CM to see what's up there -- http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Vista's_New_Color_Management_System_-_WCS http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t14242.html

NWphotodev

Known Participant

Some additional data...

A test print from LR2.7 also displays magenta cast. This is with the test image, using known prem. luster photo profile on prem.luster paper. Print driver CM off, application (LR2.7) CM on.

So this means that the following are all impacted by whatever is causing the problem...

LR 2.7 with ACR 5.7
LR 3 with ACR 6.1
PS CS 3 v. 10.0.1 with ACR 4.6.0.30
PS CS 5 v 12.0.1 x32 with ACR 6.1.0.250

That seems to point *away* from ACR and supports your recalling the new ACR not working with the older LR version (I seem to remember something about that too).

It also seems to point to something that either is common among all of these applications that changed when CS5 was installed -- or -- is common to printing/color management that was recently changed in one of the standard updates (a Microsoft Windows update?).

My Epson SP2200 print driver hasn't been updated but is a more recent version (5.92) than is available online to download (5.91). So that doesn't seem to play into it.

Or maybe I'm off target? Any other ideas/thoughts?

-Bonnie

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