Printing too dark in CS4

[_doug_plummer_]

I have CS4 on Tiger 10.4.11 on a completely color managed system, Epson 4800 printer. Printing seems to be broken in the new version. Prints are very dark. I know to select "Photoshop Manages Color" in Color Handling, and "No Color Management" in the printer color management dropdown. The procedure works fine in CS3.

That something is up is suggested by this wrinkle. In this case I am printing using advanced b/w. If under color handling I choose "Printer Manages Color" and go into the b/w advanced setup, it's still too dark. If instead I choose "No color management", then make my choices in advanced b/w, it works fine.

One would first think that it's a double color management problem, but I'm turning it off anywhere I can see it in CS4, and still having problems. Is there a new secret handshake I haven't puzzled out yet?

[Was DYP]

Now, if you use the canned profiled for the specific media (the same

ones registered to the media in the CU) you should get correct color.

Or as you can now see you can change the profile registered to the

media if you want to use a custom profile. Just make sure the profile

set in the PS print dialog matches what you now assign to your media

in the CU. This is the ColorSync workaround that is often mentioned.

I don't recall if you mention that you have tested printing and your

monitor with a known test image. But that defiantly needs to be done

to see where mistakes are being made in the whole color managed

workflow.

[Art_Mattiello]

Hello

Try this:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1003&thread=31085537

Art

[Ramón G Castañeda]

Thank you, Art.  That is helpful. 

[Art_Mattiello]

Hi

Glad I can help....

Art

[1.4]

I'm having the same problem with rgb files.

[Guest]

bump

[Dlogue]

This is clearly an Adobe problem. The printer HARDWARE is fixed. My R1800 worked fine with CS3! And while the CS4 Upgrade has offerred some incredible upgrades to the Suite Harmony, it don't mean much if I cant PRINT.

I have tried ALL of the suggested "Fixes" and none worked. I have gone through 100 glossy sheets and 2 full sets of Inks tryin to get these prints right for a client. The only thing I found that comes close is to set everything to "Adobe Manages Color" and then go to "Printer Setings > Advanced" and set brightness to 24 ... And then the GAmma (2.2) is slightly skewed.

BTW, I use a Cannon die sub printer (Shame on me ... But Costco had a great deal) and it needs the same +24 brightness adjustment for my "On Site Prints" at events.

This was NEVER a problem with CS3 or CS2,

The printer didn't run off in the night an change itself. This is Adobe's problem and for what I pay to stay current with my suite, I expect them to fix it!

Dennis Logue

aerobat@att.net

[Was DYP]

There is a ton of information about this issue. I suggest you take the

time to search and read these.

Because going forward applications will need to use the new printer

path required by Apple, new drivers will need to be written to

properly use this path. If you cannot acquire new printer drivers then

you need to use the ColorSync Utility workaround, double profiling

with the same profile. This is assuming that your driver has installed

properly and that it is set as the default printer. You can check if

it has installed properly in the ColorSync Utility to see if under

Device the printed and profile are registered there.

Getting Adobe to go back to the old printing path that CS2 and CS3

used is not going to happen.

[Jeff Schewe]

DennisLogue wrote:

This is clearly an Adobe problem. The printer HARDWARE is fixed. My R1800 worked fine with CS3! And while the CS4 Upgrade has offerred some incredible upgrades to the Suite Harmony, it don't mean much if I cant PRINT.

Uh, Epson isn't even selling that printer anymore (replaced by the R1900) and when that printer first shipped, Leopard wasn't shipping so, it's a bit shortsighted to presume everything is Adobe's fault...

First off, unless you have a 6.xx series driver, forget about printing from Leopard. Since you don't indicate what driver you are using we really can't help you there...you also don't indicate whether you are using 11.0.0 or 11.0.1 so we can't help ya there either. And since you fail to mention what system update you are on (10.5.8 is current) we can't help you there either...so, I guess you're just shyte out of luck huh bud? Sorry...

:~)

[Mike_Ornellas]

The never ending circus will always have a ring leader - that of which no one can control.

[Dlogue]

Jeff,

I'm running O/S10.5.8 and I have the June 2008 driver (1.02) from Epson. I also calibrate the iMac 24 LCD with a Huey.

The printer printed perfectly with CS3 but I can't find a consistent setting for the printer with CS4 Extebded. I also have a Cannon Selphy CP750 Die Sub printer. It's new so I don't know how it would have worked on CS3 but it also prints dark and the same +24 brightness adjustment works fairly well but it's got a Gamma issue.

Finally, I have an Epson 7880 but I have yet to try it because it's way too expensive to experiment. So I have been waiting to see if there is a fix for the R1800.

I remember when Leopard first came out, I had to use a Guttenprint driver for the 7880 until Apple and Epson got in synch ... Maybe that's a solution for the R1800 but it's tediously manual and wastes a lot of proof sheets in the process.

I thought about buying an R1900 but they announced a $150 Rebate and that's what Epson does before they release new units so maybe there's am R1950 or something on the way.. Even so, we shouldn't have to go out and buy a new $500 printer everytime we upgrade our Adobe suite.

For now, I'm having the shots processed out of house while I experiment but in reading the posts, I think I've exhaused most of the settings permutations. With CS3 it was so easy ... Photoshop Controls color or printer controls color ... both worked without any tweaks.

Dennis

[Was DYP]

A June 2008 driver is probably way to old to work correctly (does not

turn off CM in the driver) with the print path that PSCS4 uses.

That being said I can print correctly to a Epson 9600 (way older

drivers) if I use the ColorSync Utility (force the driver to use the

same printer profile as selected in the PS print dialog). My Canon

iPF9000 on the other hand prints correctly because the driver is

forced to no CM the way it supposed to work in Leopard and CS4.

[Dlogue]

Thanks for the feedback. FYI, the June 2008 v1.02 Driver is actually an update to the 6.12 driver (2007). It seems to be a patch to 6.12 and I tried that patch a few days ago. Those seem to be the latest drivers available from Epson.

Thanks for the info on the 9600. I guess the 7880 is safe. Epson does a very good job of keeping the drivers updated on the Pro Series printers. They take very good care of us and their support is excellent ... Not so much with the R1800 and other comsumer level printers but they do have a lot of drivers to maintain.

But this color profile issue on the R1800 has been very frustrating. I really love everything else about the CS4 Design Premium Suite but printing is a pretty important feature. All the work flow improvements of CS4 are lost because I spend so much time messing with the print proofs.

If I knew the R1900 was going to stay in production for a while, I would buy one but I have this feeling there's a new model in the wings.

Thanks again for your suggestions. I also have a Print fix system so I could re-profile the papers manually but you probably know how much work that is ... Probably a lot more man hours than the cost of a new printer???

Dennis

[grayscapes]

SO if you check the Epson website, they say that they are fully commited to supporting Snow Leopard, but the drivers for the SP 3800 are not available yet (I did not check the others).  (They have some work-around that involves Rosetta, but I can't say that I understand it or want to monkey with it.)

Maybe this will be the opportunity for Epson to fix their drivers to work properly with Apple's revised color management scheme.

Here's hoping, anyhow.

~grayscapes

[grayscapes]

By the way, I am holding off on the 10.6 upgrade, at least on my studio machine, at least for now.  The printing problem has given me plenty of headaches for now.

When Epson has released its new drivers, then I will give it a try.

~grayscapes

[Dlogue]

Grayscapes,

I agree on the delay to install Snow Leopard ... But they are running a great deal for the upgrade ($29) so I think I'll buy it and hold off on the insall on the Big Machine. I might unstall it in the MacBook Pro 17 since that's just a location machine and I don't need to print. But I can try it out when I get back to the studio.

As for the 1800, I gave up. I don't know if it was all the test / proof printing I've been doing lately but the sheet feeder mechanism finally gave up and it stopped feeding paper. I went with a 1400 when I saw it on sale at Office Max for $199.00. I haven't used dye since I used HP years ago but the upside is that you can get incredible high gloss prints using Ollympus Pictorico Pro ... It's like glass.

Maybe we should start a new thread for CS4 with Snow Leopard so we can all share our experiences???

Dennis

[grayscapes]

Soooo......it's been awhile since the release of Snow Leopard.  The .1 update is out.  I have installed it on two macs, but not on my studio mac. 

Anyone have any feedback?  Are we good to go on this?  The installations on the other two (iMac and MacBook) were painless.  Had to install new Brother driver and fix a certificate issue with Quicken, but other than that, flawless install.  And both machines are running great.

Here are the key elements of my system in the studio: 

-- Lightroom 2.5

-- Photoshop CS4

-- Epson Stylus Pro 3800 (which we all know has been giving headaches with the profile issue)

-- LaCie 4-disk RAID external drive

-- Mac Pro (obviously )

Do I take the plunge?

~grayscapes

[Dlogue]

I actually gave up on the R1800 printer and got a 1400 and it's perfect. However there is a lot of chatter on the forums about Snow Leopard problems with PS CS4 11.0.1. I don't think it's totally justified and may be coincidental with Font corruptions.

The problem is that Photoshop CS4 crashes on Save, Save As, Save to PDF and sometimes on Export to JPEG. I was starting to have that problem with 10.5.x and that's why I upgraded to 10.6.1 (Yes, ".1" is out already). I'm not sure who's fault it is but here are the "work-arounds" that seem to have worked for me.

1- In PS CS4, Preferences ==> File Handling; Disable "Version Que"

2- In PS CS4, Preferences ==> Performacce; Disable "Open GL Drawing"

3- In PS CS4, Preferences ==> Performance; You may need to lower memory usage to 55% or so ???

4- In Snow Leopard Open Font Book ( Applications ==> Font Book), highlight ALL of the fonts and re-validate all the fonts (File ==> Validate Font)

5- Delete all the fonts with warnings and fatal errors (Yellow and Red flaged fonts).

Then re-boot.

A SIMPLE Fix:

The easiest but most inconvenient fix is to create a new user. Many folks are saying when they run PS CS4 from a new user account it runs perfectly but that's a bit of a pain. However since that builds new user preferences and Font libraries, I can see how that might work.

In any case I found Save issues to be a problem after the PS CS4 11.0.1 update in Leopard (10,5,x)  so I don't think it's specifically a Snow Leopard problem. However Snow Leopard also has some problems with Firefox because of Font issues and required a Font Library rebuild (Automatic on a Safe Re-boot). The real question in my mind is "What corrupted the Font Files in the frst place?" I didn't have a problem before PS CS4 11.0.1 but that could have been coincidental with the Font problem ... unless 11.0.1 caused it???

On the Big Plus side, LightRoom runs in 64 Bit Mode with Snow Leopard and it seems very fast and very stable so far. (In Finder, Highlight "Adobe Lightroom", click on more info and un-check "Run in 32-Bit")

This probably belongs on a new thread but you asked so I figured I would save you some Google time.

Dennis

[grayscapes]

Dennis:

Thanks for your response.  This has turned out to be a good forum with lots of good responses from knowledgeable folks.

After doing to the Snow Leopard upgrade on my iMac and MacBook without any problems, and after the 10.6.1 update was released, and after reading lots of stuff about the upgrade and its effect on PS & LR and the Epson issues, I decided to take the plunge with my studio computer (a MacPro).

I had tried the UK driver with poor results.  It worked fine when I first installed it.  Then it kicked out an error on a subsequent attempt to print and I could not get it to work at all.  I also did not like the more limited options in the interface.  So I reverted to the most recent US release (6.11?).  I was still getting effed up results for BOTH color and B&W prints.  I figured that the Snow Leopard upgrade was unlikely to make the problem worse, so WTF?

I did the install yesterday and ran some test prints--using the same image as I had printed previously with poor results as a base of comparison.  At first, I had to reinstall the printer driver and printer.  I guess the OS upgrade overwrote the drivers?  I don't really know.  After reinstalling the drivers and the printer, I tried some test prints.  The color print came out well.  Especially in comparison to the previous attempt for the same image.  Next, I tried a B&W print, with similarly improved results.

On the B&W front, my observation was this: the straight CS4 or LR2 print gave me results that were TOO DARK with shadow detail lost.  The CS3 printing work-around gave results that were certainly better, but were actually a bit lighter than intended.  WELL . . .  I can report that post-Snow Leopard upgrade (including the 10.6.1 update and reinstall of the 6.11 driver), the results were Goldilocks (ie, in between too dark and too light . . . just right). 

I have not done extensive print tests, but I am encouraged by my results so far.  I wonder if using Rosetta (which, by the way, is a translator for PowerPC applications to Intel-based OS) somehow reverts the color management back to the pre-Leopard way of handling it or somehow fixes the double-profiling issue.

Anyway, my results.  I hope this helps.

Cheers,

~grayscapes

[grayscapes]

Greetings all.  This thread has become stale, so I thought I'd freshen things up a bit. 

All kidding aside, I wanted to make sure that you all saw that Epson has posted a new driver (updater, really) for the Epson Stylus Pro 3800.

I just discovered it tonight, so I have not tested it at all. 

I will post results when I can.

In the meanwhile, if anyone has experience with this updated driver, let us all know how it went.

Cheers,

grayscapes

[JimH1778]

I own a Epson R2400 and I have had this printing dark problem on and off for years - dark photos by 1 to 1.5 stops (I own a MacPro 12 core, Aperture and CS5).  After doing a lot of searches going all the way back to 2006 with the r2400, I have finally realized that Epson has had a long history of this throughout all printers of the professional level.

I think they have Driver problems that have never been fixed or even acknowledged. I can not find one person that has figured out how to print normally the way you should be able to. Everyone thinks it's Photoshop or monitor problems, calibration problems but I believe it's and Epson Driver issue.

Just start doing Google searches for Epson printers: "Epson R2400 printing Dark". Put in any model number of the professional level printer and you will find a long history of this.

We should all start trashing Epson because they have a historic problem and they need to fix it.

P.S. I have tried to print the exact photo that printed perfectly 4 months ago using: Aperture, Photoshop CS5, and Preview on my MacPro and my MacBook Pro. It doesn't matter it always prints dark.

Thanks,

Jim