Photoshop 2020 washed out colors when printing to Epson 3880

@richardb94222772 we'd ned morer info to really try diagnosse "what is going on"

however, I'll take a shot:

So that's strange - if your images look a good match to the screen when printed on the gloss media with the gloss profile than it would seem perhaps all is well in that particular workflow.

SO maybe we can presume that the screen calibration is OK.

Can we presume you're always testing with the same image, yourte sure tis the same one you printed earlier?

To be sure, please do your testing with a known composite test-image - e.g. the Adobe RGB testimage: https://www.colourmanagement.net/index.php/downloads_listing/ 

Why, when printing on Moab Entrada Rag Natural using the previously successful ICC profile called "ultra premium matt." no longer works is rather strange.

I wonder at this point why you're not using an ICC profile specific to the media from Moab, though?

You wrote "Once again I tried with my.Rag Natural Coldpress" but you had previously mentioned 'Moab Entrada Rag Natural' (are you using 2 names here for the same media?)

Anhyow, you write that 'Rag Natural Coldpress' prints OK with the premium glossy profile (is that the Epson premium glossy profile?) Again, why are you not using an ICC profile specific to that media and your printer from Moab?

MAYBE the Moab rag paper formulation changed, if a profile that worked previously no longer works, sometimes manufacturers do that, but generally that’s rare?

OR could it be ( a VERY common error) that you're using a different setting under "media" in the printer's driver software, that can make a massive difference to print appearance, an ICC media profile can generally only work well with one single "media" option in the driver, that is - the one that was used when making the profile. 

When stuff like this happens we have to think "what might have changed"

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

Not a solution sorry. Printer Manages Color is a totally different print path, sans color management and worse, on some OSs, sends sRGB though the print pipeline. You can't soft proof. You can't pick a rendering intent. With proper color management, there is zero reason you can't use ProPhoto RGB and a good output profile, get superb prints from a 3880, of which I own and use.

Working CMYK, no; that differs depending on the users color settings and bad idea to try sending CMYK to an Epson; its drive has no idea what that is, converts back to RGB anyway. GDI and QuickDraw printers have no idea what to do with CMYK.

You can leave Printer Manages Color if you don't want to properly trouble shoot how to print using actual application color management but it is really a Band-aid for those that do want to print using color management.

I did that - I haven't used the printer for probably 5 or 6 months and I think a power cleaning of the heads might be required. There are people with similar issues in the DP Review forum - I'll read that properly and then see where it might lead!

Thanks!

Steve

I think so - I have color management turned off in the printer. Then in PS I have:

Document profile - ProPhoto RGB

Printer profile - Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Premium Luster

Rendering - Relative Colorimetric

Check - Black point Compensation.

However, I tried an experiment - I exported the portrait from LR to an sRGB jpeg, then inserted that into a Powerpoint slide. Then I printed the image from there, with the printer color mode set to Automatic Epson Standard sRGB. Paper is selected to premium luster as before. The image looked quite saturated on my screen, but the print from this process was pretty identical to those I had been getting from PS.

This leads me to think I have an issue with my printer perhaps rather than with the interaction with PS.

Steve