Output Instructions - Epson Mac OS X
Epson Print Driver
Probably 85% of our clients use Epson printers for their photographic output and with good reason. Prints from these pigment machines are long lasting, offer exceptional sharpness and provide a wide color gamut on a range of media. The printer driver in the printers released from about 2005 (Epson 2400, 4800, 7800, 9800) behaves much better than earlier drivers and adds the bennefit of the Advanced B&W driver for neutral B&W priints using 3 levels of black ink.
Earlier drivers (Epson 2100, 4000, 7600, 9600) posed problems for profiling using the No Colour Adjustment setting with some papers due to poor linearity in laying down the ink. This often resulted n clogged shadows and it was often necessary to use PhotoRealistic Gamma 2.2 instead. This resulted in a smaller gammut but better tonal performance.
Illustrated below is the reccomended procedure for outputting charts to Epson Printers.
Open the Test Chart Pages in Photoshop
Locate the test chart pages (if you have not already downloaded them, get them HERE) Open these pages into Photoshop. These pages are untagged RGB, meaning they do not contain any embedded working space profiles. We need to leave them as untagged so we can send raw RGB data to the printer. If you have your Photoshop Colour Settings correctly set, you will be asked how you want to handle this untagged image (as shown below).
Note that under Colour Management Policies, we have Preserve Embedded Profiles turned on as well as ticks on Ask When Opening. This will ensure that the following Dialogue will show up.
It is very important that we choose Leave as is (don't color manage). This will open the test chart as an untagged RGB file.
Nozel Check in Epson Driver
The first step in printing the chart is to use the printing utility that comes with the printer to run a nozzle check on the print head. If there are blocked nozzles the resulting print will not be suitable for making a profile from. You can usually access the Printer Utility from inside the print driver.
In Macintosh OS X, open the System Preferences from the Apple Menu or the Dock, Click on Print & Fax, select your printer and click on Print Queue. In the print queue click on Utility
Click on Nozzle Check and follow the instructions there.
Print Charts in Epson Driver
Once we have established that the printer is working effectively, it is time to print the charts. Select the 1st chart and in Photoshop select Print with Preview from the File menu. You will be presented with the following. The first screen grab is from Photoshop CS2, the second is from Photoshop CS3:
Photoshop CS2 Print with Preview
If you can not see the options under Colour Management select the pop up menu that says Output and choose Colour Management. The important thing to note here is that in the Print section our Print source says Document (Profile: Untagged RGB). This indicates we have open the file in the correct way.
Under Options we select Colour Handling: No Colour Management. This ensures that no profile conversions take place when you print your test chart. If you are printing from Photoshop CS choose Same as Source from the Printer Profile pop up menu. This does the same thing as No Color management if the document is an Untagged RGB image.
Choose Page Setup to select your printer and page orientation which should be Landscape for these charts. Click OK.
Photoshop CS3 Print
Our Document Profile is Untagged RGB as it should be. We select No Color Management from the Color Handling pop up menu.
Choose Page Setup to select your printer and page orientation which should be Landscape for these charts. Click OK.
Epson print Driver Settings
Click Print to select Printer Driver settings.
The settings we want to use will depend on the type of paper we are printing on. Generally we want to print at the highest resolution the printer can use without laying down too much ink on paper. If the ink pools or causes the paper to buckle and warp, there is probably too much ink being laid down, reduce the resolution or quality by one step or choose a lower paper type lower on the list. We also want to force the printer driver to pass the raw RGB data on to the printer so no colour space conversions take place in the print driver itself.
In Mac OS X. you will see the following driver window:
Click on the third menu down (usually says Copies and Pages) and select Print Settings.
Here we are printing on an Epson 2400 onto a Crane Museo matte paper. If you are using a paper that is not made by your printer manufacturer, you will have to choose a paper type that comes closest to the type you are printing on. The Crane paper web site has instructions for each of their papers as to what the best driver settings are. Here we have chosen Media Type: Enhanced Matte Paper, Color: Color, Mode: Advanced.
The Advanced mode lets us choose the resolution (Print Quality) and other options such as High Speed or Finest Detail. Here we are using Best Photo (1440 dpi). Some drivers will give you the actual resolution numbers and others will give a quality name such as Best Photo, Fine, Standard... You will have to choose which is the best for you printer/paper combination. We generally turn off High Speed and Finest Detail at this stage.
Again, from the third menu down, choose Colour Management.
Here we are telling the driver to turn off its own colour management and use No Colour Adjustment. This will pass the raw data through to the printer.
Once you have made these settings it is a good idea to write them down, or better still save them as a Preset.
Choose the second menu down and from the bottom of the drop down menu choose Save As... Give the preset a name that means something (Paper type and Resolution) and click OK. You will now be able to choose these settings from the Preset menu each time you print on this paper instead of having to choose all these individual settings each time. This will reduce the likely hood of making an error in the future.
Click Print to send the file to the printer.