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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Photoshop/epson Printing Problem

duncan1 - Oct 16, 2005 - 5:06 pm

I am printing from Photoshop 7.0 (Mac OSX 10.2.1, Mac tower G-4) to an Epson Stylus Photo 1200.
I have recently calibrated the monitor using Pantone Spyder2 and created a printer profile.

This worked great for a little while. Then I started getting VERY dark prints--almost black. I would get a pretty good print, then do minor tweaks, and print again - aurggh! So I discarded the Photoshop prefs, restarted and got a good print. Then I started getting DARK prints again and couldn't get out of it. So I reinstalled photoshop. Again, good prints for a while. Then intermitant bad prints. (This is a shortened version of the agony.)

Now I am only getting dark prints. A reinstall of Photoshop didn't help this time. I am being very meticulous in watching the settings in the "Print with preview" dialog. I'm sure if I try hard enough and use enough paper, I can get it to give me a good print again--once or twice-- before it screws up again.

This is killing me! I have a deadline that requires accurate color. We won't even talk about the quantity of paper and ink!

Thanks in advance!
claire

DeltaMac - Oct 16, 2005 - 5:44 pm

The Photo 1200 is really a dead printer as far as Epson is concerned. They haven't updated the drivers for at least 4 years, and did not release a version for CUPS, which is what you would need. I think your only option now is some software called gimp-print, (which has recently been renamed Gutenprint. Apple provides this software if you would upgrade to Panther or Tiger. You can download the most recent version here - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15970. Read the info carefully, you will also need the GhostScript software with your version of OS X.
- Dale

duncan1 - Oct 16, 2005 - 8:15 pm

Okay.

Now I have downloaded Gutenprint and Ghostscript and have them installed and have the printer set up as described in their readme file.

But now the printer won't print at all. It shows it printing in Print Center for a moment, then the job disappears.

Can I get back to square one by reinstalling the old Epson print driver?

DeltaMac - Oct 16, 2005 - 9:37 pm

Just change to the Epson driver through Print Center. If you didn't uninstall that, it's still there available to use in the Print Center. There's apparently not a good driver from Epson for that printer, with OS X 10.2 or later. That's why I recommended going to the Gutenprint driver. Here's a printer utility that can help you get this going again.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21738
This can help with a multitude of printing problems. Won't fix everything print-related, but will help in a lot of situations. It's worth a try.

Let me know how it goes...
- Dale

duncan1 - Oct 17, 2005 - 4:09 pm

Dear Dale,

Thank you for your responses.

I did download the printer utility and ran it. Didn't help. Also downloaded the backend usb driver to use with Gutenprint. The installer hung-- so I still can't print with Gutenprint.

But back to the orginal problem.

The prints were coming out fine using the original Epson drivers, which I have now reinstalled. I was just tweaking the colors very minor amounts at a time, when, suddenly, the printer would print a very dark print. Now I am getting dark prints when printing from both Photoshop and Acrobat .
Where could the problem be? I have dumped the prefs, reinstalled Photoshop, updated system software, recreated the icc profile, checked and rechecked the print settings, turned the printer off and on, retarted umpteen times. When I reinstalled Photoshop, I reset to Adobe rgb 1998. It isn't a corrupted document.

Could it be a hardware problem? A connection problem? I'm totally stuck. Do you have any suggestions where else I might get help if you can't think of anything?

It just seems there should be a way to get back to where I was Saturday afternoon when life was good.

Thanks again,
Claire

DeltaMac - Oct 17, 2005 - 4:31 pm

I find it interesting that you could get it to work at all with Jaguar. As I said in my first post, Epson never released any updated drivers for this old printer, when Apple vastly improved the OS X printer support.
I think at this point, that you are 'beating a dead horse'
You could try updating your system to a later OS X 10.2.8 from here - download and install the update (hope you have a high-speed internet) http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...bo_10_2_8.html
Part of this update installs improvements to the printing software in the system. Of course, it could completely break the drivers for your printer, but I don't know when the drivers are not updated to even your present level. Something to complain about to Epson. But, they will tell you that they won't update this printer, which is their choice, I guess.