dogunter

<p>Poking around the web further, I see that Apple updated the latest printer drivers for Epson on Snow Leopard last October:</p>

<p>http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#epson</p>

<p>Thanks for the feedback. Though I'm not using Snow Leopard I suspect that recent updates to Leopard have added in the same print driver changes to OS X that Snow Leopard has. Perhaps that is why I'm seeing this now.<br>

I quite agree that printing from within Lightroom is easier. I was expecting the output to be horrid seeing as how I didn't have as many buttons to press and knobs to dial. ;-)</p>

<p>I have had a decent printing setup for about 3 years now. 24" iMac (white, Intel, Leopard 10.5.8), Spyder2 Pro and an Epson R1800 printer. I use MIS inksets that have been a blessing to my wallet but for which I took the time to obtain two custom ICC profiles for the two papers I use most often. These were made by a local print service that I like to use for larger prints.<br>

This system has been great until now. What I see on my screen is what I get off the printer about 90% of the time, provided I calibrate the monitor once a month or so. But something has changed and I'm not sure what it is. I have upgraded from Photoshop CS3 to CS4 and didn't think that made any difference until I tried to print a recent new image. It is a sandstone formation in early dawn with very subtle changes in red/orange hues and even further subtle hue changes in the blue sky.<br>

The image has been saved to a PSD file, 16-bit, tagged with the ProPhoto RGB colorspace. There is no print setting/combo (I have tried them all after going through a box of one of my profiled papers) for which PS CS4 comes close to getting this image correct. It is either woefully dark with almost correct color saturation or woefully pale with no contrast and flat colors. In all cases PS manages the colors and color management is turned off in the Epson driver.<br>

Having exhausted all found tips and suggestions I installed Lightroom 2.5 this evening and loaded up the same PSD file. Without making any adjustments I printed it from within Lightroom, choosing the same custom ICC profile and making sure the "16-bit" box was checked. The result was an extremely close match to what I have on the screen, as good as when I first installed these custom ICC profiles.<br>

I cannot think of why PS is unable to print this image correctly when Lightroom does. The upgrade to CS4 was done several months ago and I hadn't noticed a difference when printing some existing files. Other changes include various Apple updates (10.5.1 was on the system when I installed the profiles, 10.5.8 is the latest for Leopard).<br>

Anyone else see this or similar behavior before?<br>

One other thing I tried was to convert the file to 8-bit, converted to Adobe RGB. Again, PS fails to print it accurately whereas LR has no problem.</p>

<p>I haven't had a celebrant tell me "no photography" yet but I did have a priest limit me to a small area off to the side of the groom throughout the whole ceremony. That is, no moving around with the exception of a few as the bride came down the aisle. The wedding shots during the ceremony were sub-par in my opinion but since everything was explained to the bride & groom beforehand and they understood who's decision it was, they were pleased overall. Besides, it was a traditional Hispanic New Mexican wedding. Most of the excitement and memorable photos came from the reception.</p>