Photoshop CS3 and Epson R2400

Jochen,

I have major problems with all three of my Epson printers (4800, 2400 and 950) since upgrading to Leopard, including my R2400. None will print. I downloaded the new R2400 driver from Epson's UK website. Whilst it gives me the full range of R2400 print options, I still can't print anything from Photoshop CS3 or from any other program, although it does print the test page from my Mac. When I go through the print dialogue boxes it transfers the file to the Print jobs dialogue box, says that it is sending the job and then nothing happens. The job disappears into the ether, every time! I just tried printing the test page from the Printer section of the Epson R2400 menu bar again and it printed first time! The funny thing is that the Epson Print Utility is working fine. It shows me ink levels, cleans the heads and prints the test pages! Very frustrating as I too have print jobs to do urgently. If I can't solve it shortly I am going to look into reverting to Tiger, which worked as advertised.

I have read the threads that say that this is not Apples fault, but I strongly disagree. You only have to look at the volume of posts on printer problems to see immediately that Apple have screwed up badly! They should have foreseen these problems and have sorted out a fix. What good is an OS if you can't print from it!

Regards,

David

My 2400 brings up and prints from CS3 if I click on a photo in iPhoto. If I click on "Open" in Photoshop Nd navigate to the lists of apps, iPhoto is grayed out. I don't know if this was always the case.

Jochen,

I managed to get my 2400 printing OK now. I spent a completely wasted hour e-talking to Epson UK Support yesterday. They offered nothing useful and spent all the time telling me to do obvious things, which was very frustrating. Then I decided to go back to basics. I ditched all the personalised settings in all the print dialogue boxes and tried printing with only basic settings. I had professional print profiles for each of my papers and printers, but none of these will now work and I think that they were the crux of the problem.

This is what I did:

Step 1 - I turned off my printer. After ditching the entire Epson folder from the library and restarting Leopard, I downloaded the current Mac drivers from the Epson Support website and started by reinstalling the 2400 from scratch. I turned on my printer. I ran the downloaded installer and then went into Apple/Preferences/printers and faxes and removed the 2400 that leopard had installed with the gutenburg driver. I then installed the 2400 again through this screen and checked that the downloaded Epson 6.12 driver had installed. It had.

Step 2 - I went to page set-up for the photo I wanted to print in Photoshop CS3 and in Format For: I selected Epson Stylus Photo R2400 and in paper size: I selected A4 (sheet feeder - borderless) and clicked OK

Step 3 - I selected File/print. In Printer I selected Epson Stylus Photo R2400. In colour handling I selected Printer Manages Colour and in Rendering Intent I selected Relative Colorimetric. The I pressed the Print button.

step 4 - I then pressed Proceed in the larger than paper dialogue box taht then appeared and this closed.

Step 5 - This brings you to the Epson Printer Dialogue box. I selected the Print Settings section and selected Premium Glossy Photo paper as the Media Type. In colour settings I selected Epson Standard (sRGB). and selected the Advanced radar button below and best photo as the print quality. When I pressed print I got a good quality print....and it seems to work every time now!


I have also tried this with my Epson 950 and it also works. In fact I am getting better prints with this one than I was before Leopard!

Don't ask my why it is working this way. I don't know. I used to let Photoshop CS3 manage the colour using my profiles, but this will not work now. I suspect that as my profiles were done in tiger they are Tiger dependent. I will contact my supplier next week and discuss this with him. I am still disappointed that I seem to have lost complete control over my printing and blame Apple and Epson in equal measure. From my "discussions" with Epson support it is clear that their "fix" is aimed at the amateur user and not those requiring control over the production phase!

I hope this helps.

David

David has it exactly right. I've been struggling with this on behalf of my wife, who's a professional photographer but a computer amateur, converting from CS2 on the PC to CS3 on a new iMac. After much frustration, I went through exactly the steps he describes: deleting the entire Epson folder from Library, emptying the trash, restarting, reinstalling the 2400, ditching Gutenburg and using the right driver. When she went to print the way she always had -- letting Photoshop manage colors using the right print profiles for the paper -- the print previews (and the prints) were totally washed out and faint. So following David's suggestion, I told her to try it letting the printer manage the colors using Epson Standard (sRGB) color. Result was fine, although (she says) not as good as she used to get letting CS2 manage the color.

So here's the question: is this an Adobe problem or an Epson problem? Unless it's happening universally to a lot of printers -- which I don't think is the case -- it looks like an Epson problem.

PJ

Has anyone tried trashing CS3 preferences after installing Leopard? This solved all of my Epson printing problems. (I have a 4800 and a 2200.)

Just hold down command/option/shift when launching CS3, and you will be asked if you really want to discard Photoshop settings. Say yes. You may have to reset some of your prefs, but this may solve your printing problems.

PJ,

Your wife has it exactly right. The prints are not quite as nice as I could get them with my pro profiles and I have, effectively, lost my WYSIWYG system. Like your wife, I am also a pro photographer and find this loss of control very frustrating. Too difficult to call whether the problem is Adobe's or Epson's. One thing is absolutely certain, they will each point the finger at the other. Adobe say that CS3 is fine with Leopard, but that some functionality is lost in CS2, so CS3 should be OK.

I am going to try trashing my photoshop preferences today as suggested by Mike and see what happens. I will report back after doing so. I also have an Epson Pro 4800 Mike, but I haven't even tried to sort this out yet. It was always temperamental! I hate to think what that exercise is going to be like!

Interestingly, my Epson 950 is now working again, using the technique I mentioned above. It hasn't worked since I went Mac three years ago! It refused to print anything. I had to clean the heads several times to clear out three years of dried ink, but it works fine!

Regards,

David

I have recently installed CS3 and found that CS3 does not support the Epson 2400 though it does support the 2200. I have talked with Epson, Apple and Adobe and was told that Epson must provide the patch. i filled out a formal request, as was suggested by the Epson technical person I talked with. In the meantime, the temporary solution we worked out was to do all the corrections, etc in CS3 and then move the image(s) to CS2 and print from there. This is a pain, but should allow me to get the best quality images out of my 2400. Hopefully, someone will provide the patch. This is always a problem in upgrading software. Al;though I am still in Tiger, I don't think it would be any different in Leopard, as the problem appears to be with CS3, not Leopard.

It seems the Photoshop CS3/Leopard/R2400 combination is a disaster. I've spend at least three full days trying every suggested fix and driver on every blog. I'm on a new iMac 24 with OSX 10.5.1 and CS3. After probably 75 test prints, using every combination of settings and drivers imaginable, I get the exact same muddy output on my printer. I also have very few print media options available no matter which version of the driver/software I download. Every once in a while I could get a decent print with a specific ICC profile but otherwise, all settings produce the exact same result.

As to the speculation on who is the culprit, I am most suspicious of a Leopard/R2400 incompatibility because I've tried printing photos from other applications - iPhoto, Preview, etc. and was presented with the same horrible result.

I am an artist with thousands of dollars of new equipment and no method of output. I have wasted insane amounts of ink and paper on this, it's truly maddening!!

Hi,

Sorry I haven't been back for a while. I have been away taking pics.

I tried trashing the CS3 preferences, but no joy. However, I don't think that the issue is a CS3 problem. I very successfully ran my business using an Epson R2400 ( also a 4800 and a 950), my own profiles and CS3 for about a year on a Tiger platform, without any problems. I am also running CS2 in parallel on my G5 and I get the same problems when trying to print from CS2 using my own SICC profiles. This leads me to believe that this is a Leopard problem. My extensive discussions with Epson UK didn't get anywhere and certainly no one suggested that this might be an Epson problem...as if they would do I hear you would say!

However, I am getting some reasonable results with my R2400 using the very basic settings I mentioned in my earlier post. My customers appear to be happy with the quality of this output, although I would prefer to be using my profiles.

I too have wasted "insane" amounts of time, ink and paper on this problem, which was not of our making!

By the way, I love the term "muddy output" as it is a perfect description for what you get out!

I hope you all found out this answer. There is a download on eposon for this specific problem. You download the installer for the '10.5.2" Lep and the correct print page comes up in CS3.

I am having the same exact problem with my mac. I just upgraded my 3 yr. old mac (running panther) to leopard to install the new adobe cs3 and now i can't print using my epson r2400 (which printed BEAUTIFULLY using panther and cs1)!!!
i have tried everything posted here and on other forums AND have called epson twice with no luck (i have uninstalled and reinstalled and deleted folders and all that MULTIPLE times). epson keeps telling me it is the usb cable that is the problem (it is brand new, just bought it TODAY) and that i need to hook the printer up to a windows based os (like that is going to solve the problem!)
i don't understand why it will print from the utility but not from photoshop or any other program. i think it might be b/c i am running a powerpc card and not an intel (some of the posts i have found that have had success have intel macs). i am so frustrated i am crying!!! someone please help me, i'm a poor art kid with not enough time or $$$ to deal w/ this!!!
~beth

Ralph TV,
I cannot find the installer for the 10.5.2 - could you provide the link?
Thanks

Hi! everyone,

Has anyone managed to solve this problem with CS3, Leopard and R2400 printer? I ran into the same problem. I upgraded to CS3 and installed the v6.12 driver which I downloaded from Epson. All my prints are dark by about 1 to 1.5 stops. I've got the same problem with Lightroom as well.

I've tried every suggestion I could find on the web - trashed my EPSON drivers folder, reinstalled the driver, removed the printer in "Printer and Fax" System preferences and the installed the printer manually. I've even tried setting the Colorsync profile to point to the ICC profile from Epson rather than the Factory setting. I've also used the "Printer manages color" option. I've even moved ICC files to the Library/Printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/ICCProfiles etc, all to no avail!!!

This is driving me crazy and I've wasted tons of paper and ink, not to mention the time wasted which could be used for more productive purposes. I'm almost reaching the point where I'm seriously considering some other brands printers even though Epson products are rated highly by photo professionals. This does not make up for all the frustration one gets when setting things up.

If anyone has a sure cure for all this, I'd appreciate some help.

Thanks.

Stephen Ng

Try using soft proofing, (View>Proof Setup>Custom) choose the paper you are printing on and check "simulate paper color" in the display options. This will give you an idea of what your print will look like coming out of the printer.
Use a levels layer to adjust the brightness before you print.