Epson print profile problem. Prints overexposed.

Epson's profiles are confusing, with many different (IMO silly) naming conventions and cryptic abbreviations. It is difficult to match various papers with the proper profiles, and Epson's tech support is worse than useless.

The good news is that Epson Stylus Photo printers and papers do profile really well with Macs and produce excellent prints. Check out Gary Ballard's (Photoshop oriented) color management tutorials:
http://www.gballard.net/psd.html

Good luck!

-Allen Wicks

Have you calibrated your monitor with a hardware calibrator like the Eye One? If not, that's really a mandatory first step.

One other thing: Make sure you're using a gamma of 2.2, rather than the Mac standard 1.8.

I am pretty sure there is a bug in Aperture, because I can get perfect prints from Preview or almost any other app, but with Aperture 2.1.1 and Mac OS X 10.5.5, my colors are off. Note, my problem is prints are too dark, not too light, and my prints from Aperture have a green cast.

After struggling with this for a while, I think I have a work around. I posted it here: http://blogs.oreilly.com/aperture/2008/06/printing-tips.html. Copied below, for your convenience. I hope it helps.

C. B. Edgar wrote:
I am using a Epson R1900 (which is a huge improvement from my Epson Stylus Photo 870). I have a calibrated display, and colors are on very good on the display.

I use the latest printer driver from Epson. NOT the Gutenprint, gimp, or cups print drivers. I tried those, and was not pleased.

Here is my workflow and settings.

Select Print (image, book, whatever) to get the printer dialog. Select your printer. Then (this is important), select ColorSync Profile = SystemManaged.

Now, hit the print setting button. Select the driver specific setting from the pop-up menu. On an Epson, it is called "Print Settings". Then select your paper type, color= color, 16bits, color settings= 'Off (No Color Adjustment)', print quality, and speed. If you have advanced settings, check those. My advanced setting tells me the name of my colorsync profile. Very handy if you are going to calibrate your printer for different papers.

Now everything is set up. It should print fine. But is doesn't. At least in Aperture. So, hit Preview in the main print dialog box. That should send a PDF temporary file to Preview. In Preview, select print. Now do all the settings again.

In Preview, there is a "Color Matching" setting on the popup menu. Select Color Matching, ColorSync (as opposed to EPSON Color Controls). I select profile "Automatic" which gives the same profile noted above under advanced settings.

Now, finally, you can print. And the prints look great.

From any application besides Aperture, the colors are so good on the print, I did not even bother to calibrate the printer. The stock profiles are perfect. Using the work around above, I also get excellent color.

Using Aperture, with either the colorsync profile selected in Aperture, or using System Managed, I get poor results. Too dark with a green cast. But by sending the print to Preview first, I am able to work around the bug.

Just before you final click to Print, if instead you click on Preview, is the image more like it has been printing, or more like when displayed in the Aperture viewer window?

Ernie

I had the problem of washed out prints but it has now, through perseverance been fixed. Monitor calibration had no effect.
My printer is an HP B9180.
My path was - latest software and updates.
In Colorsync make sure that you select the paper type as recommended by the manufactuer e.g. Hahn German Etching is Fine Art if I remember correctly.
Do not use system managed but select the appropriate profile.
Black Point clicked on.
I set my Gamma between 1.10 and 1.20 - it has to be so tweaked.
My prints are usually spot on.
I still have the feeling though that Apple could do more to make the process easier and more exact.

Many, many Huey Pros (perhaps all in the first year of production) were manufactured with faults. I suggest you contact Pantone and get a new one. they know of the faults and will exchange your device or refund you without question if yours is one of the affected units.
Having said that the Huey pro is a very limited device. I had a conversation with a (for once) knowledgble techie at Pantone recently. he thought I was being unrealistic to expect the Huey Pro to be able to make two similar monitors connected to the same computer look broadly similar.