Poor Print Quality From iPhoto, But Printing Direct From Camera is Good

Poor colour and horizontal lines are usually symptoms of dirty print heads, so it would be worthwhile running a Nozzle Check from the Epson Printer Utility as a first step, to check whether the printer heads need cleaning.

I print from iPhoto because the colour accuracy is so good, using just the default settings. I also use an Epson inkjet.

My suggestion is that your friend makes sure that he has checked the Color Sync option when importing into iPhoto. You can find this in Preferences: Advanced.

I would also suggest checking the Color Sync settings. You can do this by choosing a file to print, choose the Epson printer,then click on the Advanced button to bring up the printer settings. Choose Color Sync from the drop down menu which you should find immediately below the Printer and Presets menus.

Ensure that the Color Conversion setting is Standard, and that the Quartz Filter setting is None.

Other than that, your friend's monitor maybe wrongly calibrated, and sometimes calibrating one's monitor can do more harm than good if it has been done inexpertly. Believe it or not, some Photoshop experts - as in well known and published Photoshop/photography writers - tell their students that they are better off sticking with the presets if they find that their prints are close enough to what they see on the screen.

I get great results from iPhoto and my Epson inkjet, so I would suggest that there are colour settings either within iPhoto or on the operating system which have been changed. Alternatively, he may have altered the printer's colour management settings. I use the default settings of Color Conrol; Photorealistic; Gamma 1.8 and all the sliders set to 0 - the default, straight out of the box settings.

Yes, your friend would be bypassing the computer's colour management completely if he can print straight from the memory card to the printer.

I would guess that it is a colour management problem either within iPhoto or on the operating system.

Often problems start when someone starts calibrating or using different colour profiles. Colour management can be a nightmare and often you waste a lot of time and a lot of ink chasing the holy grail of perfect colour. If you find a close enough match to what you see on the screen, then stick with it.

I get great results with printing directly from iPhoto, so I do all my printing from iPhoto, even if I have edited in Photoshop. My settings are as above, and my printer is an Epson 1290 (1280 in the US).

You may also want to look at some of the other printer settings. Click on "advanced" in the print dialog box and see what's available. I don't know which options are standard for all printers and which are for my specific printer but I have a setting called "color options" and I must select "photo/image" to get the best photo prints. Mine did not make horizontal lines, though. There may be other settings for his printer that could solve his problem.

Yes, that's a good point, Badunit.

If using an Epson printer, He should click on the Advanced button, choose Print Settings and then set the Media Type appropriate to the paper he is using. The Ink should be 'Color'. Clicking on the Advanced Settings radio button allows additional control over the Print Quality. 1440dpi gives optimal results from an Epson printer, anything greater can be slow and uses a lot of ink. 720dpi can give acceptable results sometimes, and is worth using for test prints as it saves a bit of ink.

Different printers and brands have quite different settings, but the Epson printers are fairly consistent, although there are newer printers with a greater number of inks, so it is impossible to know them all. The above is intended as a guide.