#499 Wont work with Epson 10000- prints too light
Hi, After spending a few long days testing your driver with my Epson 10000 printer, and downloading every available software update, plus the raster extension and I am running Mac OS x-Snow Leopard- I tried printing several different ways and the only print that comes out at full value (darkness) is the test print from the printer itself. I can't for the life of me get Photoshop, Acrobat, or even text edit to print out anything but a faint print, no real value darker than around 30% or so.
It is not printing low res, its printing high res (at least 720x, viewing it with a loop) and it is seeing the driver fine, the latest one, 5.2.6.
I know Epson isn't supporting the Mac 10000 rip, but if your driver is intended to work correctly, it isn't working. I noticed other comments from at least 2 people with the same complaint.
Is there a fix to this? I will try pushing the density through the sliders, but that really defeats the purpose of controlled accurate printing.
Thanks for any updates or info you can pass my way.
Phil Howe 425 328 5835 cell or email philip.howe@frontier.com
Reassigning as a support request for OS X for now. Matt Broughton, our Macintosh expert, will work with you on this.
I will see what I can do to get acceptable prints for you with the Gutenprint driver. First, however, I will need a bit more information on what you are describing and your workflow.
You mentioned that you have downloaded every software update plus the raster extension. Are you talking about the latest available drivers from Epson? It looks like they only support this printer through OS X 10.4. That doesn't mean that their drivers won't run in later versions, however.
You also mentioned your printing a test print from the printer. I don't have this printer, but I looked at the Owner's Manual. The only 'test print' I could find reference to is the printing of the status of the ink levels. Is this the test print you mean or is there another test print available from the printer.
Do you have a scanner that you could use to provide us with a sample of what you are getting that is only 30% as dark as it should be along with a sample of what you consider correct?
One thing that has happened in OS X 10.6 is that Apple changed the default color space to sRGB with a gamma of 2.2 from something close to the Generic RGB color space presumably with a gamma of 1.8. The Epson drivers from OS X 10.4 would be tuned to the previous space and produce darker prints in OS X 10.6. The Gutenprint drivers are set so request sRBG.
Hi Mark, thanks so much for a quick response. I scanned one of the new washed out looking prints and an old one thet has full tonal range. As far as the test print, yes, I just printed that printer test print that you can see as black text below the photo-images. As you can see in the file I will try to attach, if I can figure out where to attach it, you will see that the black is fine in the text, yet the images are still faded. This is on premium glossy photo paper, but I get the same results on a variety of stocks.
I wasn't aware that Epson now defaults to the 2.1 gamma, basically switching over to PC default and dropping what was the Mac 1.8, which is too bad. I think they must have gone after a larger pool of users. It also explains why they have not supported the 10000 or other printers of that period since around system 9.+. on the Mac, anyway. There is no driver support for Intel Macs at all, as far as I could find and the techs there at Epson verified that a few years ago.
By the way, the inks, paper and cables are all fine. I can still print on my old G4 (a separate computer I am only keeping around to print from) , but when I try to print from my Intel based Mac, this is when I have problems. Which is why I was hoping your driver would work.
sRGB is a standard I feel is more suited to contrasty prints and the internet, than good middle-tones and natural skin tones. I would have thought they would have went for Adobe RGB as it is at least a safer gamut.
By the way, adjusting the sliders under the color options setting did nothing to change the values of the prins at all. It is as if the printer is simply not responding to the software.
I just did two more test prints, both as sRGB, the file profile now as sRGB, and printed using both 'Photoshop manages color, and one using Printer manages color. I received the same results, still washed out. I really don't know what else to try at this point. But I do appreciate your help.
Phil
Scan of washed out + normal print-Epson 10000
Phil,
Thanks for posting the scan. The output from the Gutenprint drivers is very pale. It was much lighter than what we have been dealing with on other printers.
Am I correct that the print on the scan that is correct is from using the Epson drivers in OS X 10.4 or OS X 10.5 on your G4?
Could you please do the following for a different test print. This will be a test page from the printing system itself. You can use plain paper for this as that is the default paper specified in the printer PPD.
1. Go to the Print & Fax preference pane and delete your current printer that you have been experimenting with and add the printer again. This will give you a brand new PPD with all the defaults reset.
2. Next, use a browser and go to http://localhost:631/printers/ Find the newly added printer in the list of printers and click on its name.
3. At the top of the page that will show up will be a drop down menu titled "Maintenance". Select the item "Print Test Page".
4. Attach a scan of the test page to a reply.
In response to some of your other comments-- It was Apple that decided to change from a Generic RGB color space to the sRGB color space with the gamma of 2.2. Epson had to retune their drivers to match this space. Apple also finally deprecated the old Tioga class of drivers that some manufacturers were using beginning with Snow Leopard. Many of the manufacturers had a lot of work to do and did drop support for a lot of printers. Then again, it was pretty well known for the past five years or so that support for the older style of printer drivers was being phased out and that at some point they would not work anymore.
Matt
Phil,
I forgot to ask whether you had ever tried the Gutenprint drivers in previous versions of OS X?
Matt
Hi Matt,
Wow, thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it. It would be really nice to get the printer, which is still in excellent shape and usually prints great off my G4, to work on my Pro system.
First of all, I spent about an hour trying to get that Cups test print to print via the url using Firefox. You should note that it does nothing, just refuses to see or allow you to click on any options. So I switched to Safari and it printed right away. I was going to send you the error messages from Firefox but I guess you won't need them.
Anyway, I will attach the test print as a scan. If the black on the page is supposed to be 100% black, it looks more like 80% to me, but much darker than any of the the previous prints I was saying were washed out. I did it twice, on matte and premium glossy stock, same results. I will scan the glossy stock to attach. Your limit is 250k per image, so it will be a reduced jpeg.
To answer your questions- I only recently tried the Gutenprint drivers, have only used them with Snow Leopard. I am printing from a late 2006 Mac Pro ver 1.1, and it has printed to the Epson 10000 in the past, a few years ago, using a test of 3rd party drivers, but the color was way off and not worth the $3k to buy the software. So I just went back to the G4 until now.
I wondered if it might be the fact that I am using USB, when I was using Ethernet before, but I don't think that would make the printing look washed out.
That is really interesting about Apple. I can only think it had to be a switch due to so many cameras out there set to sRGB. All the pros I know use Adobe RGB. I used Colormatch for many years and still do for most of my commercial jobs, or Swop 2 CMYK. I tried printing in both RGB and CMYK using variations, as well as sRGB, but always end up with the same results. The fact that the sliders won't even make a difference when pushed to enhance contrast or color suggests that the printer is simply not reading the software, or, Photoshop isn't. I also tried allowing Photoshop to control the printing, and the printer to control it, and I tried printing via Acrobat Pro as well.
Beats me. Anyway, hopefully this test print will give you some idea of whats going on. I am open to trying anything to get it to work.
Thanks again, Oh, yes, on that first scan, the good print was done off the G4, system 10.4.9 I think I used the old Gimp print 5.0 beta, but am tempted to test this new one on the G4. I also wonder if the old one would work with the Pro? I used firewire, not USB. I am doing a new print right now to make sure the printer is fine, via the G4. I downloaded your latest driver for the G4 and now I can't get the G4 to print at all. I am wondering if it recognizes the printer (ping for IP address) but the ethernet card may be going out? If so, would this corrupt or disable any use of firewire or USB? Because, now, it won't print from any of these, but it always recognizes the Printer as the Epson 10000, even after reboots, etc. I tried several ways around using your driver and now I can't get around it, not even by setting the IP or using the standard setting that comes up as Epson 10000 cf, I get an error message of -9672. I am using a longer cable to connect to the G4, an extra 4 feet or so, via connectors. I don't think that would affect it though if its already seeing the printer.
I will try going back to Ethernet tomorrow, if I get time. I need to be able to print from one of the two Macs.
Thanks, Phil
Phil
the scan of the print test from the URL
Phil,
That does look like the printer has been mistuned. Both the color wheel and the greyscale ramp next to it are very light.
Please try this.
1. Make sure you have a printer with all the options set to default. If you have been adjusting various settings, you may want to go back and add a fresh printer.
2. Using Safari, go to http://localhost:631/printers/ as you did before. This time look under the Administration drop down menu and select Set Default Options.
3. You will be prompted for you administrator's user name and password.
4. When you get to the page for setting the options, click on the Output Control Extra 1 entry at the top.
5. Find the entry for Density. Increase that to 1.2 or so and then click the Set Default Options button.
6. You will then be brought back to the page where you can choose the Maintenance drop down menu and print a test page.
If that appears to be even a bit better, you can try going back and increasing the Density until you either get the darkness you need or until there is no more difference. There is an ink limit that is set into the driver so you don't flood the page.
Please post a scan with the best results you can get and let us know what Density setting you used.
Remember that the default is to use plain paper. We will try to not have you waste too much ink or good paper during these steps.
Matt
HI Matt,
Unfortunately, when I went to the link for the CUPS site, I entered an account and password and got it verified, then tried both Safari and Firefox to get the page to work, but it never accepted my password again, even though it allows me to log onto the site with it. So when I get to the page where I am to set the density to 1.2 or higher, I click on save as default and it asks for my name and password, then just keeps rejecting it.
I think I will just try the old ethernet next.
Thanks,
Phil
Hi Matt, I was able to get a good full color printout of the same file at full density off my G4, but it wouldn't work with your software at all, just kept adding up percentages that took forever then said unable to connect with the printer. That was using USB, It only printed with my old method of using ethernet (directly) and then bypassing your software and going to Default Browser, then More Printers, Use Epson Appletalk (!) which must still be on the G4 somewhere, thank God, and then it shows up in the window as the only choice. Printer right away no problems, but it just takes forever now on the Pro using USB and I have no choice outside or your driver. Is there a way to remove it?
Thanks,
Phil
It looks like Apple's bugs with the CUPS web interface in OS X 10.6.4 and the USB communications in OS X 10.4.11 are causing some extra work for us.
I am attaching some modified PPD files where I modified the Default Density to the values indicated at the beginning of the file title. That is 1.2-stp-escp2-10000.5.2.ppd.gz will have a Default Density of 1.2. You can add a printer for each instance and try the various density settings. Just be sure to name new printers something meaningful to keep track of things. After adding a new printer, you can then print the test page as you did before.
That should be a work around for the crazy web interface bug in OS X 10.6.4.
As to your G4--My guess is that you are running OS X 10.4.11. That version of OS X did break a lot of printers trying to use a USB connection. You can get around this by using the alternative communications software (backend) called USBTB. It is available for download from our site at <http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-print/files/usbtb%20-%20Mac%20OS%20X%20ONLY%20usb/1.0.17/usbtb-1.0.17.uni.dmg/download>. The setup is pretty straight forward with the installer. It will install the software and lead you through the process of creating a new printer to use that communication software (backend). That should allow you to use the Gutenprint drivers with your G4.
As to the Ethernet connection on your printer. Good luck. :-) Theoretically, it should work, but many others have not been able to get it working. See one of our FAQs about using the EPSON TCP/IP cards at <http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/p_FAQ_OS_X.php#tcpip>.
You can uninstall any instance of the Gutenprint drivers by using the uninstaller. A copy of the uninstaller is on the disk image with the 5.2.6 drivers. You can also download just the uninstaller from our main Mac OS X page at <http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php>.
Hopefully you can get some good tests and good results with one of the attached PPDs -- if I can remember how to attach a file.
ModifiedPPDs to test Density-part 1
ModifiedPPDs to test Density-part-2
Phil,
I should have mentioned that you can put the modified PPDs on your Desktop. Then when you add a new printer, use "Other..." under the Print Using: section. You will then get a standard navigation window where you can select the PPD on your Desktop or Download folder.
Matt