I was actually on the beta test list for “Snow Leopard,” so I have been using it without problems for a while – but not on the computer I use for my photographic work but rather on a separate laptop. After the very trouble-free experience on the test machine I went ahead and installed in on my photography workstation yesterday.
Today I tried to print. Ouch!
The first problem I encountered was that the Epson 2200 sitting next to my computer no longer appeared in the the printer dialogs in Photoshop. Knowing that Snow Leopard supposedly will add new drivers as needed I tried to use the 10.6 preference panel to add drivers for the 2200. No luck – the system didn’t even see the connected printer.
I finally went to the Epson web site and followed their instructions which include:
- Install Rosetta from Apple install disk.
- Download the most recent pre-10.6 drivers for my printer and install.
- Download and run their updater for drivers under 10.6
Done. Now I can see the printer via its Firewire connection… but not, as far as I can tell, via its USB connection.
So, I fire up Photoshop and try to make a test print using a black and white image. Things seem to be going more or less OK as I work my way through the usual setup and print process: Photoshop manages colors and all. But the print emerges looking very green and way too dark. I attempt to download and reinstall the Epson profile for the Epson Premium Lustre paper I’m using at the moment. Installer downloads… but won’t run.
I do a restart and try the profile installer one more time – still no go. Since the photo was one that I had not previously printed I decide to remove one variable and instead print a color image that I had successfully printed right before installing the update to OS X. Again… very greenish and far too dark.
There is no joy here at the moment…
Update 8/31/09:
- I will try to continue reporting on my CS4/Epson 2200/Snow Leopard printing issue as I continue to try to understand and resolve it. This may take a while, as I don’t have any urgent printing business to take care of.
- As a – otherwise very successful – beta tester of Snow Leopard, I should not have allowed my enthusiasm for the new OS and otherwise good experience with it on the test machine to blind me to the standard practice of waiting a while to install on my production machine. Some of us never learn!
- Other than this issue – serious to me, but probably a non-issue to most – the upgrade has otherwise been positive. One pleasant surprise was that the installation gave me back 125GB of space on my main drive!
- I welcome any information about the printer issue that you may have. Please either leave a comment or send me an email.
Dion, two possibilities come to mind – I’ll just toss them out on the off chance that they might help.
Dan
This thread seems to have generated some sort of email error and may be sending repeated copies of the original post. For this reason I’ve closed the comments on the topic – but feel free to contact me by email or other methods regarding the topic.
Thanks!
Dan
My latest update: this problem is manifesting it with such bizarre inconsistency. I can’t explain it, and I can’t figure out a solution. I printed one print just now that came out well, and compared closely with what is on my monitor. I then printed another file, *exactly* the same settings across the board (same media), and I’m back to very dark and greenish-blue.
I will add, this is Ilford Smooth Gloss Galerie paper, with their profile. However, I did a test with Epson’s Premium Luster with the correct profile, same problematic results.
This is so frustrating.
Dion
Dan, thanks for the comments, much appreciated. No need to clarify for me; as I mentioned I spent many hours researching this, and have seen many discussions outside the contents of this thread. You are quite correct that the green or magenta cast can occur with certain incorrect settings.
Although you (and others) have had no problems with 10.5.8 and Epson, many have reported that they have. Some may be explained by incorrect settings, but I wonder if there is some other issue that causes this problem? I have printed with my Epson successfully for some time before this problem came up, and I’m quite familiar with the printing settings and how to configure them for correct colour management.
Someone else in another thread suggested that Epson printer drivers had some problems starting around 10.5.6 (perhaps only with some systems; there are too many variables in how a user’s Mac might be set up to make any generalizations).
So beyond that, I’m not sure why this problem started at my end. I’m going to reinstall a bunch of things.
Thanks,
Dion
Dion: I need to update/clarify something I wrote in the previous post. I’m afraid I must have read your message before coffee this morning – often a bad idea! – and I thought you were reporting on a color problem under OS X 10.6.x. But the I re-read your message and I think that you are reporting the problem under 10.5.8.
The problem that my post referred to is specifically related to 10.6.x. This problem is resolved simply by going back and printing under 10.5.8 (or 10.5.x). This is the issue that I have so far been unable to resolve.
If you are getting either a green or a magenta color cast under 10.5.8, as far as I know your problem is not related to the Mac OS and almost certainly not related to the Epson drivers. They work fine under 10.5.8!
Assuming that you are using the right paper/printer profiles for your printing, the heavy magenta/green casts are almost always caused by incorrect settings during printer. The two problems are:
(Green cast is associated with one of these and magenta with the other – but I can never remember which! Suffice it to say that setting this up correctly should resolve the problem.)
If you are printing from Photoshop, in the Photoshop print dialog you want to have Photoshop manage colors. In the following print dialog you want to not let Epson drivers manage colors – in other words you select no color management in this second dialog.
There are some other issues that can also create odd color problems including use of the wrong printer profile for your paper/printer, problems with your print head, and so forth.
Hope this helps.
Dan
Hello everyone,
I have recently spent probably 30 hours trying to research and fix this heavy green cast. I am using 10.5.8 and have been hesitant to upgrade to 10.6 because inevitably something breaks, and an upgrade is a big risk. Numerous people have reported this Epson 2200 green printing problem exists with later versions of Leopard, such as 10.5.8. I can tell you, it definitely exists for me!
On the Epson site, they tell you that support for Epson is included with Leopard, and they have no download for 10.5 drivers for the 2200. I downloaded Apple’s Epson drivers, and installed it. Reset all printers, and reinstalled all printers. The 2200 showed up, and appeared to have all the same printing dialog boxes and settings as before. And when printing, that same heavy green cast! I have tried many of the common suggestions, nothing has worked.
I downloaded the Epson drivers for 10.6, but they won’t even install on 10.5.8. So, I am at a loss. Does anyone have a solution for this, other than upgrading to 10.6, which I want to avoid for now? I have to do some serious printing and I’m at the end of my rope!
Thanks,
Dion
Dion, I’d love to report that I have a solution to this. At one point I thought I did – after downloading and installing one of the updates that Epson finally released for this printer. However, I think my initial judgment was premature since I later ended up with some of the same problems when printing in the correct way under 10.6.x. (E.g. – having Photoshop manage colors and turning off the Epson color management.) At this point I’ve more or less given up. I intended to continue using my 2200 to make small test images and the occasion card and so forth. (My main printer is a Epson 7900, and that works just fine under 10.6.)
There are two “accommodations” that some find workable, though I don’t think either is fully satisfactory:
Instead of letting Photoshop manage colors, let the Epson drivers manage colors. I tried this – if you aren’t too critical about color it might be OK. I’m critical about color and this “solution” is unacceptable to me, though I acknowledge that some are fine with it.
Use an older small external drive or partition your main drive so that you can have a separate 10.5.x boot volume with Photoshop installed. Boot from this volume into the older OS when you print. If you don’t print frequently this can work, though it isn’t a totally happy solution.
I’d love to hear about a real solution to this that does not involve either of the above options.
Dan
Thanks Dan, and stansil – I was having the same problem Dan described and his work around solved the problem.Seems weird but the new driver is installed and I will attempt printing.
Thank you everyone.
Hector
Stan:
Thanks for the update. This morning I needed to make a few quick small prints for some visitors and didn’t want to crank up the Epson 7900… so I downloaded the updated driver and it works!
There was one small glitch during the update process. I’ll describe it in case it affects anyone else. On my Mac system admin access is, of course, required to run the installer. The app throws up a dialog asking for my password, but as soon as I try typing it switches back to the Finder! (This is the first time I’ve ever seen that behavior!) The solution was to type the first character of my password, manually click on the window to make it the front-most active window again, and then finish typing.
The bizarre color problems that were occurring with the old driver under OS 10.6.x are no longer present, and I was able to get good prints.
By the way, I didn’t check on the direct link that you posted a couple messages above mine, but I was able to find the driver by going through the Epson site in the usual way to find downloads for this printer.
Dan
Thanks for this update. When I downloaded the driver I was prohibited from installing it because somebody thinks I am not an administrator; I am. I tried installing the driver under three accounts, all admins and no luck. I was able to download and install 2 other objects from the Epson site; Common Updater and Easy Print. What am I missing?
Thanks
Hector
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I happened to check the Epson Website tonight and there they were – 2200 drivers for Snow Leopard (version 8.12) – http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=14402&prodoid=20306147&infoType=Downloads&platform=Macintosh
They work. Enjoy.
Stan
FWIW, I too am having problems with my Epson 2200 and Snow Leopard. I don’t use the printer often but in the last couple days I have and it’s the first time since the Snow Leopard upgrade. I was able to print, from Aperture, but the print had marks on so I was going to run the nozzle cleaning utility etc. After looking everywhere, I cannot find the Epson 2200 Utility program. Using Spotlight I searched the entire hard drive with no luck. Then I went to the Internet and started finding articles such as this.
Thank you for sharing this information. Do you know how I can get a copy of the Utility.app file?
Ciao
Hector
Hi:
I don’t know about that particular file, but at this point the only way that I’ve seen to get your 2200 to print correctly is to install OS 10.5. x on an external boot drive along with the applications you need to print from. Then boot from the external drive to do your printing. This is not a satisfactory solution, but I have yet to hear of any other that actually works correctly.
Dan
Regarding Parallels, yes and no.
If you have Windows installed on your Mac (need to buy that) and you have the Windows version of CS4 installed as well, in principle you should be able to switch into the Windows environment, open the Windows version of CS4, and then open the files that you created in Mac CS4 and print them.
Not a solution for very many people I’m afraid.
I think your “if epson cared” text is important to think about…
Dan
I have an idea and would love some feed back. I have Parallels 4 on my mac pro. I use lightroom and cs4. Here is the question. Is there a way to print from either program through Parallels to the epson 2200. Could this avoid the 10.6 issue. I have seen no comments on this type of solution. If this is possible could someone go step by step on the way to set up the Mac and the windows program in Parallels. I use XP in Parallels. If it could work it would sure be a simple way to solve a major headache for a lot of people. If epson cared one would think that all that eng. power could come up with some workaround for this most trying issue.
Thanks
Don R
I got some good news from Epson today. I had gotten a call back from someone a few weeks ago asking about my satisfaction in regards to my call to Epson tech support. I explained to the person that I wasn’t satisfied given the lack of a Snow Leopard driver for the 2200. They asked if I wanted a call back from someone at Epson and I said yes. I got a call today from Sandy at Epson tech support. She looked into the situation and said that a Snow Leopard driver for the 2200 should be available from Epson by the end of the year or early next year. It’s a little bit of a wait but in the meantime my Leopard partition work around is OK. She also said it could be earlier but that Epson was working on the drivers starting with the newest printers first. She suggested checking their site every few weeks.
Good news on the way! :)
I was actually looking at printers online last night. Then, I printed something on my 2200 today, on my Leopard partition, and it came out great. It’s still a great printer – just needs some new drivers. I certainly don’t need to spend the money on a new printer.
OK, I surrender. I have an old external drive and I’m in the process of installing the old OS and a copy of CS4 on it with the plan to boot from the external so that I can print again.
Grumble, grumble…
Dan
Dan, one other thing. When you first access Lightroom from the Leopard partition you have to re-enter the serial #. No big deal but just so you know that it will need to be entered – only the first time.
Dan, I initially installed Lightroom on the Leopard partition but subsequently deleted and just access it from the Snow Leopard partition which works fine. The other thing with Lightroom is that you can install it on as many machines as you want so it doesn’t really matter.
I find Lightroom to be a great program. I mainly do photography and use Photoshop mostly for applying filters like Nik and Topaz. I used to use Photoshop exclusively but now that I’m using Lightroom I find that it’s good for about 90% of my editing. Also, the integration between Lightroom and Photoshop is quite good so when you do need to do some PS work it’s quite easy to do from Lightroom and when you save it in PS it shows up back in LR. As much as this Epson thing is a pain I think my current workaround is working pretty well. I still hope either Epson or Apple fixes it but am not convinced either will put much effort into it given the age of the printer.
Yes, I didn’t think CS4 would run unless you install it on the same volume you boot from. I’m pretty certain you are correct about the activation issue.
Are you certain that the copy of Lightroom you are printing from is really installed on the snow leopard drive? Seems odd that this would work. If it is, that may be one more reason for me to finally break down and add Lightroom to my computer.
Dan
Unfortunately, CS4 would not run from in Leopard. I suspect it might work if I reinstalled it in into Leopard but I’m not going to bother since I’m fine printing from Lightroom which has an excellent print module with the same options as CS4. I think you’d have to deactivate CS4 in Snow Leopard before activating it in Leopard unless you only have it activated on one computer. As you know, you can have it activated on 2 computers at the same time.
The answer to that second issue – can you run CS4 installed on the main Snow Leopard volume while booted in “plain ‘ol Leopard” off of the partition/external? – will be very important to me. If so, that will likely be my interim solution to this as well.
jkchen, What you’re talking about is what I did, kind of. At first I figured I would used my cloned OS 10.5.8 external HD when I wanted to print. However, I decided a more elegant solution (still not good) was to partition my Snow Leopard drive leaving a small (25 gig) partition where I loaded Leopard. I print from Lightroom and found that I could access my Snow Leopard Lightroom from the Leopard partition. This way all my pictures on my Snow Leopard partition are available. You may want to consider this method if you’re going to have to make a bootable drive. It’s probably just as easy as doing it externally. I’m not sure if you’ll have to reinstall CS4 on the Leopard partition. I’ll see if I can access my CS4 from Leopard and report back.
One update after upgrading to 10.6.1 last night. After updating and rebooting, I removed the printer from the Print & Fax System Preferences, powered up the printer and plugged it back into USB (Print & Fax recognized the printer and Epson driver automatically). I did NOT erase and re-install the drivers themselves. Immediately, I tried to print from CS4 (PS manages color, no color management, appropriate Epson ICC paper profiles – basically the same exact set up I used prior to SL). The result dropped me back to the dreaded dark greenish blue print.
No joy. I wished I had cloned my iMac’s HDD prior to upgrading so that I could just reboot into 10.5.8. I may just create a bootable external HDD with 10.5.8 + PS CS4, printer drivers, fonts, plug ins and ICC profiles just for printing. What a hassle, but I don’t see any other solution for now.
Even trying to buy a new printer isn’t an easy solution – I realized after checking with the usual companies that no-one makes a pigment-based letter-sized photo printer that is equivalent to their 13×19″ models. So, replacing the 2200 with something smaller and of equal quality (color control, ink permanence, photo quality) appears out-of-the question, unless I’m missing something.
Not a whole lot new to add here other than I tried virtually all methods suggested that were gleaned from various discussion forums (including the decent discussion at apple.com). No way to return to the quality I was achieving on 10.5.8/CS3. A little background:
When I upgraded to 10.6 (still using CS3), I reinstalled the Epson drivers and update (11832 and 13044) without doing all of the delete drivers and folders/unplug/install/re-plug/re-find printer, etc. The result was prints that were fairly close in hue but the overall prints were too dark, making skintones too reddish (like taking the tone curve and dragging it down severely).
I decided to upgrade to CS4 (for no better reason than the fear that Adobe would not support problems with CS3 in 10.6) and, using the exact same file and settings and without reinstalling the printer driver, I got the dreaded green tint, overly dark prints. Hours and hours of deleting printers, folders, reinstalling, etc. (virtually every method and order suggested) the final result was…in CS3 the prints had the awful green cast and in CS4 the prints returned to the proper hue but way too dark (the result as described in the first paragraph).
For the past six years owning the 2200, I have been pleased with the robustness of color management and driver support through multiple OSX iterations and versions of PS, plus Epson’s willingness to (coincidentally?) have drivers that didn’t break the reliable, predictable, accurate color. As an owner of an older Epson all-in-one printer, I have been stung by the lack of Epson support and feel I am quickly sliding into same quagmire once again. By the way, I also own and print to an HP Z3100 raster printer and 10.6-compatible drivers installed without issue. Color matching was as good as prior to the OSX upgrade – just like you would hope and expect.
If there are no solutions pending, I will look for another pigment based-archival photo printer, but since the Z3100 meets my wide-format needs, I will likely downgrade my desktop printer to a letter sized model. Any suggestions? I won’t pull the trigger yet, but will look at options. I still hate to think that my reliable workhorse for the past six years (the 2200) could be put under by driver neglect.
“risotto” has posted a photograph illustrating the results of printing from PS to the 2200 under OS 10.6 as compared to under OS 10.5.8: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7175273@N07/3893236007/
John C, I think you’ve probably identified the issues with the Gutenprint (Frankenprint? :-) drivers – particularly in comparison for the normal Epson drivers for their printers. While one might succeed in getting this to work:
For me at this point the “solution” is likely to be one of several possibilities:
I’m not happy that Epson still hasn’t made any public statement on this beyond the same boilerplate that we saw a week ago and that they are still guiding users to the same non-functional “solutions” to this problem. They haven’t responded to either of the two support requests I’ve left via their help system. It doesn’t take that much person-time to at least put up a short note saying something like:
“Epson understands that a number of users are having problems using their Epson printers under the new “Snow Leopard” OS X 10.6 from Apple. We apologize to our customers who have been affected by this problem, and we assure you that we are working with Apple to make updated drivers available as quickly as possible. If your printer does not appear on the list of Epson printers for which updated drivers are currently available please consult the following list of printers we no longer support. If you printer is not on either list, please check back here for updated drivers during the next week.”
Or…
“Epson knows that you believed you were making a long term investment in a quality product when you purchased your Epson [2200 or other] printer from us a few years ago, but we never made any promises about supporting our products – if you think so, show us. Even though it seems that we make most of our profit by selling you the ink for your printer, it is also part of our strategy to hasten the end-of-life of our products by ceasing to make available necessary software drivers and other support in order to force you to EOL your printer while it still works and replace it with a new one, thus insuring greater short-term profits for our company at your expense. That’s all we are going to say. Tough luck, sucker.”
I hope that Epson thinks more along the lines of the first hypothetical statement. Right now, given the non-response from the company, many users – even those of us who love the results that their printers produce – fill in the blanks with assumptions more like those in the second hypothetical statement.
Dan
I never know what to expect until I print a couple of 4×6’s anyway: regardless of driver. It’s amazing this stuff works at all.
I’d like to find an understandable guide to the Gutenprint driver. Lots of problem-solving by Linux geeks, but nothing comprehensive, or comprehensible. If I find one, I’ll link to it here.
Well, after doing some testing I have to agree that printing with the Gutenprint driver is pretty close to the Epson drivers from Leopard. As I mentioned before, I made a Leopard partition on my computer for printing so I was able to compare the same picture printed with both drivers side by side. The Gutenprint driver print was slightly lighter and less contrasty than the Leopard driver but pretty close. The matching to the screen was also a little better with the Leopard print. I have to say that I’m impressed by how well the Gutenprint did. I still hope either Apple or Epson comes up with a Snow Leopard driver for the 2200 but in the interim I’m going to play with the Gutenprint settings and see if I can get it a little closer to the Leopard driver.
I should start with the disclaimer that I am not a professional, and lack a pro’s keen eye for correct color. Given that limitation, I am less concerned with correctness than consistency. Given the shortcomings of any technology from oil painting to offset lithography, and given the variance between peoples’ eyeballs, it seems to me that correctness is an ultimately unobtainable goal. But if my gear is consistent, I can make whatever adjustments are necessary to reliably bring it to my standard of correctness. It’s like a GMT clock that gains 10 seconds a day; so long as it consistently gains 10 seconds a day, I can adjust the reading, convert it to my time zone, and arrive at a time that is useful to me.
This approach fails when I send files to a service bureau. In that case, the colors must be correct according to whatever standard the printer uses. At home, though, I can mediate a working agreement between my software and whatever output device – screen, printer, iPhone, television – that I am using, provided that they are all consistently accurate or inaccurate
So far, Gutenprint is consistent. I resent having to learn new software, but at least it’s free.
“I was not able to avoid using them in Photoshop, so yes: you should use “managed by printer”. Every attempt to have Photoshop manage color – black point compensation, ICC profiles, etc – failed with a nasty magenta cast.”
That is a problem, given that the normal and ideal way to get consistent and accurate prints from Photoshop is to let Photoshop manage colors. Not doing so will lead to results that are not going to correspond correctly to your carefully calibrated screen display and which will be different (perhaps subtly, but unacceptably) from those achieved by using the correct method.
Dan
Black point compensation is present in both Aperture and Photoshop CS4, but not in Gutenprint (near as I can tell).
After some apparent success in making Gutenprint settings stick via the application’s printer presets in Aperture, I lost the magic and wound up having to set them every time. This is not as bad as it seems at first: most of the important settings are in the first couple of “printer setting”boxes and you can get pretty fast with them. I just ignore the box after box of nozzle settings.
I was able to get the OS’s system-wide printer presets to work every time. They’re pretty handy and I can attest that they work fine in Photoshop, Preview, and Pages. I was not able to avoid using them in Photoshop, so yes: you should use “managed by printer”. Every attempt to have Photoshop manage color – black point compensation, ICC profiles, etc – failed with a nasty magenta cast. After many attempts, I apparently corrupted a preference file somewhere, and the 2200 printed garbage. I deleted the OS preset I was using, rebuilt it, and all was well. I now have a system-wide set of presets that share settings for number of ink cartridges and a couple of other 2200 attributes, and vary by type of paper being used, matte or black ink, quality of print, etc. I’m not sure it’s necessary to specify printing resolution; I think “draft”, “standard” “super photo”, quality settings take care of resolution for you.
We’ll see how this works over the next few days, but so far I’m not missing Aperture or Photoshop color management. My standard test image is as printing as accurately as it ever has.
Thanks John C. That gives me starting point. I use Lightroom but would be happy to see your CS4 setup as I can easily apply that to Lightroom. I don’t have ‘Black Point Compensation’ and Gamma options mentioned in the gragsie.com post. Are those setting in Aperture or should they be somewhere in the Gutenprint dialog box? Also, I don’t have “no color management” as an option in LR so I assume I should use “managed by printer.” I plan to do some experimenting with this in the next few days.
More advice on locking presets in Aperture. The secret? Use the “lock” command!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=975593
Gentlemen, I must tell you that one could do worse than the Gutenprint driver. It is giving me some very nice prints out of Aperture on Epson Premium Glossy and Moab lasal matte. It seems largely immune to the too-dark problem that has plagued my 2200. And it looks possible to set up printing presets that stick. My thanks to gragsie.com
http://gragsie.com/Aperture/howtoprint.html
for his advice, especially the admonition to build presets by saving any time you change anything.
I’ll report how it works in my CS4 setup. Meanwhile, I look forward to your experiences with this clunky but (fingers crossed) workable open source driver.
-John
Thanks for the continuing flow of information – though info from Epson is what we really need!
Stansil, I read that LL piece on the 9900. That printer, of course, is a much newer model and a high end printer – so they better make that one work right! I was happy to hear that Apple (or at least the “Apple executive” mentioned in the story) would like to see high end photo printer driver updates handled through the OS instead of in the current manner – that makes a ton of sense!
John, I’m interested to hear more reports of the extent of these issues. I think that we are early enough in this situation that most people are focused on the incompatibility with their own piece of Epson gear, and that they have not yet looked up to notice that the issues are affecting other equipment as well. It was only when I did a bit of investigating that I started to see reports on other printers – some seemingly resolve and others, like the 2200, not resolve and with no statement at all from Epson about the prospects. I had not heard about the scanner issues.
Dan
If you check out the list of Epson drivers supplied with Snow Leopard here
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#epson
it’s pretty clear that Epson has a big problem with SL. Its entire line of Stylus printers is unsupported except with the Gutenprint workaround. The Stylus Pro 3800 isn’t listed at all. Maybe the company got blindsided by the early release date of SL.
Even gear that is supposedly supported with a new driver is not, really. My V100 scanner is listed with a new driver version, but it only works through Image Capture. The Epson Scan front end is supposedly “supported” via Rosetta, but I can’t get it to work.
Maybe this story isn’t over.
Dan, Here’s a link a friend sent me regarding a different Epson with similar problems under Snow Leopard. The author seems to imply that Epson and Apple are both aware of the problem and for this person were able to fix it. However, it was the Stylus Pro 9900 and not the 2200.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/woes.shtml
Maybe there’s some information here that we can try to adopt to our situation.
Update on this situation…
There are lots of suggestions floating around on the internet that purport to address this problem. As far as I can tell none of them actually resolve it. Here is a summary:
Several things make this situation even more aggravating:
Dan
Whoops, forgot to mention that my Epson is a 2200.
Hello, brothers in misery. Thank you for saving me from the pointless task of getting SL to use the Epson drivers; it sounds like the resulting prints aren’t worth the trouble.
For what it’s worth, the Gutenprint driver – nasty interface though it may have – has produced a couple of very nice prints for me. With no other choice but to wait for Epson or buy a new printer, I’m going to dig into it. For now, my main task is to figure out how to get it to save all those choices I must make for each print.
Good plan – I may resort to something similar if there isn’t a better solution soon.
I hear you, Dan about a new printer but don’t feel like putting out the $$ right now. I have another potential solution that I’m working on right now. I may partition my hard drive and put Leopard on a small partition with Photoshop and Lightroom. When I need to print I’ll just reboot into the Leopard partition. I’d be surprised if either Apple or Epson put much effort into our old reliable 2200. I have to come up with a solution as I have a photography exhibition coming up in January and will need to do a lot of printing for that.
I have the exact same issue with my 2200. I was so happy when I finally loaded the Tiger drivers from Epson’s site and got Snow Leopard to recognize them using Rosetta. Then, I printed a photo and the colors were totally off (basically unusable). My only workaround at present is to boot from an external drive with and image of Leopard made using Super Duper when I want to print photos. This is pretty awkward. I hope you come up with a solution because I doubt that Epson or Apple will give much attention to this printer given how old it is. However, it’s still a great printer and I don’t want to upgrade.
Yes, at this point I’ve pretty much figured out that the driver simply doesn’t work with 10.6. I’m at least a bit optimistic that they’ll come out with some additional updates later this month – I just hope I can avoid needing to print until that point. I also do have a potential short term work-around if not. I have an older G4 Powermac that can run Photoshop, at least to print, so I could just hook up the old printer to that machine.
On the bright side… I’m in the market for a newer and larger printer anyway. If Epson doesn’t get their act together soon I may just get the newer printer a bit early.