(IMPORTANT NOTE: I generally do not remove old articles from this web site since search engines and other links tend to point to them. This short article and link to Epson 2200 printer drivers was accurate when it was originally posted, but you should consult current information sources and perhaps contact Epson directly for update information. In all likelihood, based on my past experience, this printer and other older Epson printers will not be supported indefinitely by Epson. For my part, I would not get a 2200 at this point, no matter how cheap it was – and I have not owned a 2200 since perhaps 2010 or so.)
A while back I posted about serious problems with the Epson 2200 printer when used with Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6.x “Snow Leopard” operating system. I won’t recount the whole story here (that’s what links are for!) but the short version is that Epson had not updated their drivers when Apple released the OS update, and then Epson failed to communicate with their customers or update the drivers in a timely fashion – leaving photographers who used several of their printers including the 2200 “high and dry.”
The good news is that Epson did release updated drivers during the past week. The updated driver appears to resolve the very serious printing problems that rendered the 2200 essentially unusable for several months.
Dion, thanks for the update. The $699 Epson 2200 printer was introduced 10 years ago in 2002, and was ultimately available for prices much lower than that, so my sense is that anyone who got 10 years of use from this printer should congratulate himself or herself for getting their money’s worth! (The price of the hardware might amortize to as little as $60/year!)
As you probably know, while that printer was quite something at the time of its introduction a decade ago – when the idea of a printer with a 13″ carriage for such a low price was unheard of – it had its “issues,” and its technology is now quite outdated. It was one of the last Epson printers designed for photographic use that still struggled mightily with metamerism failure an issue that led to prints picking up odd green or magenta coloration in different kinds of ambient light. This was especially a problem when making black and white prints.
Later generations of Epson and other brand printers have largely solved this problem or reduced it to insignificance. While I have shared your frustration with Epson’s driver updates and their lack of response to customers’ needs, at this point I recommend updating to a newer printer – not only have you gotten full value (and a longer than expected life-span) from your 2200, but you will find that the newer printers produce much better and more consistent image quality.
Take care,
Dan
(BTW, I added “note” to this post to remind any other readers that the post is quite a few years old and no longer provides useful or current information. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.)
Dan, thanks for the quick reply. If I would’ve gotten 10 years of good use from my Epson 2200, I wouldn’t have written that comment. The $1000 that I paid was the going price at the time here, so if it was available for less later, it’s not the issue.
I have a Wacom tablet that is older, and incredibly, Wacom still support the drivers, and it works fine– because they are a good company with good customer support. All of the older cameras and lenses I own are fine. I don’t believe there’s any reason to justify a throwaway society.
If Epson had better support for their drivers and support over the time that I owned this printer (and in general), I also would be happy. My printer has seen very little use, and it is not worn out. Ink is still available, and the prints are still quite good– the metamerism is not a problem for many purposes, especially with mat prints like Velvet Fine Art paper. I never make large glossy prints.
The problems with this printer are not the outdated hardware, but poor driver support from Epson. If they are releasing drivers, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be careful enough to eliminate such obvious bugs (which probably exist in printers other than the 2200 as well). Such bugs are usually due to careless software development with inadequate testing. (For a textbook example of this, read about the ubiquitous “chroma bug” that made its way into almost every DVD player ever made.)
Also, even if posts are old– this information is still useful to many people. A lot of these printers were sold, and people don’t necessarily want to throw things away so quickly. Thanks for providing the old information, and helping people keep these things out of the landfill, especially if they don’t need a new printer, or don’t want to throw away money on a new one! All of this information helps people discover your site as well.
Best regards,
Dion
Ahh, these driver updates didn’t solve all the problems by any stretch. Even the release that came out two days ago didn’t fix this problem:
When printing from some applications, the printer doesn’t behave correctly if you are printing a small image somewhere on the page, perhaps in the centre or off to one side or corner. The printer will print it, but even if it’s a tiny thumbnail size, the printer heads will advance across the entire page slowly, as though the printer is printing every square of the page.
For example, if you were printing a tiny thumbnail as a test, onto the top corner of a sheet, then you’d better go out for a walk, because whether the printer hits that part of the paper first or last, it will take as long as printing full size. Even if the thumbnail is printed in the first section of the page to go through the printer, the printer will take 20 minutes (or whatever) to print “nothing” on the rest of the page, rather than spitting the paper out like it is supposed to, once the printed area is completed.
This is a new behaviour with this printer, never got it before, once upon a time when Epson actually had drivers that worked. And if Epson tries to tell me it’s an old printer– that’s no excuse. It cost me $1000 and was used very little, there’s nothing wrong with it except bad Epson drivers.
Even when I bought the printer new, the drivers had problems with printing borderless on a Mac. I don’t know what Epson thinks, but if they think they aren’t losing customers over their sloppy driver development, they are mistaken. Do they think I’m going to just buy another Epson printer? This one never had good driver support– why would I trust another Epson to be any different?
With the latest 10.6.3 updates and EPSONs driver updates (rev 8.23) I still have issues using off the shelf ICC profiles (EPSON and ILFORD to name two sources). Workflow using Photoshop (CS4) performs color management:
With legacy ICC profiles and the latest drivers (downloaded in May 2010) from Epson (epson13564.dmg) and then a larger download from Apple (EPSONPrinterDrivers2.3.1.dmg), I have the following issues:
– Print a test patch (say 8.5 x 11 image scaled 25% in the CS4 print menu) and print it in lower quarter of the page.
– you would expect the printer to scroll the paper to said patch and NOT print a fine mist all over the page, but it does not work as expected. My older icc profiles Epson dated 2003 and Ilford ICC profiles dated 2004, 2008 have the same issue.
– Thus color management is incorrect for the new driver and old profiles
– I updated my print profiler (Datacolor) to Spyder3Print, and developed new custom profile.
– The NEW profile works as expected, printer will scroll to the test patch and print a color corrected image. Not perfect, but now better than the Ilford factory profiles after some tuning.
(I reran the old driver and old profiles under 10.5.8 and things work as we expect, so my printer hardware is OK)
There is still something amuck with 10.6.3 and EPSON drivers – a custom profile or a 3rd party RIP may be required to work around this this.
CAUTION: I had to use CS4 to print the test color patches for the printer profiling to disable color management: Spyder3Print reverted to the preferred printer ICC profile when printing the test patch!
Hi, Ozzie:
Not sure I can fully resolve this for you remotely, but here are a few thoughts. First, to install the upgraded driver you just need to download the software from the Epson web site (which I presume that you have already done) and then double-click the installer to run it. From here the installation process is pretty automatic.
If you are printing from Photoshop, the broad outlines are that you first need to go to Printer Setup and select your printer and the right paper size and orientation. Then choose Print. Have Photoshop manage colors, and make other appropriate settings in this box. Then click the print button to see the second print dialog. Here you may have to again select your printer and choose your paper and some other parameters. In this dialog be sure to select the option that does NOT have the Epson printer software manage colors – turn printer color management off.
Dan
Mr Mitchell would you mind explaining how to load this new driver. I have a mac and a 2200 that only prints with leopard if I choose printer control for color management. I have downloaded the 13564 but have no idea of how to incorporate it into the program. Thanks a million!
Ozzie Regueira
Thanks for your information, however when I go to the Epson 2200 driver web site, I find nothing new from the previous postings by Epson. When these drivers were downloaded and installed, I continued to have the same muddy green pictures. I had no problems prior to MAC 10.6.
I have been waiting a reply from Epson on the update with no word so far.
Again, thanks for your input.
Boy, Epson’s web site certainly doesn’t make this easy. If you go to the “Snow Leopard” pages there you won’t see anything for the 2200, or at least I didn’t when I just checked. However, if you bypass the “snow leopard” links (and the new pop-up warning if you run snow leopard) and navigate to ink jet printers and then select the 2200 from the popup list you’ll find that a new driver is available:
[+] Printer Driver v8.12
Macintosh OS X (v10.6 – 10.6.x)
epson13564.dmg – 10MB – posted on 11/25/09