Dark Prints When Using CS3

Question

have just begun using CS3 10.0.1 on an iMac (using 10.5.2) and am experiencing darker than normal prints.
My setup is as follows:
Color Settings In Photoshop:
RGB: Adobe RGB (1998 (but have now begun using ProPhoto RGB)
CMYK: US Web Coated (SWOP) v2
Gray: Gray Gamma 2.2
Spot: Dot Gain 20%
When printing, I have been using:
Photoshop Colour Management -
Document
Photoshop Manages Colours
A specific printer profile for the Epson paper I use ( downloaded the from Epson website)
Perceptual (Rendering Intent)
For the printer driver (for an Epson R800 printer) I have been selecting Off (No Colour Management) from the Colour Management Tab and I have been adjusting the Print Settings to the paper I have been using.
If there is a bug in CS3 that is causing the darker than normal prints, is there a workaround (such as printing images edited in CS3 in CS)?
Any assistance is appreciated!
Frank

Answer 1

I and some (many?) others have similar problems, for which I have two partial solutions.
To begin, I strongly suspect the printer is suspect. I had an R800 and now use an R1800. I have used the R1800 with Tiger and Leopard, both through several revisions up to the most recent (10.4.11, 10.5.2). I don't recall problems before CS3 (currently 10.0.1) With CS3, I cannot print satisfactorily using Epson printer profiles for glossy and luster paper. I can print to watercolor paper IF use a glossy profile. (It's OK to lie to a possible demented print system.) That said, here are two workarounds.
1) Let the printer manage colors. Heresy, I know. Works well for me with glossy or luster paper and any of 3 choices of printer control-- Epson Std, Epson Vivid, or Adobe 1998. Oddly enough, before I dod workaround #2 below, the Epson control for brightness didn't seem to have any effect. I bumped it up to 3. I've never twiddled the other controls in that panel.
2) This is tedious.
(a)Remove printer drivers using Epson's Uninstall options for your printer in BOTH the present and the preceding versions. Old driver software not removed has been suggested in this forum as a potential problem.
(b) Remove the printer entrie or entries via System Preferences--> Fax&Print, reset the printer system, and throw away any previously downloaded Epson printer software installers.
(c) Run Disk utility, do a safe boot, run disk utilities again. Reboot as normal.
(d) Download a fresh driver from EPson and install it.
(e) Remove PS CS3 preferences. Restart PS while holding down the option key to generate a fresh default preferences file. CAVEAT-- you will lose any custom preferences and any
non-default actions. I am recreating the defaults on the fly, and I was able to reinstall the actions, whose files wee still in place, by double-clicking on each in turn while PS was running.
The outcome? Well, I can now elect to let PS manage colors & turn off Printer color management. I get better prints on luster paper and on glossy paper. The matte printer profiles still flood low-key regions of an image with cyan and/or blue. I'm not done testing other paper surfaces yet.
Three final threads-- (i) paper -- I use Epson, Premier Art, and (!) yes, Staples professional brilliant gloss. Various profiles for these icc or not don't seem to make noticeable difference to my eyes. (Aside-- I don't really believe Epson and other printer makers actually manufacture their own paper, we're buy Epson-branded paper made by who knows whom.)
(ii) Other sometimes helpful sources of info include g ballard's site (Google it). John Nack's blog http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/, and the Apple ColorSync email chat list.
Also search this forum for Epson, R800, R1800, and Leopard will produce a lot of text and some useful info.
(iii) I rebuilt a 10.4.11 system but saw the same bad results as with 10.5. To me this implicates a bad guy somewhee in the software stream up to and including printer memory.
Apologies for length. Maybe I should just use Marshall Oils like my grandfather did...
--Gene