Epson R1900 Setup Fun and Games

Question

Hi,
Took delivery of a factory second R1900 for 50% off last night and proceeded to play with the print settings in Aperture. Having previously spent ages trying to get the right combo of settings for my HP Photosmart 8230, I was expecting to spend some time on it.
The paper I used was Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss Paper - simply because I had a box handy. It probably would have been easier to use Epson paper and will get some today.
Much to my surprise, I couldn't get a decent print by selecting the paper in the Aperture print settings and the corresponding option in the printer dialogue. Unless my multiple combinations missed the right one, they all came out too light. Selecting the Ilford profile in Aperture and any other paper in the printer driver just doesn't seem to play nice.
After much mucking around the setting of System Managed in Aperture and No Colour Adjustment in the printer driver is the closet (and is very close. still not happy with the blues - a touch grey-ish).
The prints themselves are very nice. Once I get one pre-set locked in stone, I will get myself some matte paper and try that out.
Does anybody have a magic combo of settings for printing to the R1900?
Regards,
Calx

Answer 1

I'm pleased to report a successful evening of setting up the r1900 for Aperture. Once I turned colour settings off in the printer driver, the rest was pretty easy.
Both Epson Premium Gloss and Ilford Premium Plus were set up with only slight differences in settings, and resulting in (as far as I can tell) identical looking prints apart from a veeery slight difference in shading of certain sky blues - and with same saturations and brightness as the screen.
Settings in Aperture print dialogue were:
Colorsync profile - the relevant Epson or Ilford .icc profile
Black Point compensation - ON (although OFF made little difference)
Gamma - 1.0 (if you were obsessive 1.05 may have been better, but more likely need 1.0025 eek! )
Settings in printer settings were:
Paper - the Epson premium glossy for the Epson paper, and semi-gloss for the Ilford
Colour Management - OFF
Print Quality - Best Photo (haven't tried PhotoRPM yet, to save ink)
Hi Speed - OFF (was getting faint banding sometimes with it ON)
Hope this helps! Next objective is to set up the matte and specialty papers, which I'll also post here once done.
Disclaimer : My iMac is not fully calibrated, so claims of colour accuracy should be interpreted as "as far as my eyes can tell, it looks the same".
Regards,
Calx