In PS C6 I'm getting a warning that "No color management" setting for printer isn't supported. Why?

Question

I'm using Photoshop Extended CS6. I'm printing to either an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 or an Epson SP4900. In the print dialog, I get a warning I haven't seen in a long time. It says the setting "No Color Management" at the printer is not supported. This is patently false. I am given a link to download the Adobe Color Print Utility (which gives abominable results; I know this from repeated uses in the past), and a service note saying this issue is for Photoshop CS5. Clearly there is a problem, possibly a bug.
I have never had CS5 installed on this machine. I do have PS CS5.5 and PS CS6 on this machine (I have used all versions of CS in various suites from the start of the product line).
Can anyone explain this annoying intrusion on my workflow? Of course "no printer management on printer/Photoshop manages color" works... There must be an explanation.
Thanks.

Answer 1

An excellent question, and worthy, in fact of an essay, if not a chapter in a book on color management and proofing issues. And as you suggested earlier, it's a philosophical question (not strictly conceptual to my way of thinking).
It's also a question I can't answer, in terms of practicality and a personal sense of efficacy in dealing with a monolithic process (producing a print). That is, I can't answer for you, or anyone else I'd venture to say.
Stepping back for the briefest of moments, we should remember we live, on computers, in a virtual world. Whatever we see is a simulation, or if you prefer a simulacrum. Plato would probably say, not much better than the play of shadows on the cave wall from the flickering flames.
It's called soft proofing for a reason. The only hard proof is a print. I am old enough to remember the days when producing a color print from a chrome (requiring an internegative) or even directly from negative images, was an art, best left to skilled technicians in a lab. And even then it was an iterative process. Making an image ready for accurate color rendition in lithographic reproduction was the same things, maybe times ten. And required sometimes a whole team of skilled technicians, the last of them being the press operator. You can't appreciate the full impact of these facts of life back then unless you have been "on press" in some plant, invariably in the hinterlands, looking at actual press proofs under 6500K calibrated proofing lights, comparing them against the original chrome, the separation proofs used to make the plates. You had to understand not only the physics (and biology) of RGB imaging, but the intricacies of subtractive technology, aka CMYK. As in so much else in life, less is more, and so you had to understand that sometimes the least adjustment was the best (because you were also dealing with the physical constraints of layers of ink on paper), so if an image looked too green on the press sheet, it might be best to throttle up on the magenta just a touch, rather than cut back on the yellow and cyan. You balanced one against the other, because of the possible effects on other parts of the image.
This long-winded, probably tiresome if not boring, anecdote is meant to be illustrative of the analogous situation in which we find ourselves printing images with digital technology, combined with electromechanical devices spraying pigmented fluids in drops measured in picoliters of volume on substrates of varying physical properties related to absorbency, refractive index, contribution to an arcane phenomenon known as metamerism.
We can't hope to see anything but a, pardon the expression, simulacrum of the combination of the effects of these phenomena (and other phenomena as a result of the interdigitation of these different technologies, at the software level, and even more so at the hardware level), at least not on a screen (which introduces a whole other set of variables). We can't see what we will get unless we actually go through the ordeal and expense of producing a hard proof. And then using our experience and deductive skills to make adjustments, not unlike maneuvering a rover on the moon from a control station on earth, that will produce the desired outcome within a very narrow (I assume) set of parameters.
Personally, I prefer working in Lightroom and in Photoshop in order to produce the image I would like to see in an ideal, if you like a Platonic, world. If what was on the screen could somehow be transferred magically to the surface of a lovely unsullied sheet of Arches cold press watercolor paper, 350g/m^2 coming out of an Epson 9900... (I've done it). Not so easy.
What the soft proofing capabilities of Photoshop are good for, from my point of view, is to show me how far off the image I am looking at as ideal will fall short on the intended target substrate. I must always remember, it is not a wholly accurate rendition of what the printer will do with a sheet of paper from a particular production run, with the particular combination of inks (with varying dates of origin of manufacture), never mind the vagaries of temperamental nozzles in the printhead, not to mention conditions of humidity, temperature, etc.
What the softproof tells me is that the red in that scarf on my subject really needs bumping up, if I expect the level of vibrancy I see I need in the ideal rendition. And I make the adjustment in the RGB representation on the screen, etc. When I have made my by guess and by gosh adjustments to all problem areas as suggested by the soft proof (it is only as accurate after all as the RGB image is in depicting any realistic expectation of a final result—the only assurance I have is that if I really want people to see my image as I see it on the screen I had better show them the screen...), I make a print. Sometimes I have to make two or three until I am satisfied this is truly the best I will get from the beautiful, but arcane, surface of the paper I have chosen.
In short, it's a risky business, and expensive.
If you want fast and affordable, frankly, stick to premium grade high gloss surfaces, preferably from Epson, in your case, or the manufacturer of your printer in general (Canon, incidentally, produces spectacular results on their Pixma Pro series printers and their own papers, especially the Pro Luster surface... I don't even bother with soft proofing... so there is an exception even to this rule I am taking a lot of time to point out to you). High gloss papers tend to have the widest gamut, give the deepest blacks, and the best renditions of saturated color, red and blue particularly, for some reason often the hardest spectral colors to render with the level of saturation you might like. Especially if you tend to shoot vividly colored subjects.
If you regularly use matte surface, or so-called fine art or watercolor surfaces, I think even if you adhere to the workflow implied in your question... Just set the computer and screen to "soft proof" in effect in Photoshop and work from their, and hope for the best... you are in for massive chronic dissatisfaction.
One last thing, I produce what I consider a basic working image in Lightroom, add further effects using a battery of third party effects software (from Google Nik, OnOne, Imagenomic, AlienSkin, etc.) and then go to work further on the image in Photoshop, but I never save the image, except as a revised file, once I'm done with Lightroom adjustments (which are never applied to the RAW file, but kept as meta-instructions separately in the LR database). So any effects added produce a new file. Any changes in Photoshop produce a new file. And when I am working, finally on an image to make into a committed hard print, I NEVER save the settings I use to produce a print, including a print I deem acceptable for exhibition. If nothing else, I can honestly tell a print buyer they are getting a unique "hand-made" image. I don't feel I'm operating a factory after all, but a studio. Further, changes in technology occur dynamically and continuously. I don't know what I would do with the settings I derived from working solely in the "soft-proofing" mode you think you might prefer in your workflow, if a new paper or ink set, or printer came along that solved the problems I had to fudge around to get a decent print with the existing technology at the time. At least if I work solely in RGB trying to achieve an "ideal" rendition, I will always be able to start from that same point, the next time I want a print worth saving of that image.
We've gone, or I've gone, way off topic here, and I beg the indulgence of anyone else who might be reading this, hoping for a simple fix to the original simple problem.
H