Poor printing results

Question

Pesky problem: prints too dark and colors lack saturation.
Have been printing on an Epson Artisan 50 with good results. Have added a new R2880. Both print with the same poor results NOW.
Use OS Mavericks, a 2-year-old iMac calibrated with Color Munki, custom ICC profiles for both printers, and PS 2014. Workroom is fairly dark with medium tan walls and 2 ‘Ott’ lights behind monitor.
Have made the following adjustments to see if I can find a solution:
•   With monitor have tried luminance of 80 and 120.
•   With monitor have tried white points of 55 and 65.
•   Have let PS and printer handle color.
•   Have converted color space from ProPhoto to sRGB and back again.
•   Have used 2 different packs of Epson Luster- both new.
I do view prints under the daylight corrected Ott lights and I take them outside in the sunlight to see if they're dark. And they still are! Wondering if somewhere I’m making a simple rookie mistake? I’ve followed both J. Schewe’s and the Digital Dog’s instructions as best I know how. How do you check that the driver settings are correctly configured? How do you check the output profile setting?
Any help is much appreciated.
Richard

Answer 1

Aperture really wants to manage colour during printing.
One common problem seems to be having your printer (driver) set to colour management, and then Aperture doing it as well. (This is probably not the only problem...)
One of the O'Reilly Inside Aperture Podcasts, with Joe Schorr, covers this very issue.