Printing with R1800 and Mac - now getting beautiful prints - thank you everyone

Question

I want to give a huge "thank you" to all the people on this forum who have discussed how to set up color-managed printing on Epson printers. As a complete novice, I naively bought an R1800 printer and thought that I would just whip out my prints at home. Alas, after messing with this off and on for almost a year, and after burning through 2 complete sets of cartridges and untold quantities of Epson Ultra Premium Luster paper, I was roundly cursing color management, profiles, monitor calibration, Epson, Lightroom, and photography in general. But the information from Jason Hicking in post 17 of one of the many threads on printing problems ( http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.3c05eae6 ) fixed my problem and I am now getting gorgeous 13x19" prints that look like what I see on the screen. Jason Hicking deserves an extra round of kudos for the investigation he did on this.
I am just a hobbyist and got my very first SLR camera only 18 months ago. I could never have gotten to this point without everything I have learned from this forum. Many, many people contributed pieces of information that helped me put the puzzle together.
Now, anyone have any ideas on how to get more wall space for putting up framed photos? :)
--Kimberly Smith

Answer 1

Claude
Glad to hear you've now got a working solution as I know you've put a lot of effort in yourself to resolve the issue with your 3800. Keep us up to date with any changes will you?
DYP
Thanks for the thanks! I'm glad that I was able to nudge you in the right direction, sometimes we probably know the answer but just need someone to show us a different route to it. I'll come back to you shortly with regards to platform and driver versions if you don't mind as it will help in the research I'm doing as I mentioned in my initial reply to Kimberly.
John
I'll also keep you in the loop with the discussion between DYP and myself on the driver issues if you like, and I'll also try to explain the theory between using Epson profiles and custom-built profiles for those who'd like to usderstand the issue deeper.
I appreciate fully that it's not just Adobe but until someone can fully explain the complete workflow interactions between different versions of Lightroom, Colorsync and the Epson drivers then we'll have to keep coming back to the 'apparent' culprit which appears to be Lightroom's new print pipeline. I say 'apparent' as the tests I've done so far show that my workaround isn't needed for InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop running on the same platform and drivers as Lightroom. If anyone can get 'those who really know' at Adobe to openly describe the above then please do so as this will help with my other avenues of enquiry at Apple and Epson.
As Doyle said for those who custom profile their machines, myself included, the current situation is that we've got a workaround but not a solution. I consider this to be an ongoing quest until it turns into a reliable, user-friendly solution.
Cheers for now, anyone with any thoughts please feel free to chime in.
Jason