Epson Photo 895 and OSX poor colours

[deanmcg]

I have an Epson Photo 895 printer (UK nomenclature) which is essentially the same as the Photo 890 but with the addition of a PC Card Slot to allow Computerless printing of digital pics.

Printing from Classic the output is perfect and largely similar to the displayed photo on screen.

When I print from OSX using the same settings in Colorsync and in the Epson supplied printer driver the colour range is compressed, way too red and hugely unstisfactory. The displayed picture in Photoshop 7 and the Preview app however looks fine.

I even tried loading the Epson Drivers to a clean install of OSX with exactly the same results.

I am now thinking of changing the printer as I suspect the problem may lie with the printer drivers.

Anyone have similar experience with the OSX drivers from Epson?

For the Record the pictures being printed are taken with the Nikon D1X

 

[rharder]

Epson blames it on ColorSync:

Q: Why does my color output look different from what I see on my screen?

A: Mac OS X includes the latest version of Apple's ColorSync, color matching software. This new version of ColorSync is designed to automatically tune itself to produce the best color output based on the users display monitor and display settings. Apple OS X new architecture defaults to ColorSync on, and since this new feature is designed to match each users unique monitor and display settings, it creates the color difference between the screen colors and the printed colors.

Source: http://support.epson.com/webadvice/wa0301.html

Isn't ColorSync supposed to prevent that exact problem?

-Rob

 

[deanmcg]

Colorsync is supposed to help and indeed I have seen it work to great effect with workflows I used to use whilst employed in Digital printing.

Hence my strong belief it is the fault of the drivers.
I was considering buying the Canon S900 or S9000 but I do not know whether I would be better off. Or indeed if there are OSX drivers.

Dean