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Allright, so after two weeks I’m still on Snow Leopard and have decided to live with the very annoying printing bug. In fact as of this morning I’m on 10.6.1 which unfortunately - after a few more tests – doesn’t solve anything. Why not revert to Leopard? Well frankly, the rest of the system feels more responsive and the small refinements are nice. I also have a workaround that’s allowing me to use my R2880 and get the right colors.
So here’s a recap of the problems I’ve encountered and their – hopefully very temporary – solutions.
Aperture forums are talking about purple prints after upgrading to SL. The problem appears when using certain paper profiles. I say certain because I don’t want to generalize without being absolutely sure but from where I’m standing ALL third party profiles result in this color shift. We’re talking unusable here. Apple’s answer? Switch to System Managed or turn off Black Point Compensation. The first solution is almost insulting to any photographer that takes printing seriously. You will NOT get the right colors with System Managed, period.
SOLUTION: Turn off Black Point Compensation and use your profiles as before. I’ve found that slightly boosting the gamma setting to 1.05 brings the blacks back where they should be. I use Ilford Gallery Smooth Pearl and so far my prints are dead on.
Epson released 10.6 drivers for the r2880. I thought I was golden. But when I tried to print I found there were no print options under Printer Settings. Nothing. No Advanced Black and White, no high detail, high speed… nothing. And of course Epson were of no use, stating in their FAQ that they had left out certain features due to size constraints on the Snow Leopard disc (what??!!!!!!!). It turns out that although the drivers are 10.6 compatible, they also require Rosetta to be installed. What threw me was that I’d selected it to be installed as part of my SL upgrade but it somehow wasn’t.
SOLUTION: Install Rosetta from Optional Installs after upgrading to SL. Options in the driver reappeared without even having to restart the computer.
This is the big super annoying bug. It’s the one requiring the most complex workaround. When printing from Aperture with the R2880 you need to choose a paper that not only fits the intended size but also the right source (meaning the printer tray). Here’s what I mean:
Normally, choosing any name that says Sheet Feeder will instruct the printer to use the main tray. Not so when printing from Aperture in SL. No matter what you choose the printer receives it as Roll Paper. And there’s no way to change it. Brilliant.
SOLUTION:
1- Prepare everything as you normally would: paper size, profile, sharpening, border etc. But instead of hitting Print, choose Preview. This creates a pdf with all settings rendered and sends it to Preview.
2- Once in Preview your window contains two buttons: Cancel and Print. DO NOT HIT PRINT. You’ll get the same source error. Instead, hit command-P to get to Preview’s print dialog. Once there choose the right paper (again!) and don’t forget to (again!!) set the profile from the Color Matching section.
3- When all is set hit Print from the dialog. The picture will print normally.
When I realized I was going to be doing this for awhile I immediately created presets for every paper type and size in Preview, thinking I’d at least save myself the trouble of having to redo everything each time. Good idea. Doesn’t work: the print presets don’t remember the paper size or scaling. It does at least remember the profile. One out of three.
So here we are, unsure of what lies ahead and hoping against hope that some kind of resolution will come. Hopefully this post will help a bit in the meantime. I don’t know about you but I’m starting to feel antsy about a lot of things in Aperture Land.
“they had left out certain features due to size constraints on the Snow Leopard disc”
This is what I understood to be the case:
SL is advertised saying it cleans up room your disc. This is, from what I understand, partly done by removing drivers Apple considers legacy. It seems they also curtailed 3rd parties in how much they could include. If Epson can be bothered to make a full-featured driver for post-SL install, that could solve it. Being Epson, I’d be a bit irritated with Apple.
Hey my friend!
That’s not entirely correct, sorry :-).
SL really does clean up a lot of code. And apparentely the 64 bit code pretty much replaces the PPC code that was left out, which means there’s alot of actual optimization going on in a lot of native apps and the system itself. As far as printer drivers go, previous versions of the OS X installer installed roughly 1.5gb of drivers by default – just in case (btw: I’d always uncheck anything I didn’t need before upgrading so the many gigabytes I saved with Sl didn’t come from there).
Now, it checks which printers are connected to the computer, which printers you had installed in Leopard and only gives you drivers for those models. It has nothing to do with legacy. When you plug in a new printer it offers to download the required drivers. There’s also a basic Gutenprint driver included.
The FAQ I’m referring to is from Epson’s support website where you can download the latest printer drivers.
That’s it right there. What size constraint are they talking about? It’s their servers, their software. If there is a size constraint imposed by the SL disc, just give me the full installer from the support page. What are they talking about?
It’s also completely false: installing Rosetta and the 10.6 drivers brings the full feature set, same as Leopard. That’s just bad communication or laziness man.
There seems to be an issue with Photoshop in a similar manner. I have been getting the same message when trying to print using the rear paper tray. I had a service call from Epson today who did identify a problem with the rollers but after cleaning it worked perfectly under Windows XP – The engineers laptop – but not under SL. I am trying the pre-SL drivers and am having some success – I will report back if I make progress
Thanks for the info Paul. I was having problems with the rear tray and Aperture before SL – so the issue isn’t new, just worse. That tray on the R2880 appears to be pretty temperamental and I’ve resorted to using the main tray as much as possible. Fortunately I’m more of a luster/pearl/baryta guy so the papers I’m using aren’t a problem. Love your photography btw…
Great tips. Thanks. Sadly for me I just read them after rolling back to 10.5.8.
I for one will stick with 10.5.8 until this is resolved. It’s mad that Apple allowed this situation to occur. Perhaps (just maybe) they are holding fire for Ap 3.
Which would be no excuse.
[...] after much deliberation to do all my printing in-house (at least anything 13 in wide or less).The Snow Leopard debacle notwithstanding, I haven’t regretted my decision one bit. Sending my client’s photos to [...]
[...] We can now turn Black Point Compensation back on and use paper profiles. Goodbye purple! 2) Aperture sends the right tray info to my R2880 so no more Preview [...]
I now have 10.6.2 and my black point it back without problem, but when I try to print from Aperture rather than preview I still get this error “/Library/Printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/Filter/pdftopdf.app/Contents/MacOS/pdftopdf failed” If I use your previous work around through Preview I can print. Do you have any thoughts?
Frustrated,
Larry
Larry:
Hmm… That’s an odd one I haven’t seen before. Basically it seems to mean that Aperture is unable to communicate with a background app that creates a pdf before sending the file to the printer. When you use Preview to print you’re actually creating a temporary pdf file which explains why the problem doesn’t appear in that case. What printer are you using? Have you tried re-installing the drivers and rebooting just in case? You can also go through the motions described here and see if it does anything – I’d try moving the preferences first since it’s a quick fix.
Also, are you trying to print from a previously saved preset? I found that I had to go back in the printer settings and re-save the preset in order for it to work correctly. Let me know how it goes… Wish I could be of more help to you.
Patrick,
Thanks for the advice. I went in and deleted my preferences and that seemed to solve the problem. I am using Epson R2880. Your post has been very helpful. It does appear that Apple with its 10.6.2 update has solved my printing problem.
Thanks,
Larry
Good to know. Glad it worked out :-)
10.6.2 seems to have fixed my problems as well. And now the Quad i7 iMacs are shipping and screaming my name… (!)
Hello: you are a genius for having figured this out!
I could print normally with smaller prints ( 5×7 and 8×12) but not 17×22, when
I would get the cryptic pdftopdf error.
I am now printing on my Epson 3800 from Aperture using your brilliant Preview method.
I’ll try deleting and recreating the presets next.
What a mess!
Thank you very much!
SL version for R2880 is 8.17, which is what I have. Can anyone tell me where the function is to align printer heads? Epson has no clue and was quite confused by my phone call last week. I just got this printer.
Mike:
Epson drivers are a mess – the fact that they’re confused is certainly not encouraging.
This function is available from Epson Printer Utility 3 which is normally part of the install package. But when I went looking for it on my new iMac, I found that it wasn’t there either. Instead, I get Epson Printer Utility Lite which doesn’t allow print head alignment. Ridiculous.
I have to say that I didn’t visit Epson for this new machine: I simply used the included drivers, verifying that they were complete from the print dialog. Hadn’t noticed the missing parts until your post. Did you download the full Drivers and Utilities Combo Package from Epson? That’s the only solution I can think of right off the bat…
Latest update on the Drivers and Utilities Combo Package: “Intel-based Macs with OS X (v10.4.4 – v10.5.x), PowerPC Macs with OS X (v10.3.9 – v10.5.x)
epson13628.dmg – 48.9MB – posted on 01/04/10″
The full package doesn’t seem to be supported in OS X 10.6.2?
Harald:
I’m inclined to think it’s a typo on Epson’s part. I can’t imagine them releasing a new update that only supports the old version of the OS (!!!). They can’t seriously be that messed up…
I am having a hard time getting a good B&W print out of the R2880 on Aperture they seem muddy, I have to push the contrast I am printing on HP satin any help would be great! I am new to the digital print, I am a traditional printer in the darkroom worked under the eye of Eddy Dyba.
Miah:
There are a lot of variables to consider with digital. First and most importantly you need to make sure you have a good Colorsync workflow with a well calibrated display. Otherwise you’re just shooting in the dark. I use a Spyder3Pro calibration unit (with the bundled software) and always make sure to use the correct paper profile. I’ve had to adjust my presets with the new Aperture 3 but this workflow is giving me consistent colour (and BW). Muddy prints are usually caused by a non-calibrated display that’s essentially too bright, preventing you from making the right tonal adjustments visually.
Which version of Aperture are you using? Have you calibrated your display?
I haven’t worked with the HP paper – do you have the corresponding ICC profiles installed?