The initial few paragraphs of this page are common to all three
Print Workflows described earlier. When you press the Print
button (i.e. bottom right hand corner of Photoshop Print dialog)
the "System" Print dialog as shown in Figure 5 should
appear. Like the System Print dialog in Tiger the Leopard dialog might
appear quite complicated in so far as it includes menu options,
although most are better set within Photoshop. In particular, you
should not need to access options such as: Layout, Color
Matching, Paper Handling, Cover Page and Scheduler.
Also, I really can't emphasise enough how important it is that
you configure the printer driver in the sequence that I describe
otherwise there is a good chance that one of the settings will revert
to the Epson default.
Figure 5 - "System" Print
dialog
Press the popup labelled Layout. Since it's partially hidden
in above screenshot I have shown a red splash symbol adjacent to it.
Next, choose Print Settings from the list of options. The
Printer Settings panel (figure 6) will appear.
Figure 6 - Epson Printer
Dialog - Main Window
Readers familiar with Epson driver for Tiger will immediately notice
that all of the options they need to set are now contained within a
single panel. Also, for the purposes of this tutorial I will
concentrate on the type of Media Type (1),
Color Settings (2), Print
Quality (3) and printer
specific options (4) such as speed
and detail.
For best results you should make sure that the settings Media
Type (1) is set to match the
paper that you'll be printing with and Print Quality (3)
should normally be set to the highest available resolution that is
compatible with the printer/media combination you're using. Generally,
High Speed (4) should be
disabled.
The remainder of this page discusses the options available for
Color Settings (2) and is
separated into two parts, the first deals with Print Workflow 1
and the second Print Workflow 2 and 3.
Print Workflow 1 (Contd. from page 1)
When developing the new Leopard compatible drivers Epson appear to
have took on board many of the criticisms that were levelled at
previous drivers. For example, Color Settings (2)
now has only two options: Color Controls and Off (No Color
Adjustment), this workflow only uses the former. Also, remember
that when this option is selected the Photoshop Print dialog
should be configured as shown in
Print Workflow 1 on
page 1.
Figure 7 - Epson Print Driver:
Print Workflow 1
Of the four sub-options available under Color Controls I
think Epson Standard (sRGB) and Adobe RGB are the best
choice for printing photographic images.
I don't recommend the use of the Advanced Color Settings
adjustment sliders, nevertheless, I have shown the panel for
information. Leaving it at the default settings and fixing tonal or
color issues within Photoshop is more likely to produced better results
because you have a live preview the adjustments. Using the adjustment
sliders usually requires multiple iterations of adjustment and print
before everything is correct.
Figure 8 - Advanced Color
Control Panel
Print Workflow 2 and 3 (Contd. from page
1)
The other option for Color Settings option is referred to as
Off (No Color Adjustment) (2)
and is ONLY appropriate when you're using application color
management (i.e. you have selected ICC media profile in Photoshop
Printer Profile pop-up) or printing the targets required for creating
ICC media type profiles. In other words you should only use this
setting if you have chosen to configure Photoshop Print dialog
as shown in Print
Workflow 2 or
Print Workflow 3 on the previous page. This option produces by
far the best print quality. It's also worth mentioning that if you find
your final prints are light and magenta in appearance then there's a
very good chance that you chose Color Controls by mistake.
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