As with the guidance for Mac OS X on previous pages you'll
find that 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 10 should appear.
Figure 10 - Windows "System"
Print dialog
Press the Properties button. Once the Printer driver dialog
(Figure 11) appears choose the type of Media (1)
that will be used. Next select either Photo or Best Photo
for Quality Type (2). The
last setting to choose in this dialog is the Advanced button (3).
Figure 11 - Epson Basic
Printer Dialog - Main Window
Print Workflow 1
For Color Management (5)
we have a number of options, many of which only serve to confuse and
are completely unnecessary. Also, for this tutorial I'm ignoring
Advanced B&W since it's only available on higher end Photo printers
such as the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 and Stylus Pro3800.
The following screenshot (Figure 12) is where we make the important
selections. For best print quality you should disable High Speed
(4).
Figure 12 - Epson Print
Driver: Print Workflow 1
The first two Color Management options are designed to automate the
process of printer color management and you have the choice of Color
Controls or PhotoEnhance. Both these options are intended
for novice Photoshop users but I suggest that you avoid using
PhotoEnhance since it applies additional processing and sharpening
to the image and can produce very unsatisfactory results with some
printer models. I also suggest that you stick with Epson Standard
or Vivid for the Color Mode (6).
Also, remember that when this setting is selected the Photoshop
Print dialog should be configured as shown in
Print Workflow 1.
Lastly, unless you have good reason to choose differently I recommend
leaving the Gamma setting at 1.8.
Figure 13 - Epson Print
Driver: Print Workflow 1 (ICM Mode)
By choosing ICM (5a)
(see Figure 13 above) you gain access to the internal Epson printer
color management system (i.e. Applied by Printer Software) and
the Off (No Color Adjustment) mode. The later mode (i.e. Off
[No Color Adjustment]) is NOT compatible with Print
Workflow 1 and should NOT be selected. When the former (Applied
by Printer Software) is selected the driver automatically makes use
of the Epson media profiles but does so in a way that means their
selection in Photoshop should be avoided. Actually, with previous
versions of Photoshop using this method to select an ICC media profile
in Photoshop and the Epson driver would have lead to double profiling,
so the final prints would have looked awful (light and magenta).
Photoshop CS3 now includes a feature that should prevent this problem
occurring, but it's likely that it only works with more recent
printers. Therefore, to obtain the best results from this particular
mode of operation Photoshop should be configured as shown in
Print Workflow 1
on page 1.
Print Workflow 2 and 3
The last setting for color management is referred to as Off (No
Color Adjustment) (7) and is
ONLY appropriate when you're using ICC media profiles in Photoshop
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.
This setting is by far the best setting for advanced Photoshop users.
Figure 14 - Epson Print
Driver: Print Workflow 2 and 3
Tip: In the screenshot shown above you can see
that choosing Off (No Color Adjustment) (7)
resulted in the Mode pop-up, Gamma and slider controls being removed
from the print dialog; this is how it should be so don't panic when
they disappear.
Page 4 of 4
