As with the Mac OS X page 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. top right hand corner of
Print with Preview 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 the Epson Stylus Photo R2400.
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 colour management and you have the choice of Color
Controls or PhotoEnhance. Both these options are best suited
to novice Photoshop users but I suggest that you avoid using
PhotoEnahnce 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
with Preview 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
colour management system (i.e. Applied by Printer Software) and
the Off (No Color Adjustment) mode. The later mode (i.e. 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, using this method to select an ICC
media profile in Photoshop and the Epson driver leads to double
profiling, so the final prints will look awful. Therefore, to obtain the
best results from this particular mode of operation you be configured as
shown in Print Workflow 1.
Print Workflow 2 and 3
The last setting for colour 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 with Preview dialog as shown in
Print Workflow 2 or
Print Workflow 3. This
setting is by far the best setting for advanced Photoshop users. 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 one
of the other settings in error.
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.
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