Odd PK to MK Swap Behavior

The purpose of this blog is to document weird, unusual, or comment-worthy happenings with my 7900. This fills all of those categories:

I've been very busy with client print work over the last two months, with a couple of breaks for travel. I've just wrapped up a printing job for a long-time client. I made two large (20 x 30 inches) prints on an old roll of the "original" Ilford GGFS. The rest of the job consisted of 24 small prints (six copies each of four different images) on Epson Enhanced Matte sheets. This required switching from PK to MK.

I don't often print on matte papers, but over the five years (!) I've owned the 7900, I'd guess I've done the Epson Ink Shuffle several dozen times. I should know what to expect.

MK showed 62%, PK showed 61%, LK 51%, and LLK 1%. I initiated the swap as usual. After ten to fifteen seconds the printer stopped making the usual noises and required a replacement ink. Assuming the offending cartridge was the LLK (recall that the printer doesn't tell you which of your low inks it's complaining about), I replaced that with a new cartridge. The machine thought about this for a few seconds and then raised the same "not enough ink to continue" message. I then swapped all remaining low inks just to get on with the job. Those were Y at 9%, and VLM at 1%. The printer then displayed "Cleaning".

That's new; I don't think I've ever experienced a cleaning prior to the ink swap. The printer did the usual thing, moving the head around, making the expected "I'm wasting ink" sounds, but this went on, and on, and on. I didn't time it, since I'd no reason to expect this behavior, but it seemed to take three to four times longer than the normal "standard cleaning" I might initiate manually to clear a clog. When it finally completed, the LCD displayed the progress bar normally shown for ink swaps. It seemed all was well.

But wait, there's more: when the swap completed, the machine once again displayed "Cleaning" on the LCD. And once again this took a very long time. When this finished the machine appeared to be ready to print. The waste tank showed a drop in free space from 27% to 21%. As you know if you've read my increasingly infrequent postings here, I keep pretty good records of my 7900's numbers. I looked back to the last time I did a PK to MK swap, and found the waste tank had dropped only 3%, and looking at older records confirmed this is typical. I also found that every ink took a larger than expected hit during those cleanings, clearly showing the machine pumped ink through all channels, not just the blacks.

It's normal for the machine to clean after an ink swap, but not before. The after-swap cleaning has always seemed typical in terms of time required. I've no idea why it behaved differently this time. Once the machine made itself ready, the printing went perfectly. I made 18 of the 24 prints. One day later I printed the last six. Most likely my next print job will require PK; I'll swap back to that when the need arises, and report here if it seems warranted.

  --Jay

Photoshop CC Printing Issue with macOS Sierra (10.12.0)

Mac users who've upgraded to the latest OS, "Sierra", and who use Adobe's Photoshop CC 2015.5.1 (and possibly earlier) may experience crashes when trying to print to their Epson printers.

A bit more information is found in a posting here. The same site lists other issues, including installation problems.

My "early 2008" Mac Pro is not compatible with Apple's latest Mac OS, so I've not seen these issues here. I'm still using OS X 10.11 "El Capitan" and the latest Epson driver (quite old, but the latest).

Not related: I've received a few comments/questions from people after my last posting here, waaaaay back in July. I'm afraid I've not had time to set up testing to determine the cause of that problem and whether later updates to Photoshop CC or to OS X 10.11 have resolved it. I've not encountered a print job for which I need to set up multiple prints across the width of a roll, and otherwise printing has been working fine. I suspect as the weather changes with fall fully "here" and winter coming I'll be able to make some time for such testing. Stay tuned; I'll certainly post the results here. And, thanks for the comments and questions.

  --Jay

Roll Printing Failure: Photoshop Bug, or Operator Error?

My 8 July posting describes a bug in the current release of Photoshop CC (that being the oddly versioned 2015.5). After "upgrading" to that version, but before learning of the bug, I made several prints, including a client job. It's the client job that's interesting.

The client is a painter for whom I periodically print scans of a series of watercolors. I've done work for her for a number of years, predating my installation of the 7900. In this case I had to make ten copies of a picture that's 8 x 26 inches (20.3 x 66 cm).  Those dimensions include a white border. I make these prints on Epson Enhanced Matte paper. I'd always printed these on a 17 inch wide roll, using a file that puts two copies of the picture together across the width of the roll. I made that file when I had my Canon 17 inch iPF5000 printer, and continued to successfully use it on the 7900.

I wasn't sure I had enough paper left on my 17 inch roll to complete this job. I decided to make a new layout, putting three images across a new 24 inch roll. I opened the file with Photoshop, created a new blank document, and pasted the image into that three times. I placed them to fill the 24 inch width.

With that document ready to print, I cropped the length to 4 inches (10 cm) to make a test strip. The strip had just a small piece from the end of each copy of the painting. My goal was to print the strip and make measurements to insure the pictures were placed and centered properly so when cut apart, each 8-inch reproduction would have the same borders. I wanted all the prints to be identical in every way.

After making the PK to MK swap I set up in the usual way, making a nozzle check print, etc. Invoking the print driver's dialog box I created a custom length for the roll paper, set everything else as needed, and then loaded the roll paper into the printer.

The preview is exactly what I expected, so I made the print. And got exactly what I didn't expect. A small part of the center image printed. Nothing at all printed for the two outside images. When bizarre things like this happen I always assume I've made some error in the setup. I rechecked everything and found no problems, printed again, and got the same result.

Huh. I then made a series of troubleshooting steps, printing between each. I did the usual and obvious things, including flipping the image 180°, changing the order of images (that is, which image resided on which layer), flattened to a single layer, exited and relaunched Photoshop, rebooted the Mac, and power-cycled the printer. Results varied; these attempts did change things, but I never got the printed test strip to looked like the preview. Below is a photo of a stack of the resulting prints. Top to bottom: not cropped, borderless; cropped; new file; new file, new page size, single, centered image; new file using a 3-up template that's worked fine before; after rebooting computer and printer. The pencil lines are mine, checking positioning.

I had to get this job done, and was tired of wasting time, ink, and paper. I loaded my 17 inch roll, loaded the older two-up print file made for that size roll, and printed. The resulting prints looked fine. I removed the roll, counted the "wraps" of paper around the core, did the math, and determined the roll had enough paper to complete the job, so I did.

In all of this, I did not see the color shift that is the reported bug in Ps CC 2015.5. Perhaps the range of color in the image is within the range minimally affected by the bug. Perhaps I'm just lucky. In any case, a happy client, and happy me because the job is done. But I still can't create a new, multi-print document and successfully print it on roll paper. I've since made single prints on cut sheets and again, not seen the reported color shift. Those prints look very nice (all on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique sheets). I have not tried printing a single image on roll paper, but I'm awaiting the delivery of files from a pair of clients that will require that, so I'll soon see what happens.

Is this another issue with Photoshop CC 2015.5? Is this operator (my) error? I don't know. I'm considering installing the previous version of Ps and then trying to print the saved 3-up test strip file with all settings made the same. I'd hoped to wait for Adobe to release a fix for the known bug, but several weeks after the buggy release there's still no word on when that'll happen. I may have no choice but to roll back to the older version. Either way I'll post results when there's something to report.

  --Jay

17 May 2017: I've posted an update to this.

Killer Photoshop CC 2015.5 Bug for Mac Users

If you make prints with a color-managed system, using a Mac and Epson printers, and if you've "upgraded" Photoshop CC to the latest version released a couple of weeks ago, that is, version 2015.5, you have a problem.

A long thread in the Luminous Landscape forums provides details:

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=111358.0

That thread includes other useful links, but I'll add a couple here for convenience. The Adobe support forum thread on this:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/8848998#8848998

The thread title would lead one to think only Lightroom is affected, but Photoshop is, too.

In his blog, Conrad Chavez provides help for rolling back your Ps CC installation to a previous version:

https://blog.conradchavez.com/2014/06/30/how-to-install-earlier-versions-of-creative-cloud-applications/

These are good links today, but as usual with the Web, one can't predict how long they'll be active.

It appears Adobe is aware of the problem, and while admitting they didn't test this in the 2015.5 release, they appear to be pointing the finger at Apple. Again. We may be in for another round of blame wars while we users wait for somebody to fix things. As always, we'll see.

I'm still reading and learning more about all this. I've just wrapped up several large print jobs and have not seen color problems, but I am having issues printing new files on roll paper. More about that  when I have time to write it up, in a day or two.

  --Jay

June, 2016, Firmware Update

Epson's U.S. site has posted, on 14 June, a firmware update for the 7900. This is HN124G5. As usual, the U.S. site's blurb doesn't say much about what this update does; if I believe what it does say, I probably won't install this update. From the update page:

epson17815.dmg

Description: This file contains the Epson Stylus Pro 7900 Firmware Update version HN124G5. 

This update improves paper thickness setting for custom media and adds M1 support for high OBA media when using SpectroProofer.

Installation instructions:

1. Download the file.
2. Double-click the downloaded file to create a disk image on your desktop.
3. Open the disk image.
4. Use the Remote Panel Utility to update this firmware.

Compatible Systems: Macintosh OS X (v10.11.x), Mac OS X (v10.10.x), Mac OS X (v10.9.x), Mac OS X (v10.8.x), Mac OS X (v10.7.x)

  --Jay

Odd Cleaning Experience After MK to PK Swap

After a slow start to the year, I've been very busy printing in March. I rarely print on mat papers, but recently, after completing several client jobs on Epson Luster (with PK ink), I had to switch to MK, and then make 14 small prints for a client.

Several of the inks in my printer show 1%, which means these cartridges are somewhere between 1% of their capacity and empty. I've learned I can make a number of prints with inks at 1% before I'm forced to replace them; Epson has indicated it's perfectly OK to run these cartridges until the machine stops and requires new ink, and I've done that a number of times. When I initiated the swap from PK to MK, the printer displayed a message indicating there wasn't enough ink to continue. The machine never specifies which ink, and with a number of "low ink" cartridges this can lead to a lot of trial and error (or just swapping all of the low-ink cartridges for fuller ones). In this case I assumed the complaint was about MK; I installed a new cartridge, and the swap then completed as usual. "As usual" means after the swap finishes, no auto-cleaning happens prior to the first print job. I finished the printing job, but left MK loaded.

Today, two days later, I wanted to print some focus targets to test a new lens. I'd print these on very glossy paper, so I swapped back to PK. Once again the printer complained of not enough ink to continue. I removed the 1% PK and installed a fuller one, expecting the ink swap to complete after that. The MK to PK swap then completed and as usual when swapping from MK to PK, an auto-cleaning started. And stopped right away. Again the machine displayed the "not enough ink" message. Having no clue which ink(s) stopped the show, and not having time to change them one at a time to determine the culprit(s), I changed all of the 1% cartridges (there are six, total). The cleaning then completed.

An MK to PK swap always requires two auto-cleanings. I inserted a sheet of plain paper and initiated a nozzle check print. As expected, the printer then performed the second auto-clean, after which the nozzle check print completed. All nozzles looked good. I then removed all of the fuller cartridges and installed the 1% inks.

My focus targets for testing the lens have no color patterns, only black. These targets are small, so I set up an image in Photoshop to print two per sheet. I needed six targets (three sheets). I printed the first sheet, and after carefully inspecting it I printed the second. When that completed I inserted the sheet to print the third. The 7900 stopped, displaying the "not enough ink to clean" message. Huh? Clean what? Why? With Auto Nozzle Check (ANC) turned off since the first day I owned the printer, how could it know it needed a cleaning?

As usual with this machine, I had no idea, and no way to find out short of swapping inks with fuller cartridges one at a time until the machine did its cleaning. Since my targets use only black ink, in this case PK, I reinstalled the fuller PK. That allowed the cleaning to proceed. When it finished I restored the 1% PK to the printer, and then, finally, the last print completed (and looked fine).

Nothing above is unusual except that third cleaning, and that's something I've never seen before today. I don't know what initiated it. I don't know if it really was necessary, or if some other glitch caused the printer to think so. Perhaps the 1% PK cartridge is very nearly empty, and that triggered an incorrect message. In any case, I finished printing the test targets and they look fine. Just another 7900 mystery.

  --Jay

Centered, Finally!!!

I've had my 7900 since October, 2011. Several times in the early days I wrote about the difficulty centering a print on sheet paper when printing from the Mac. I had a number of email discussions with Friend Dean, who's been mentioned several times in this blog. He prints to his 7900 from Windows 7; the printing architecture is quite different, of course, and the dialog boxes he sees in Photoshop for setting up a print job appear to be somewhat different from those seen when printing from the Mac. With Windows there are 'center' checkboxes in two different dialogs, those being the large dialog (with image preview) one initially sees when invoking printing from Photoshop, and a second that's raised by clicking the Print Settings... button in that dialog.

However, on the Mac, with OS X going back  at least to 10.8 and Photoshop CS5, there is no centering control, checkbox or otherwise, on that second dialog. Still, if the 'center' box is checked on the initial dialog, one would expect the print to be centered. But when printing on cut sheets, it never is. This has been endlessly frustrating. After all, most of the prints I make are for paying clients. Within my small collection of clients I have a reputation for making high-quality prints, on the best choice of paper for a given image. I handle these prints with utmost care, and go to extremes when packaging prints for shipping to insure they arrive undamaged. My clients expect perfection, and are willing to pay for it.

Imagine, then, their perception of my work for them if they unpacked a print and found uneven borders around the image. To me this appears unprofessional and sloppy. To avoid that I've made a number of trail prints and determined reasonable offsets that insure very-nearly-centered prints. When printing, I check the 'centered' box to get the printer's default margins (which it apparently, and erroneously, thinks make a centered print), and then I uncheck the box and enter the appropriate offsets in the fields for top and left margins. A PITA, to be sure, but worth the effort, and occasional wasted print, to get it right. I really hate it, but that's just part of life with a 7900.

Earlier this month I made a few small prints of my work, on letter-size sheets. When, while setting up to print I selected the sheet size I noticed an option I didn't recall seeing before, 'US Letter (Sheet - Centering)'. Huh? Where'd that come from? What does it do? I never imaged it meant the image would be centered on the sheet, since the 'centered' checkbox is just kidding, not really meaning the image would be centered. As I'm afflicted by extreme curiosity I could only select that option and make the prints. Imagine my surprise when I measured the margins around the image and found it perfectly centered!

Note the top and bottom border shading: they are now equal, providing a visual indicator of the centered image. Click or tap for a larger image.

Note the new option, '(Sheet - Centering)' for paper size in the Print Settings... dialog. Click or tap for a larger image.

1. Where did this come from: The Epson driver? Photoshop? The Mac OS?
2. When did it appear?
3. If the image is large, approaching the margins of the sheet, is the new option still available?

I have more questions, but they become increasingly academic and irrelevant if the new option works consistently (or, even if it doesn't). As usual I did some testing to answer those top three.

For #1 there is some confusion, as both Photoshop and the Mac OS have been updated here since I last printed on sheet paper. But we can rule out Epson's driver; the most recent version for Mac OS X is 9.33, released 29 October, 2014, according to Epson's US Drivers and Downloads page. It's what I have.

For #2: I updated the Mac to OS X 10.11, "El Capitan" last fall, after waiting for the 10.11.1 version release. I finished building a clean system, with Photoshop CC 2015, in late November and have used that exclusively since. I updated Photoshop CC on 18 December to 2015.1.1. Best guess: it was that Ps update that brought the new centering feature. As I recall, I printed only on roll paper through the rest of December, so I'd not have noticed if the new sheet feature became available immediately after that Ps update. For the record, OS X is now at 10.11.3, and there's been another Ps CC update which I've not yet installed.

For #3: Yes. The new centering option appears in the paper size selection list regardless of sheet size selected and regardless of the image size. I've only tested with US sizes, and only up to 17 x 22 inches.

The centering has worked perfectly on images I've printed on several sheet sizes, and seems to behave consistently. After dealing with the original problem for several years, I'm delighted it's gone away.

  --Jay