Printing with Photoshop CS6

As described at length in my last posting, I'm now using the most recent Mac OS (OS X 10.8.2, "Mountain Lion") and the most recent version of Photoshop (CS6) on my Mac Pro. I'm also using the latest Epson printer driver for the Mac, 9.04, although I'd been using this for a while with older versions of Photoshop and OS X.

Today I made my first print with the 7900 and the new combination of software. I optimized my photo in the usual way; with the exception of the new (and very interesting) process version in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), that being PV2012, there's little change to my workflow with CS6. I've read from several sources that soft proofing has been improved in CS6; that may be true, but I'll need to work more with that before I can say for sure. In any case, getting ready to print is straightforward.

However, the print dialog is new, and different in several ways. I was surprised at the new layout of the print dialog. Having never seen the Windows version of this, I'm not sure how different the Mac version is. In the previous version with CS5, a full-height right pane contained the color set-up options. To the left of that another pane had sizing, quantity, scale, and a few other options. Those two panes filled roughly half of the big dialog box. The preview pane filled the left half.

Now, all of the old set-up options (and more) are in a single, scrolling pane on the right, while the preview remains on the left. Here's the good part: the preview is surrounded by a white border, and that has edges with slash marks. By default a black background surrounds the preview. While there may be some good reasons for that black border, I thought it made the preview image appear very bright, and I didn't care for the contrast with the settings pane on the right. I discovered right-clicking in that black border exposes a menu with some gray shades and a "custom" option to set any color. I chose the darker gray. Click the image below for a larger view.

The white around the image is the print area. The slash marks, representing the unprintable area, show the edges of the full sheet. I think this is excellent. After making the print and comparing, I found this representation of the print position on the sheet to be quite accurate. You can see the total bottom border is significantly wider than the top, despite the "Center" option being checked. But it shows exactly what I'm going to get, which is a nice improvement over CS5.

In my early days working with the 7900 and its driver, I ranted here several times about the difficulty centering images on cut sheets. Look back at postings in late October through mid-November, 2011, for details. This new preview doesn't fix the centering problem (that is, checking the "Center" box in the Position frame of the dialog does NOT center the image on the sheet), but it does, finally, provide a good approximation of where on the sheet the image will be printed. This means the top margin can be adjusted so the image in the preview looks centered, and clipping of the image can be avoided. Nice!

Apparently, this is all Adobe's doing. As a test, I installed the latest 7900 driver on my MacBook Pro 15" laptop. This has OS X 10.8.2, but still has the older Photoshop CS5. The print dialog is exactly as it appeared on the Mac Pro with CS5 and the older OS, confirming the change is the result of the Photoshop upgrade to CS6.

  --Jay

OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

I generally don't rush in to things. I'm not an "early adopter", instead preferring to let others debug new products and software. They can be vendors' unpaid Quality Assurance if they want. After the flames have been put out and an update or two released to fix early problems, I'll have a look. I use my computer to make a living, so I suppose I'm cautious by nature.

Apple released the newest version of the Mac OS, "Mountain Lion", OS X version 10.8, several months ago. I had been using version 10.6.n since 2009; that is now two versions old. I was happy with that; it was stable, it was still receiving important updates (security patches, mostly, which, despite all the blather to the contrary, are needed on the Mac, too), and since I'd been using it for some time, it rarely presented any surprises.

Apple advertises support only for the current version of OS X, and one generation back, although they seem to be somewhat flexible with that "one generation" bit. In any case, when 10.8 was released in July (2012) I decided to upgrade. I've had a very busy year, especially spring and summer, so I'm only now getting around to installing Mountain Lion.

My Mac Pro has four bays for hard drives. I've long had three of those populated. For the new OS I installed a small HD, downloaded the OS from Apple, created a boot install drive, and then performed the installation. Quite straightforward, no issues worth mentioning. Of course, doing a clean install of an OS is the easy part, just the beginning of a somewhat longer process.

The first order of business was to upgrade my monitor profiling software, Coloreyes Display Pro, to the current version, which fixes a problem with the installer so it'll work properly with Mountain Lion. According to ICC, CED Pro 1.6 includes some minor feature enhancements and improves their LUT loader's interaction with DDC. I can attest this does seem to be the case. The software upgrade was USD $49.00.

I like to make bootable clones of the OS at intervals as I build up a new boot drive, just as a bit of insurance if something goes wrong installing or setting up new software. The version of Carbon Copy Cloner I've used for some time is not compatible with Mountain Lion. Another $45.00 hit on the checkbook fixed that.

I then downloaded the upgrade to Photoshop CS6 (from CS5). CS6 was released early this year; as I said, I'm not an early adopter! Another $200.00 spent. I was able to copy from my older boot drive most of the setting and preference files from CS5, making it simple to set up Photoshop, Bridge, and ACR in CS6 to have my familiar, customized workspaces. A few more software installations had my new, clean boot drive ready for prime time.

Among those, of course: the latest driver for the 7900. As mentioned in a posting here back in October, this is version 9.04, released in September. Installing new drivers over previous versions maintains the old version number; this is inconsistently exposed (see the October posting linked above) to the user. This is NOT the case with a clean install:

There's no ambiguity about which driver version is installed. I installed the driver, and then allowed Bonjour, Apple's device-finding technology (it's quite a lot more than that, in fact) to locate the printer and complete the setup. This took seconds. (I should mention that my printer is on our wired network).

So far I'm a happy camper, although I'm now about $300 poorer. To be fair, the Photoshop upgrade was not necessary, as CS5 is supposed to be fully compatible with Mountain Lion.

I haven't made a print in some time, so I've not yet used the new driver, nor PS CS6 to make a print. That'll change within the next week, as I've a couple of prints to make for a small commission. I don't expect any issues, but if the worst happens and I'm unable to print, I can simply boot from the old drive, with OS X 10.6.8 and PS CS5, to get the job done.

  --Jay

"Resetting—Please Wait..."

In more than one posting here I've mentioned a friend who has a 7900; Dean was a great help when I was doing my research prior to buying my printer last year. He recently posted updates to this on the Luminous Landscape forums. He's had his 7900 for four years.

I asked Dean if he'd installed the most recent firmware, released by Epson on 6 September, 2012 (on their U.S. site -- perhaps earlier or later elsewhere). That version is HN129C5. I asked only because I haven't seen here the problem he described, and I also have not yet updated my printer's firmware to this latest version.

He replied that he had not yet installed that update, which means we both have the same firmware. At least that eliminates the update from his troubleshooting routine. Dean said he planned to install it, but hadn't had time; it's something I'm sure he'll do soon.

I've just wrapped up the last of the client print jobs I've been working on, so now's not a bad time for me to install this update, too.

There are a few differences in our set-ups. Dean uses Windows 7, while I use a Mac Pro with OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). I'm setting up a hard drive now with Apple's current OS, 10.8.2 "Lion", but I'm not yet finished building that. It seems unlikely the OS or driver is part of the problem. Also, Dean's printer is directly connected to his computer via USB, while my printer is on my wired network. Again, the connection method seems an unlikely suspect.

  --Jay

Head Strike

While working on a small print job I found I didn't have enough EEF in letter size, which is what the job required. I have plenty of EEF in 17 x 22 inch (U.S. C) sheets, however. Just cut one into four 8.5 x 11 inch sheets. Easy.

I did that, and noticed immediately upon making the cuts the edges of the pieces curled slightly. I didn't think much of it, and set to making the four prints as usual. To accommodate the print size without clipping (that is, without the 7900 cutting off part of the image) I had to feed the sheets sideways, that is, insert the wide edge into the printer. I've done this before; I have a custom paper size set up for that: 11 inches x 8.5 inches with 0 inch margins. It's a little tricky to drop the sheet into the printer and make certain it's straight, but as I said, I've done this before with these small sheets, so I had no trouble.

The first three of four prints were fine. The last one, however, emerged from the printer with a smear of ink on the trailing edge. The print itself was perfect. The ink smear was just inside the edge of the sheet. When I laid the sheet flat on a table, it was clear the offending edge had curled more than the previous three sheets. The smear was the result of the print head striking the paper; I heard it happen, a faint swish that wasn't part of the normal sounds of printing, on the last pass of the print head before the sheet was ejected.

Looking at all four prints, I could see the first three had caught up in the time that had elapsed since they were printed. The long cut edge of each had curled about the same as the fourth sheet.

Per my wife, who has some expertise in the paper production industry, it seems the newly exposed edges of the sheets I cut from the larger sheets picked up enough moisture to cause the curl. After the cuts, each sheet had one new long edge, and one new short edge. Only the long edge curled upward, toward (or into) the coated side; perhaps the direction of the paper fiber was a factor. Room humidity was in the high 40% range.

Head strike ink smear near the sheet's edge. Ouch!

I had two sheets left from a box of letter size sheets. These are perfectly flat. I reprinted the last photo on one of those. More of this paper is due to arrive today, along with the roll of Epson Hot Press Natural I mentioned in the previous posting.

The head strike happened two days ago. The print has not flattened on its own; it still has the curled edge. Why did the first three sheets print without incident and the four suffered the head strike? Time was certainly a factor. I started printing immediately after cutting the sheets, and the curl worsened in the 15 or so minutes between printing the first sheet and the last. In addition, I suspect I fed the first three sheets with the cut (curled) edge first. The leading edge would have been held flat enough against the platen by the rollers just above the print head. The last print was fed with the curled edge trailing. EEF is stiff enough that the curl would have "popped up" when the trailing edge exited the rollers above the print head. Another lesson learned.

  --Jay

It's Been a Year!

I was surprised to discover I made my first print with the 7900 one year ago today. This blog was a year old yesterday. Thanks to all who have visited the blog and to those who have commented. Most have done that via direct email, so we're not seeing many comments attached to individual postings here.

According to the printer's log, I've printed 534 "pages". Not really a useful statistic. 146 of those pages were nozzle check prints. I suppose it's possible I've made nearly 400 real prints in the past year, but that seems a rather high number.

C, O, Y, LC, MK, PK, VM, and G are still the 90ml "starter" ink cartridges. Except for MK, which I seldom use for my own work, all have displayed "1%" for some time, and all have been temporarily replaced more than once to allow cleanings. LK was the first of the starter inks to be replaced. The original maintenance cartridge is at 36%.

My apologies for the lack of postings lately. I've been traveling, having spent time recently in Ohio and Michigan. Fall color was a bit dull in Ohio, but much nicer in west-central Michigan. I spent several days there photographing in the rain. A little uncomfortable now and then, but the wet conditions were often very nice for shooting fall color in the hardwood and pine forests.

I returned to find several new print jobs waiting for me, in addition to a small commission of my own work I'd lined up before leaving for the east. One of the new jobs is reproducing a large, 40-year-old etching. I'll be printing this on Epson Hot Press Natural, a mat-finished paper I've  been wanting to try for a while. Now that I think about it, I'd best get that paper ordered!

  --Jay

Driver Update 9.04 (Macintosh)

On 6 September Epson posted to their US support site an update to the Mac driver for the 7900. This takes the driver from version 8.68 to 9.04. About this update, Epson says, "This file corrects a possible issue when printing borderless retain size." The release notes also indicate this update is for OS X 10.5 through 10.8. The download page includes installation instructions, pretty standard fare. There's no mention of a requirement to uninstall the previous driver, so I didn't. After installing the update and checking the version, I see this:

This is similar to what I saw after my update from 8.66 to 8.68. My original installation of the printer, back in October, 2011, was with the 8.65 driver.

Interestingly, when I open the Mac's Print & Fax preferences (control panel), click the Options & Supplies... button, the General tab of the resulting dialog still shows the driver version as 8.68.

I've no idea why. I made several prints yesterday and saw no differences in the driver's options or set-up choices. One would expect a full point (from 8.something to 9.something) to have some enhancements or new features rather that only bug-fixes. Of course, Epson does things its own way, and not with any great consistency.

There's one more place, as far as I know, where OS X exposes the driver version. That's in the Printers sheet under Hardware, in the System Profiler. The driver is shown there as 8.6.8.

I've built a Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) drive for my Mac Pro. When time permits (not real soon, alas) I'll install the new driver on that system. Since it won't be an update installed over an older version. I'd expect the version number to appear correctly in all places. TBD.

  --Jay

Anatomy of a 7900/9900 Ink Cartridge

If you've never wondered what's inside an ink cartridge (besides ink), that's probably because you have a normal brain and worthwhile things to do with your life. I, on the other hand.... Sometimes it's useful to know how or why things work. Sometimes not. Either way, it's often interesting. I can't resist taking things apart.

What follows is a series of photos of the parts inside my spent, 90ml "starter" cartridge of light magenta ink. While I have some hunches about the purpose of the various pieces, I've no direct knowledge from Epson. Best I can do is guess what some of these things do.

This view shows the cartridge after I snapped off the cover. The front "handle" end of the cartridge is at the bottom of the picture. There's a transparent film seal (which I removed before taking this picture) covering the compartment housing the ink bladder (the silver bag with the bar code). That seal allows the cartridge to be pressurized by the printer through the nipple at the bottom-rear of the cartridge. I replaced this cartridge when the 7900 stopped printing and required a new one. It's clear the machine squeezed every last bit of ink from the bag. It's completely flat, with no pockets of wasted ink. Nice!

The rear of the cartridge. The CSIC chip (Customer-Specified Integrated Circuit, a micro-controller made to Epson's specifications) is at the top. Below that is a component with a small ink reservoir, the valve through which ink exits the cartridge, and a pair of conductors that make contact with pads on the underside of the CSIC chip. The nine gold pads on top of the CSIC chip communicate cartridge status to the printer.

 This complex gadget includes a small reservoir through which ink flows from the bag to the exit valve that mates with the nipples in the back of the printer's ink bays. The nipple at far left fits into the ink bag in the cartridge.

There's a chip, or perhaps a piezo element, between the two metal tabs behind the small reservoir. My guess is that this either counts pulses from the small, spring-loaded "paddle" that covers the reservoir (not shown), or directly measures or senses the presence of ink in the reservoir. In any case, the count or sensed input is communicated via the metal tabs to the CSIC chip shown in the next image.

The CSIC chip, showing the chip-on-board construction. The two gold pads, showing slight wear marks in their centers, make contact with the metal conductors running to the top of the part in the previous two pictures. This board has nine gold pads on the opposite side. I assume there are matching contacts for at least some of those pads in the printer's ink bays, so information from the chip can be communicated to the printer.

That's the best I can do with my technical guess-work. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can chime in with descriptions of what these parts really do, and perhaps provide proper names for the various components.

Clearly, when one buys a cartridge (currently I'm paying about $85 for 150ml carts) one is getting much more than ink.

  --Jay