Hi everyone.

I recently went over to a MacBook Pro shortly after buying an Epson R2400. On my main Windows desktop PC I get what I see on my monitor when I print from it. The monitor is calibrated using a Spyder 2, I use the Epson ICC profiles, the latest Epson driver, and follow the user guide and Scott Kelby's excellent book re CS3 and printing.

I do exactly the same with the MacBookPro - even to the extent of doing a fresh, custom, installation of the OS (10.4.10) without installing any of the generic printer drivers on the installation CD. The printer driver I use is the latest one for the Intel-based MacBook Pros (as mine is - 15.4", 2.4Ghz).

When I press the 'preview' button imediately prior to printing, the image is washed-out, the skintones are significantly redder than the main image, and the green grass very vivid.

I get the same result on my Powerbook G4 using the appropriate driver for the Power chip.

I could understand it happening to the new MacBook Pro and blame the driver, but the same effect on both?

Anyone with some helpul advice?

Isn't it because in CS3, in Print Preview window, the image is soft proofed (or you can enable soft proof)?
I don't have CS3 (yet) but I know that is one of the new features in CS3...

You can enable soft-proofing in CS3 but this is not the case here as the preview image and subsequent print is totally different (accurate) in Windows as opposed to the preview and output on the Mac - both were processed in CS3.

Anybody? Getting really frustrated now!

OK, let´s try. You say you "press the preview button immediately prior to printing", so I suppose you mean the Preview button in the final Print dialogue? The one that´s not special for Photoshop, but appears in the same place whatever software you´re printing from, and opens the print preview in OS X´s Preview application?

If so, stop using it for judging colour, saturation, tone scale & c; it´s totally useless for that. It only shows the general layout of the page. This has been a known issue with Mac OS X printing from the start, I think; you just have to learn to forget that button....

When printing in Photoshop, always use the "Print with Preview" option, not just "Print". That´s where you get all the colour management and layout choices. Using these correctly is a long story; here´s an excellent tutorial: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps10_print/ps10_print_1.htm

That said, if your profiles and calibrations are OK, then your print should be very close to what you see, so the need for an extra preview at that stage is not so great.

Per,

Thanks for the input.

When I was working with CS2 (prior to getting the Macs) I always used the 'Print with Preview' option. However that option no longer exists with CS3 - there's only the 'Print' button now.

I accept your point re the 'Preview' button only giving a general look of the image but, as I said in my original post, the subsequent print I get is identical to the one observed if I press that damn button - way different from the true image.

This is only occurring on the two Mac laptops - the main Windows PC prints a perfect copy everytime. I was intending to sell my Windows PC and buy the new 2.8Ghz 24" iMac but now doubts are beginning to set in.

Well, I´m still using CS2, but it seems there have been som changes here. However, the link I gave deals with the new dialogue, so I suggest studying that..


Exactly WHERE is "that damn button"? Is it the one in the Preview application window that you got by pressing "preview in the final Print dialogue? Because THAT damn button is now part of the Preview application, not your Photoshop workflow, and thus it faithfully prints what you saw in the Preview application window... So no wonder if the print looks like that preview.

Obviously, what you need to do is to forget that preview method altogether, as I said, and to really dig into how to get print with true preview (and colour management dialog) in PS3. I can´t help ypu with the details there, since I don´t have that version, but the Computer Darkroom tutorial should help out.

In the CS3 print window there is a tick box on the lower left to "Match Print Colors" when this is checked it previews a simulation of your printer output. The preview is also affected by rendering intent and icc (paper) profile.

Thanks Jerry but I've already tried that and the same applies.

I've just read in another thread about the 'pink/salmon issue' which describes perfectly what I am getting. I've done a search of the forum using pink and salmon as keywords but can't find any links.