So what gives. Have those responsible for the final release of this driver all been made redunant (polite term for fired)? Q2 has come and gone a long timer ago.

Have the current beta drivers not worked for you? they won't time out ya know...

The Epson USA site list a 3800 driver for macs that was posted 9/18/08.

It's working fine, but from a customer POV it looks sloppy on the part of the manufacturer, especially one the size of Epson. Makes you feel like the product isn't all that important to them. It also suggests that the final product might be better than a beta, so the original question still stands.

Thanks. The version is 6.11, so suggests newer than the beta driver. Anyone had success with this on Leopard?

Edit: Turns out epson12786.dmg is listed but doesn't exist on the site for download!?

I've successfully downloaded epson12786.dmg yesterday after the new driver was mentioned in this thread. However, I still did not try it because I wanted to wait for some feedback first as I have no problems with the beta driver and don't want to spend time fixing printer drivers right now because I'm busy with other tasks.

Regarding the release process of this driver I agree that Epson appears in a bad light. Especially as this is the professional printer line.

When I click download now, I'm taken to an empty index page!??

I also downloaded it without any problem. I have not yet installed it since I have no problems with the beta driver. I contacted epson to ask if there were any changes in the final release or did they just drop the beta and give it a new number. He said it appears as a new driver for both Tiger and Leopard buy had no release notes on it. He told me to give it a try and if something did not work just reinstall the beta driver which is still available on the site. I can't deal with it right now and since I have had absolutely no problems with the beta driver I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

Epson's financial year starts in April, so perhaps the Q2 was mistakenly listed as their Q2 rather than the more obvious calendar Q2?

Either way, instead of posting here about it, perhaps send them an email?

I now just successfully installed the 6.11 driver and confirmed this version number as the active 3800 driver on 10.5.5. I haven't printed yet, but the Preview confirms the color accuracy, etc. The one difference I notice from the Printer Settings->Print Mode is something called AccuColor HD, in addition to Advanced B&W and Black. I don't recall seeing this selection. Can anyone comment on it? I haven't printed yet, but I have faith the it will work. It would look then, that the driver has been released.

I remember reading something about the term AccuColor but I am surprised to see it in the driver. I don't think it is in the 4880 driver, or at least I didn't see it there this week when printing.

Could someone with the beta driver for the 3800 list what the drop down choices are for Color Mode under printer settings? I think it just said Color. So ... is there a difference between AccuColor HD and just Color?

There is just color, advanced B&W, and Black.

Thanks. So the question remains, is AccuColor HD any different?

Since migrating to a MacIntel running 10.5.5, I've been having trouble printing to my 3800 out of CS3 . (Previously using a PPC-based Mac, things had been going smoothly). Specifically, problems have arisen when changing media requires a change in the black ink (matte to photo black, or vice-versa); a secondary issue concerns inappropriate error messages regarding paper feed parameters that occur randomly, as far as I can tell. I've been using the 6.11 driver which has been available here from Epson France since late July or thereabouts. Regretably, I just re-initialized my printer setup in the 0S preference pane, which did nothing, and have lost my paper settings that I must now re-configure.

I hadn't even seen this thread until tonight but yesterday downloaded the new driver. I have done some printing, and it seems to have fixed at least one very annoying glitch with my former version, in that it now seems to save my presets instead of changing them randomly. It is different but, I think, ultimately better. There is a 16 bit option which I will have to investigate.

Incidentally, I have trialled some of the new Epson "Traditional Photo Paper" tonight. It does indeed do what it says on the box. Great colour fidelity and tonal range, though it does give a slight effect of lower contrast in the darks, which I suppose I should have expected. The reason I mention this is that I got the new driver to see if it came with any settngs for this paper. It doesn't specifically but does provide an option for "Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster" which I did not have before.

The 16 bit option has been there in the beta driver. If you're using Lightroom or Aperture (I think), you have the option of printing using 16 bit data (more is better), but this is only available on the Mac, not Windows.

FYI I printed to the 3800 with the 6.11 released driver and all is fine. This driver is better in some minor ways that the beta driver, so worth upgrading.

Can you elaborate?

They fixed the jumping around behavior when you changed driver settings, and Color Mode now says AccuColor HD instead of Color. Don't know if that implies under the cover changes or not. And who knows what else has changed, except that this is a released version of the driver, instead of the beta version. I printed with it and it works.

Thank you for the info. I have a big print job in the next few days and I'll install the new driver right after that.

After reading this thread I decided to download and install the 6.11 driver. When I try to print I am not seeing all of the options that one normally sees under the print settings tab. All I am seeing is what is shown in the attached jpeg.

Click to view attachment

Under Color Model the choices are:

Color
Black & White
Advanced Black & White
RGB16

Under Media Type are all the usual paper types to choose from.

Under Resolution there is only

360x360
720x720

There no selections for things such as Hi Speed.

Selecting Advanced Black & White does not give access to the fine tuning dialog that the previous driver does.

There is also selection titled "EPIJProfileSpec". What is this?

Is anyone else seeing this? I have installed and unistalled, restarted, etc. and I still get the same results.

I am running on a Intel MacBook Pro with OSX 10.5.5.

Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Michael Fitzwater.

How odd! What programme are you printing from? I find different programmes are giving different options. I too have an Intel MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.5 with Epson driver 6.11 so should be getting something identical. Here's the nearest I can get to your screen grab:
Click to view attachment

I'm wondering if you are not printing with the gimp driver. Are you sure you are using the Epson driver?

I have tried using this driver with Photoshop, Lightroom, Pages, and other applications and I get the same type of dialog. Nothing like Deep's screen grab showed.

Before installing the new driver I first uninstalled the previous Epson driver, removed it from the list of printers and then did an add printer to see if the system came up with any other drivers and it did not. So I am assuming that the Gimp driver is not installed on my Mac.

Gimp is part of the standard packages and is installed by default on all the Macs. When you add your Epson printer to the printer list, make sure you choose something like Epson USB (I can't remember exactly how it reads). If the Epson driver is not installed or has any problem, you'll only be able to use Gimp to add your printer. It'll give you access to very basic functions only. I can't be 100% sure but looking at your screenshot makes me think that it's very likely that you're using Gimp instead of the Epson driver.

I have wondered that myself, but when I uninstall the 6.11 driver, and use the Add printer panel in the System preferences, it does not find any drivers for the 3800. If I reinstall the driver previous to the 6.11 driver then everything seems to be fine. It is only when I install the 6.11 driver that I see this stripped down printer settings.

Is there anyway to be certain that the Gimp driver is not installed?

Thanks.

Michael.

I just searched my Mac in three ways; Spotlight, the search facility in Finder and by manually looking through the Library on my hard drive and could find no "gimp" records, other than these web references. In the Library, under printers, there is something called "InstalledPrinters.plist". Opening this file reveals only the Epson 3800 installed. This MAY show if there is another driver active on your system. I note someone has said Gimp is installed by default on all Macs so maybe I am looking in the wrong places?

If you find you do have Gimp on that list (and it was me - not sure if I would necessarily do this on someone else's Mac without trying on mine first!), You could uninstall the Epson driver, then delete the InstalledPrinters.plist file (which is a preference type file the system makes when you set something up - it will just make another one) and then reinstall the Epson 6.11 driver.

Also, how did you "uninstall" the driver? I presume you followed the instructions on the website? EDIT: I just realised I posted the wrong instructions (embarrassed cough), which proves there are more ways of doing things than is necessarily helpful. Might pay to check those instructions a second time, just in case?

Maybe wait a bit and see if someone else agrees with me ...

I wonder if the procedure Epson gave me for the R2400 and R1800 might help, as it enabled me to avoid installing the GIMP drivers. Obviously replace the driver section with the Epson 3800 drivers.

It might be worth trying the second section of these instructions first if you have run the correct driver install (ie: start at 2. after the driver install) as it wasn't obvious to me that I might need to delete an automatically installed Gimp driver and then manually select the correct Epson one.

1. Close any applications that are open.
2. Click on the Apple icon and choose System Preferences. Choose "Print & Fax".
3. Highlight the Epson printer in the list and click the delete button [-].
4. If no other printers are installed, in Print and Fax please hold down the Control key and then in the list if printers, click and hold. That should present the "Reset printing system..." menu. Choose this option and confirm.
5. Disconnect the printer from the computer.
6. We will now remove the EPSON Printer driver from the system and delete the drivers that you downloaded.
Go to the Mac Hard Drive/Library/Printer and move the complete EPSON folder to the trash. Warning this removes all EPSON Printers.
7. Also remove any drivers that were previously downloaded to the trash if the file name does not match that from our web site.
8. Restart the Mac.
9. Empty the trash.
10. Now we will run a repair utility that may take up to 30 minutes to complete so please plan for this. Go to Mac Hard Drive/Applications/Utilities and open the Disk Utility. Note: If you cannot find it this way, use Spotlight to locate it.
11. Select Disk First Aid at the top of the dialog box.
12. Select the Mac Hard Drive Icon in the left hand pane.
13. Select Repair Permissions at the bottom of the dialog box.
14. When this has completed restart the Mac.

Power the printer on and connect it to the Mac. Ensure that it is directly connected to a port (such as a USB port) on the Mac and not via a third party device such as a USB hub.
You will now need to download the driver/s from the Epson website. Please connect to the Epson website via the link below:

For the R1800
http://esupport.epson-europe.com/ProductHo...IU003D&tc=6

For the R2400
http://esupport.epson-europe.com/ProductHo...IU003D&tc=6

Download the printer driver for your printer and ensure this starts in the Download Manager. Please try the following to install and add the driver:

1. Locate the downloaded file and double-click it. This should mount a drive on the Desktop. Double-click this and a window should appear with a blue VISE icon. This is the printer driver installer, double-click this icon.

2. Follow the on screen prompts to install the driver, restarting the Mac once the installation has been completed.

3. Once restarted the driver needs adding to the printer list. To do this click on the Apple icon then System Preferences. Choose "Print & Fax" and ensure it is set on "Printing". If the gutenprint driver is listed here, highlight it then choose the delete option (this can normally be done by clicking the [-] minus sign.

4. Normally, USB printers will add themselves automatically. Check the list for your printer. If listed, highlight the printer and the driver information will appear on the right. Under "Kind" the printer name should be listed, i.e. Epson SP R300 Series with a version in brackets. If a gutenprint driver is listed or the 'Kind' indicates a different printer model delete this driver.

5. If the Epson driver is not listed, click the add icon button [+] towards the bottom-left of the window. The window that will appear first will be the Printer Browser. Connected printers with a valid driver installed should appear, highlight it and click the "Add" button. Do not choose a different model from the list of printers that may be present. If 'Add' is greyed out, leave the browser open for 10 minutes and ensure that the printer is powered on and connected directly to the Mac. Do not connect it via a third party device such as a USB hub or hub in a keyboard.

6. The printer should now be added to the printer list.
Try a print from Text Edit, as it is native to OS X. Go to File > Page Setup. Choose the SP RX500 Series under "Format For" and a page size then click OK. Go to File > Print, choose the printer name under "Format For". The standard, default dialogue box is very basic and if not expanded, important changes cannot be made such as paper type and print quality.

To display the full dialogue, click on the arrow to the right of the "Format For" and printer name field. This will reveal the advanced menu. Choose the printer name under "Format For". The settings are now controlled by selecting an item from the lower drop-down list. To show Epson specific-settings, choose "Print Settings".
Make settings as appropriate and proceed to print. Some printers will have further options on the "Copies & Pages" menu such as "Color Management" and "Extension Settings". If "Print Settings" is not present, the Epson driver has not been added and a third party driver is in use and will often result in poor print quality.

If this is successful, the printer is ready to use.

Gimp is installed by default and is part of the PrinterDriversGroup.pkg. Gimp is now called Gutenprint (part of GutenprintPrintDrivers.pkg and included in PrinterDriversGroup.pkg ). You can easily check for its presence on your Mac (Leopard) but navigating to /usr/share/gutenprint or go into /Library/Receipts/boms and look for com.apple.pkg.GutenprintPrinterDrivers.bom.

By the way, Spotlight does not search system files/folders. Use find tool in the terminal if you'd like to dig into system files.

Michael should follow the step-by-step instruction posted by above by free100 and report.

Thanks for that information, Francois. Even though I do not have the problem, it's always good to see what's on your computer! I am pretty sure I do not have any gimp or gutenprint files on my Mac but it could be because when I first got it I moved everything across from my old PowerBook, so never saw a lot of what is installed on a new Mac (for example no test drive for Office). I'll be keen to see how this problem resolves as there is so much to learn with house-keeping a computer.

Cheers,

Don,
A custom install gives you the choice to install or not Gutenprint drivers. It's very possible that your old PowerBook was configured without Gimp/Gutenprint and unless you redo a partial system installation, your Mac will be free of those drivers.

If you'd like to understand what is installed (or what was installed) on your Mac, you can use Pacifist (http://www.charlessoft.com/) or navigate to /Library/Receipts/boms/ and use the terminal tool lsbom .

Thanks everyone. I'll try the instructions from free100 this evening and let you know what happens.

Michael.

Thank you free1000. Your instructions did the trick!

Thanks to everyone else for your input also.

Michael.

Michael,
Good to hear that everything is back to normal and thanks a lot for reporting.

Great glad to be of assistance.