OK, I'll try to remember my procedure - do remember though that in the end I 
stopped doing all this, for a reason :-)

1) Just for the moment forget colour management when printing, but do get it 
working for your display so that when you take a piccie of something it looks 
the same colour balance on screen. Use Gutenprint for a (small) print.  Do not 
use a print profile but your printers .ppd file.  Do go to some trouble to find 
the best available ppd file for the printer, and use the full driver not one of 
the 'simplified' ones.  Now print something with Gutenprint, do not choose 
'Uncorrected' but instead pick 'High Accuracy' for the colour correction and 
set the media type to the closest available match for your paper.  It probably 
won't be exactly like either your original image or that printed with Epson 
windows drivers but provided you are using standard premium photo-glossy paper 
and standard inks it should be pretty close - if it isn't you are probably 
still getting some unwanted profile applied somehow.  The gutenprint driver 
provides pretty good control over individual ink densities so it should be 
possible to get most decent inks and papers looking OK at the price of some 
effort for each paper/ink combination you use.

2) Now try printing with gutenprint and an .icc profile .  Keep it simple at 
first by still using an image in sRGB space not one we have exported to some 
funny colour space or tried with soft proofing or suchlike.  First get a decent 
.icc profile for your printer/paper/ink combination (or as close to it as you 
can get), I understand that Epson's own profiles generally beginning EE_ are no 
good at all as they have to work in conjunction with the printer driver but the 
files beginning SP_ are reputedly proper .cc profiles and should work. Now 
print with Gutenprint but this time we do the opposite as before i.e. choose 
'Uncorrected'  rather than 'High Accuracy' or it's alternatives.  This is 
essential as colour correction will EITHER be done with the print driver OR the 
profile, if you double correct by applying both you will probably get wild 
colour casts.  Get this working first, later on you can optimise the printing 
with custom profiles but I never found that necessary myself.  Again it should 
be pretty near perfect when you print, if it is badly out you almost certainly 
have either the wrong profile or are double (or treble) correcting.

3) Once the above is working you should be home and dry as it's possible to 
print accurately from the o/s. From there it should just be a question of 
setting print options as required by the application you want to use, typically 
the .iic filename, rendering intent and black point. Again you must either 
specify no .icc output profile and use a pre-setup gutenprint driver for your 
paper/ink OR use an 'uncorrected' gutenprint driver with a profile, never both.

What I now do myself (not necessarily a recommendation) is to produce my dt 
export images with sRGB output profile and send those off to DCL.  I do use 
DCL's specific .icc file for the printer/paper combination I am going to use 
and soft-proof with that so I'll be alerted to any drastic colour limitations 
but I still send them sRGB.  In theory I should send them an output file in 
their printers own colour space but the two are sufficiently similar I don't - 
call me an old cynic but I reckon there's a lot less chance of someone cocking 
up an sRGB image :)

Good luck,
Rob.


-----Original Message-----
From: Pascal Obry [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 03 April 2013 14:45
To: Rob Z. Smith
Cc: Pascal de Bruijn; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Darktable-users] Screen profile and image histogram...

Hi Rob,

> I would suggest giving 'photoprint' at
> http://blackfiveimaging.co.uk/index.php?article=02Software%2F01PhotoPr
> int a go. Regretably this is no longer maintained but when I was
> printing from Linux it was (if a little buggy) the best colour managed
> printing solution available by a mile -  achievable print quality was
> I thought outstanding, certainly better than native Epson drivers or
> Gutenprint.  It's downloadable as a tarball,just how much work is
> required to get it up and running with current distributions I don't
> know.

I did test photoprint, and I have the very same yellow cast without profile. 
The image is way off from what I have on screen and what is printed by 
Lightroom :(

> Creating your own profiles ought to be the ultimate solution, but I
> struggled getting my borrowed spectrophotometer working under Linux.

Do you have any procedure to share? How do you print the color chart for 
example? Looks like this is done by the software on Windows.

> If you are using stock inks in the Epson you should be able to avoid
> this by buying paper from someone like Hahnemuhle who supply freely
> downloadable Epson 3880 profiles for their papers.  Likewise if you
> buy third party inks from Lyson they will/would produce a custom free
> of charge profile for you. I seem to remember (but am willing to be
> corrected here) that you can't properly use the stock Epson paper
> profiles as they aren't true portable .icc profiles but instead
> specific to their own print drivers.

I'm using Epson paper with the premium luster paper (quite standard).
Using the ICC provided by Epson I have a very strong pink/red cast.

I have already printed 6 A4 page, no luck...

Pascal.

--
  Pascal Obry /  Magny Les Hameaux (78)

  The best way to travel is by means of imagination

  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
  http://www.obry.net

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