Printing with the Epson 2200 and Photoshop

Version 1.1, ©2003 by Dale Cotton, all rights reserved.

If you are new to using an inkjet for printing colour photographs, you will likely feel overwhelmed with the initial complexities. The Epson printing driver dialogue provides a confusing array of printer settings. For example, there are several methods for handling colour, including options like Color Controls, Vivid colour, Photo-realistic, ICM, ColorSync, and No Color Adjustment.

The simplest viable option is not No Color Adjustment, but ICM (ColorSync on a Mac). If you've read anything about color management, you may realize that best results are obtained with device profiles. ICM/ColorSync actually is a method of profiled printing, it's just that the profile is built into the driver rather than being an external file. If you are using one of the Epson brand papers that are listed in the Epson driver media choice dropdown, then ICM/ColorSync will usually give you reasonably neutral colours - free from colour casts - something that's very hard to obtain through the use of custom-made profiles. This is especially obvious if you are printing a black-and-white picture.

The downside of ICM/ColorSync is that it is conservative in two areas: gamut and black point. If you are using Epson paper I recommend you give this method a try. If the results work for you then you've saved yourself an enormous amount of hassle with custom profiling. In any event, ICM/ColorSync is a relatively simple option that will serve as training wheels until you are ready for the added complexity of using custom profiles.

Note: I'll be using Photoshop 6 for this tutorial. Photoshop 7's and Photoshop CS's dialogues are somewhat different. If you use PS 7 and find you are having trouble translating between Photoshop 6 and 7, both PC and Mac, go to Ian Lyon's invaluable site, especially Printing in Photoshop under his Feature Articles dropdown.

  • 1. Open the image you want to print in Photoshop then duplicate it with Image->Duplicate... Close the original image. If the image is large and has layers and/or selection channels, you may want to flatten the layers and delete the selection channels to speed up processing and printing times.
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