Digital Light & Color

There is a note in the Electronic Manual Color Management white paper that the printer profiles included with Epson printers should not be selected as a custom profile in Picture Window’s Print dialog box since they are designed only for internal use by the printer driver.
However, my fresh experience with Epson R2880 has just revealed that selecting the same Epson profile in PWP print dialog as the one preset in the Epson printer Media type settings results in colors nearly identical to those in the monitor, while selecting "None" results in visible differences. I do not have a custom printer profile for R2880 nor do I plan to have one made in the near future since I am quite satisfied with the results I get using an Epson profile as the custom in the PWP Print dialog.
The profile and the Media Type mentioned is the Epson Premium Photo Paper Semi-Gloss. I have not tried others, yet. Has something changed in this field in the meantime or is it just a coincidence? Has anybody similar or different experience? Thanks.

David

David, can't help you directly as I have no expierience with Epson printers, always have used Canon for printing, but keep in mind that the white paper has copyright 2008, so it's about 6 years old, in computer years a litle eternety... Things change very quickly, so maybe this note not up to date anymore.
But I'm sure Jonathan or Kiril will jump in.

You don't mention the paper. I confine my papers to those for which the manufacturer offers a profile for that paper and my Epson printer, an R2880. In practice that has not been a confining factor: all the good paper makers, with the possible exception of Strathmore, post profiles online.

In the case of manufacturers other than Epson, the situation is clear. In the case of Epson papers, you can search the Epson website for such profiles -- which are different than the generic profiles for a whole class of papers like Semigloss, etc. (It might take some minor search engine detective work to find Epson's specific paper profiles, especially if you have a discontinued Epson printer.)

You generally have two choices - either specify a profile in PWP and no color management in the driver or specifying None as the custom profile in PWP and letting the driver do the color management.

I believe the information in the white paper refers to obsolete Epson printers and both of the above strategies should be usable with the 2880. I recently bought a used 3880 via Craig's List and I am using it with Epson profiles specified in PWP and no driver color management.

I have had the Epson R2880 for more then one year (although I have not printed a color image on it until now) and to be honest I am not sure if all the profiles got installed with the driver or I got them separately from the Epson pages. The latter is more probable. The paper used was Epson S041332 Premium Semigloss Photo Paper DIN A4 251 g/m².

Anyway, the main purpose of this post was to share my fresh good experience with Epson color printing using an Epson profile as the custom profile in PWP Print window in spite of the fact it is not recommended in the current version of the white paper. Of course, No CM in the Epson driver has to be selected as well. Which altogether corresponds to Jonathan's first choice.

Thanks to all for their interest.
David