Since the release of Snow Leopard I have seen many threads from photographers having problems printing.  Epson printers appear the most affected, but this might be due to the fact there are just more Epson pro grade printers.

At this point, Snow Leopard is getting blamed for every Epson printing problem, although incorrect installations or improper workflows are a continual issue, so some of these probably aren’t related.  Some users are moving from Tiger to Snow Leopard, so their problems might be related to the changes made in Leopard, which most have resolved.

What strikes me as odd is there are so many users not having problems.  I have had no problems printing to a 3800, 7900, and 11880 with Snow Leopard.  I just inserted the Snow Leopard installer disk, did a standard install, and everything continued to work fine.  Frustrated users are trying all kinds of things, but there doesn’t seem to be much commonality - why does it not work for everyone?

The one thing I’ve picked up on from various threads might be related to how “clean” the
Snow Leopard system is.  It appears users that have upgraded without fresh installs from previous versions of OS X are having more problems, especially if they also have printer drivers related to older Epson printers.

This actually makes some sense, from the perspective of ColorSync.  If you open the ColorSync Utility on a Mac, you normally find tons of extra “stuff” laying around.  It seems the OS and ColorSync never forgets anything you’ve done, so stuff from printers past still lurk in your system.  As an example, here are some screen shots from my MacPro tower in the ColorSync utility.

I have only 2 printers connected to this computer, a 3800 and an 11880. As you can see, pretty much every Epson Printer I’ve ever owned shows up in this box ... even my 9600 and 2200 which have been gone for many years.   This leaves the question of how to clear this up.

At this point, I strongly recommend to everyone upgrading to Snow Leopard to “clean up” their Mac printing system.  To do this I recommend the following steps.

1. 1. Uninstall one of your Epson drivers.  To do this, you need to launch one of the installer programs for an Epson printer.   You can download the most current one, or use one you have.  Once you run the installer, click the Pop up menu and select the uninstall option.
   

You only need to do this with one printer.  This will delete some random Epson information that would get missed in the next step.

2. 2.Open the folder located at “YourHardDriveName/Library/Printers/”.  In that folder should be a folder called Epson.  Move this entire folder to the Trash.
   

3. 3.Open the folder “YourhardDriveName/Library/Caches/”.  If there is a folder there labeled Epson, move it to the trash.
   

4. 4.Restart your Macintosh.  After it finishes booting up, empty the trash.
   

5. 5.I recommend you launch Disk Utility at this point, and do a repair permissions on your hard drive. This step is optional.
   

6. 6.Reset the Mac printing system.  This is perhaps the most important step.  To do this, open the Printer and Fax Preference Pane.  Right click (control click) in the printer list, and select Reset printing system.
   

This will remove all printers from your system and remove all registered printer devices from ColorSync.  One downside, all custom saved setups as well as saved paper sizes in your printer dialogs will be deleted.

Your printing system is now basically at the same level as a clean install of the OS.  If you launch the ColorSync Utility you should see no printer devices in the list ... this is a good step to verify the preceding steps have worked.

At this point you should be ready to reinstall the driver, and then setup your printer in the Printer and Fax preference pane.  I recommend you download the most recent driver from Epson’s site.

This may or may not help you with your printing challenges. I know it has worked for some.  Drop me an email if it does or doesn’t work for you, including your printer model.

If you are trying to print targets to make profiles from your Epson printer, there is still an issue, which fortunately has now been recognized by Apple, Epson, and Adobe.  The issue and a current workaround is in this article by Mark Dubovoy ....Solving Recent Profiling Issues with Apple Computers and Epson Printers.  This issue, while recent to Mark, is actually something we have been fighting for quite some time, but this work around from Eric Chan (Adobe Engineer) is probably the most reliable of several out there.