Epson 3800: Step-By-Step Printing Workflow

by Eric Chan

Last updated: February 7, 2009


 

Old Boards, December 2008

 


Overview

A very common question is "why don't my prints match what I see on my screen?" or "why do my prints look much darker than what I see on my screen?" There are many possible answers to these questions. I have already written some notes on display calibration, display profiles, and soft proofing. Usually the problems stem from an improperly calibrated display, incorrect application settings, incorrect printer driver settings, or perhaps even a misunderstanding of what to expect from the prints. In other words, lots of things could go wrong during the printing process! It's no wonder these questions get asked as often as they do.

I have written this page to help photographers resolve these problems and to get better screen-to-print matches. This page offers practical step-by-step instructions. I don't cover much theory here, but I do try to explain the basic reasoning behind each step, particularly the obscure ones. (If you are interested in learning more about the methods behind the madness, I highly recommend Fraser et al.'s Real World Color Management book.)

This page focuses on printing to an Epson 3800 printer from Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS3, and Photoshop CS4 under Windows XP, since that is what I use. I have also recently added instructions for printing from Lightroom 2, as well as driver configuration screenshots on Mac OS 10.5.x. If you are printing to a different printer (e.g., an Epson R2400 or HP B9180), from a different application (e.g., QImage or LightZone), or under a different operating system, then you may need to adapt these instructions.


Table of contents


Display calibration and profiling

In order to get consistent and repeatable screen-to-print matches, your display must be properly calibrated and profiled, preferably using a hardware colorimeter. The device I use and recommend is the Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter. (Note that since the GretagMacbeth and X-Rite companies have recently merged, this colorimeter may now be repackaged under a different name.)

If you have a CRT display, I recommend setting your display calibration options to Gamma 2.2, 6500 K for the color temperature, and 100 cd/m2 for the target luminance.

If you have a LCD display, I recommend setting your display calibration options to Gamma 2.2, "native white point" for the color temperature, and 100 cd/m2 for the target luminance. This last point is very important: new LCDs are capable of emitting a lot of light (and often are extremely bright out of the box). If you edit images on a super-bright display, your print will appear too dark by comparison. Even if your calibration software recommends setting the target luminance to a higher value (e.g., 120 cd/m2), I still suggest using a lower value such as 100 cd/m2.

If you use a hardware colorimeter to calibrate and profile your display, make sure to disable Adobe Gamma, which comes with Adobe Photoshop. See this Adobe tech note to learn how to disable it.

Here are a couple of quick tests you can use to check your monitor setup:

  1. open a blank white document (e.g. in Photoshop) on your computer. Then hold a blank sheet of photo paper next to your display, so you can see the two side by side. Which is brighter? If the display is significantly brighter, then your photo prints will look dull in comparison.
  2. Visit this page on Norman Koren's site and scroll half-way down to the section titled Monitor test patterns. When viewed from a distance (i.e., a few feet away), the pattern on the left (labeled Gamma = 2.2) should appear solid gray with virtually no trace of waviness or visually distinguishable pattern. If you see a distinct pattern, something's gone wrong and you may want to recalibrate your display.
  3. If you cannot see any differences in the black levels until above 10, then something's not right. You may need to recalibrate your display, dim your ambient lighting, or choose another display.-->

Not all monitor calibration packages allow you to specify a target luminance during the calibration process. I don't recommend these packages because having the proper monitor brightness is very important to getting consistent screen-to-print matches. I strongly recommend investing in a colorimeter package whose software allows you to specify a target luminance.

However, in case you don't have such a colorimeter package, you can still get a reasonable estimate for an appropriate brightness of the display, if you have a digital camera with a spot meter. Here's the procedure: Open a blank white window, e.g., in a web browser, in Photoshop, in MS Word, etc. Give yourself lots of blank white space. Point your camera's spot meter at the white space. Set the camera to manual exposure, f/8, 1/15 sec, ISO 100. Adjust the brightness of the display till the exposure indicator lies at the middle of the camera's exposure scale. If you can accomplish this, then the display will be at roughly 100 cd/m2.

New users often express the following sentiment (which I've certainly experienced myself before): I just invested in an expensive printer, and inks and paper aren't cheap either -- do I really need to put more money into a hardware colorimeter? Well, no, of course you don't have to. But if you want consistent screen-to-print matches, I strongly encourage you to consider it.


Setting up Photoshop CS2's color settings

Make sure Photoshop's Color Settings are set up properly. Here are the settings I use (click on the image to see a bigger version). Photoshop CS3 and CS4 settings are similar.

Click the image above to see a bigger version that you can actually read!

In Photoshop, go to the Edit menu and choose Color Settings... I prefer to edit images using the ProPhoto RGB working space. Adobe RGB is also a good choice. I don't recommend using sRGB because the gamuts of modern inkjet printers (including the Epson 3800) exceed the gamut of sRGB in some areas, particularly greens and blues. Using sRGB prevents you from accessing the full range of colors that your printer, inks, and paper are capable of producing. Presumably, you've invested in a good printing system, so don't arbitrarily limit your color choices by choosing sRGB!

I never edit images in Grayscale mode, so the choice of the Gray working space isn't important to me. In the example above, I've set it to Gray Gamma 2.2.

Note that if you choose ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB as your RGB working space, it's a good idea to stay in 16-bit editing mode throughout the entire image editing process. This will help maintain smooth tonal transitions and minimize quantization (blocky) artifacts.

I recommend checking all of the checkboxes in the Color Management Policies section. (You may need to click on the More Options button first to see this section at all.) Doing so will let Photoshop alert you to potential problems as they occur (e.g., if you open an image that doesn't have a color profile embedded).


How to soft-proof your images

Soft-proofing is a handy feature that allows you to preview how your images will look when printed on paper. Some colors in your image (usually the saturated colors) may not be reproducible in the print; these colors are said to be out of gamut. The actual color gamut of the print depends on several factors, including the printer, ink, paper, and printer driver settings. Colors that lie out of gamut are remapped by the printer profile to colors that lie in gamut. Soft-proofing gives you a way to check if the profile has done a good job remapping these colors (as opposed to messing up your image).

Important note: the soft-proofing results will only be meaningful if your display is properly calibrated using a hardware-based colorimeter.

To soft-proof your image in Photoshop, go to the View menu, choose Proof Setup, then Custom...

You will see a box like this appear:

Soft-proof configuration with the Perceptual Rendering Intent
and without Black Point Compensation

Select the appropriate profile from the Device to Simulate menu. In the example above, I have chosen the Epson-supplied profile for Premium Luster for the Epson 3800 printer (Pro38 PLPP). If you have a custom profile and it is installed properly, select it from the Device to Simulate menu.

Important: make sure that the Preserve RGB Numbers box is unchecked and that the Simulate Paper Color box is checked (see example image above).

In most cases, you should either (1) set the Rendering Intent menu to Perceptual and uncheck Black Point Compensation (as shown in the example image above) or (2) set the Rendering Intent menu to Relative Colorimetric and check Black Point Compensation (as shown in the example image below).

How do you know which option to choose? As with most things in life, the answer is: it depends! The most practical advice I can give is to toggle between the two configurations and pick the one that gives the more pleasing visual result. To learn more about rendering intents, check out this informative article by Bruce Fraser.

Soft-proof configuration with the Relative Colorimetric Rendering Intent
and with Black Point Compensation enabled

Usually, you will see a big drop in contrast when you turn on soft-proofing, especially after you check the Simulate Paper Color box. Don't worry. The soft-proof feature attempts to simulate the contrast range of the paper with the side effect that the preview looks pretty flat. The actual print should look fine.

Here are some things to look for when soft-proofing and comparing rendering intents:

  • Hue shifts. For example, do the blues in your image stay blue when your turn on soft-proofing, or do they take on a magenta cast? Do reds stay red or do they become orange-ish?
  • Saturation. Some loss of color saturation is normal. In most cases, you probably want to choose the rendering intent that gives you the more saturated color.
  • Muddy colors or loss of color detail. For example, when you study areas of similar colors in your image (such as the greens in the leaves of trees, the yellows in flower petals, or the blues in skies), do the colors remain distinct and maintain good color separation when you turn on soft-proofing, or do similar colors become muddy and indistinguishable?
  • Transitions. Do smooth transitions in color and tone remain smooth when you turn on soft-proofing, or do certain transitions (e.g., blends between reds and greens) become rough?
  • Shadow and highlight detail. Do the darkest and lightest areas of your image preserve good detail when you turn on soft-proofing? In my experience, images that have significant shadow detail tend to benefit more from using the perceptual rendering intent.

It is common to use the Perceptual rendering intent for some images and to use the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent for other images. This is why it's important to soft-proof each image so that you can make the choice on a per-image basis. Remember, printer profiles can do amazing things, but even the best profiles are "dumb" in the sense that they don't take into account the contents of your images.

For example, let's say we have an image with strong reds and greens, but only some of the reds are out of gamut. The Perceptual tables in most profiles tend to reduce saturation in all hues. These profiles may do a good job of desaturating our reds to fit the output gamut, but they may also unnecessarily desaturate the greens (which were already in gamut to begin with). If you find this is happening to your images, it may be worthwhile to make selective color edits on your image (e.g., selectively desaturate the reds, but leave the greens alone). In other words, it may be necessary to optimize the color for the specific printer or paper that you are working with.

For some of your images, the differences between the Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric rendering intents may be very subtle and perhaps imperceptible. If you can't see significant differences between these two configurations, that's fine; just pick one and print with it.

What if both rendering intents look terrible in the soft-proof? What if, for example, you see nasty color transitions or blocked-up shadow detail with both configurations? This could be the sign of an inferior printer profile. A good printer profile can make a big difference in the result, especially in tonal separation and color detail preservation. For example, I used to use a paper whose profiles (supplied by the manufacturer) had difficulty separating between subtle shades of green. This was problematic for me, because many of my nature photographs contain significant amounts of green. I thought this was a limitation of my printer at the time (an Epson Stylus Photo 2200) or the paper I was using. As it turned out, the problem was with the profile. Later, I built a custom profile for this paper and the green separation issues disappeared. I was amazed. Moral of the story: soft-proofing can also help you identify printer profile issues. If you are experiencing trouble with default or manufacturer-supplied profiles, consider investing in a high-quality custom profile.

If the soft-proofing discussion above seems overly complicated to you, don't worry. The practical steps are easy to follow. Just turn on soft-proofing as described above, compare the two rendering intent configurations, and pick the one that looks best to you. With some experience, you'll have a good idea of which intent works well with which images.


 

Indian Paintbrush, Jasper National Park, Canada, June 2006

 


How to print color and B&W images with the RGB color driver

Preparation: you should prepare your image in Photoshop in RGB Color mode. I recommend using 16-bit editing throughout your entire image processing workflow. The following steps can be used to print color images as well as black-and-white (B&W) images. If you are printing neutral B&W images, however, I recommend printing using the ABW driver instead.

I strongly recommend preparing your final image (i.e., the image to be printed) at 360 pixels/inch (ppi), the native resolution of the Epson 3800 printer driver. This will often require resampling your image in Photoshop (via Image Size) to the desired output dimensions at 360 ppi.

Steps:

  1. Soft-proof your image to determine the appropriate rendering intent and black point compensation options for your image.
  2. Go to the File menu and choose Print with Preview... (CS2) or Print... (CS3 and CS4).

    In the Print with Preview (CS2) or Print (CS3 and CS4) box, ignore the colors and tones in the small preview window.

    In the Options section:

    1. Set the Color Handling menu to Let Photoshop Determine Colors (CS2) or Photoshop Manages Colors (CS3 and CS4).
    2. Set the Printer Profile menu to the appropriate printer profile:

      • Example #1: Let's say you want to print on Epson Premium Luster using the Epson-supplied profiles. In this case, choose Pro38 PLPP from the Printer Profile menu. In general, you may find it helpful to check this page for a list of Epson papers and their corresponding (cryptic) profile names. The Epson profiles are all installed during the initial driver installation; it is not necessary to download them separately from the Epson Support site.
      • Example #2: Let's say you want to print on Innova Smooth Cotton (a third-party paper) using the Innova-supplied profiles. First, you have to make sure that you have downloaded and installed the correct profile for this paper; in general, this can be done by visiting the paper manufacturer's web site and following their profile instructions. Next, choose the correct profile from the Printer Profile menu.
      • Example #3: Let's say you want to print using a custom profile (e.g., a profile that you created yourself or purchased from a custom profiling service). First, make sure that you have installed the custom profile. Then choose the custom profile from the Printer Profile menu.
      • Important note: Do not choose Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, or other profiles from the Printer Profile menu! You have to specify a printer profile here, not a RGB working space profile.
    3. Set the Rendering Intent menu and Black Point Compensation checkbox appropriately, based on your soft-proofing results in Step 1 (see above). Either you should:

      1. set the Rendering Intent menu to Perceptual and uncheck Black Point Compensation, or
      2. set the Rendering Intent menu to Relative Colorimetric and check Black Point Compensation.

    Click the Print... button, then the Properties... button.

  3. The Epson 3800 printer driver box comes up. In the Main tab:

    1. Choose the appropriate Media Type for your paper:

      • If you will be printing on Epson paper, select the corresponding Epson paper from the Media Type menu. For example, if you will be printing on Premium Luster, choose Premium Luster Photo Paper from the Media Type menu.
      • If you will be printing on third-party media using the manufacturer-supplied (i.e., canned) profiles, select the Media Type recommended by the paper manufacturer. See the instructions included with the canned profiles.
      • If you will be printing using a custom profile, select the Media Type used to create the custom profile.
    2. Set the Color menu to Color.
    3. Set the Mode to Custom.
    4. Click the Advanced... button.

  4. In the Advanced driver settings, you should choose the settings that correspond to the instructions included with your printer profile. This is particularly true if you are using a custom printer profile. If in doubt, try the following settings:

    1. Set the Printer Color Management radio button to Off (No Color Management). This is very important!
    2. Choose your desired Print Quality. I recommend and use 2880 dpi for reflective papers (i.e., papers that use Photo Black, such as glossy, luster, and semigloss papers) and 1440 dpi for matte papers (i.e., papers that use Matte Black).
    3. I recommend unchecking High Speed, Flip Horizontal, Finest Detail, and Edge Smoothing.
    4. If you plan on printing close to the edge of the paper (e.g., the bottom paper margin is less than 1 inch) I recommend clicking on the Paper Config button and setting the Platen Gap menu to Wide. This will help to avoid head strikes.
    5. (Optional) I recommend clicking on the Save Settings... button and giving your setup a descriptive name. This will save you time when making future prints, because instead of repeating Steps 3 and 4 again, you can simply choose your assigned name from the saved settings menu.
    6. Click the OK button.
  5. That's it. You're ready to print!


 

Icicles, Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire, March 2005

 


How to print B&W images with the ABW driver (without ABW profiles)

Note: I updated this section significantly in November 2008 with a new recommended workflow. The new workflow has three key advantages over the previous method: (1) it is more similar to my recommended workflow for standard RGB color printing, therefore making it easier to remember, (2) it works in all color-managed application and OS environments that I'm aware of, including Lightroom, and (3) it avoids a potential glitch when printing from Photoshop CS4 on a Mac OS X Leopard system to the Epson ABW driver (the glitch is that no print emerges from the printer!).

Preparation: You should prepare your image in Photoshop in either Grayscale mode or RGB Color mode. If you choose the latter option, make sure that your image is truly gray (i.e., R = G = B for every pixel in your image). The Epson ABW driver is a grayscale driver. If your image contains any color (e.g., if you attempt to add a warm tone to your image in Photoshop), the ABW driver will convert the image to grayscale before printing it, thereby discarding your color toning efforts. The only way to add color toning to images printed through the ABW driver is to use the Horizontal and Vertical knobs in the ABW driver settings (see below).

I strongly recommend preparing your final image (i.e., the image to be printed) at 360 pixels/inch (ppi), the native resolution of the Epson 3800 printer driver. This will often require resampling your image in Photoshop (via Image Size) to the desired output dimensions at 360 ppi.

Limitations: Please be aware of the following limitations of this procedure:

Steps:

  1. Go to the File menu and choose Print with Preview... (CS2) or Print... (CS3 and CS4). In the box that comes up, set the Color Handling popup menu to Let Photoshop Determine Colors (CS2) or Photoshop Manages Colors (CS3 or CS4).
  2. Set the Printer Profile menu to sRGB (the full name may appear as sRGB IEC61966-2.1). This step is very important!

    Technical note #1: If you are attempting to print from Lightroom to the ABW driver, then in this step you will need to choose "Other..." from the Profile popup menu and check the Include Display Profiles checkbox in the ensuing dialog box.

    Technical note #2: why don't we specify a printer profile the same way we do when printing a RGB color image? Furthermore, in the previous section on printing RGB color images, weren't we specifically warned NOT to select a working space profile like sRGB? Good questions. The answer to the first question is that the ICC profiles that we normally use for printing color images are only designed to work with the Epson RGB color driver, not the Epson ABW driver. The answer to the second question is that the ABW driver is expecting to receive image data that is encoded with the sRGB gamma function (approximately a 2.2 gamma-encoding curve).

  3. Set the Rendering Intent popup menu to Relative Colorimetric.
  4. Click the Print... button, then click the Properties... button. This will take you to the Epson driver.
  5. In the Epson driver settings:

    1. Choose the appropriate Media Type for your paper.
    2. Set the Color menu to Advanced B&W Photo.
    3. Set the Mode to Custom.
    4. Click the Advanced... button.
  6. In the Advanced driver settings:

    1. Set the Tone menu to Dark (instead of the default setting of Darker). This may automatically change the Color Toning menu to Fine Adjustment -- that's ok.
    2. Leave the other values (Brightness, Contrast, Shadow Tonality, Highlight Tonality, Max Optical Density) at their default values of 0.
    3. Set Highlight Point Shift to Off.
    4. If you wish to add color toning to your image (e.g., a warm tone), set the Horizontal and Vertical values to something other than 0. If you want a neutral print, set both Horizontal and Vertical to 0.
    5. Choose your desired Print Quality. I recommend and use 2880 dpi for reflective papers (i.e., papers that use Photo Black, such as glossy, luster, and semigloss papers) and 1440 dpi for matte papers (i.e., papers that use Matte Black).
    6. I recommend unchecking High Speed, Flip Horizontal, Finest Detail, and Edge Smoothing.
    7. If you plan on printing close to the edge of the paper (e.g., the bottom paper margin is less than 1 inch) I recommend clicking on the Paper Config button and setting the Platen Gap menu to Wide. This will help to avoid head strikes.
    8. (Optional) I recommend clicking on the Save Settings... button and giving your setup a descriptive name. This will save you time when making future prints, because instead of repeating Steps 3 and 4 again, you can simply choose your assigned name from the saved settings menu.
    9. Click the OK button.
  7. That's it. You're ready to print!

 


How to print B&W images with the ABW driver (with ABW profiles)

If you have ICC profiles designed to be used with the ABW driver, such as the ones provided on this page, then follow the instructions below carefully. They are similar to the RGB color printing instructions, but differ in a few key places.

Preparation: you should prepare your image in Photoshop in RGB Color mode or Grayscale mode. I recommend using 16-bit editing throughout your entire image processing workflow.

I strongly recommend preparing your final image (i.e., the image to be printed) at 360 pixels/inch (ppi), the native resolution of the Epson 3800 printer driver. This will often require resampling your image in Photoshop (via Image Size) to the desired output dimensions at 360 ppi.

Steps:

  1. Soft-proof your image using the Perceptual rendering intent and make any image-specific adjustments as needed.
  2. Go to the File menu and choose Print with Preview... (CS2) or Print... (CS3 and CS4).

    In the Print with Preview (CS2) or Print (CS3 and CS4) box, ignore the colors and tones in the small preview window.

    In the Options section:

    1. Set the Color Handling menu to Let Photoshop Determine Colors (CS2) or Photoshop Manages Colors (CS3 and CS4).
    2. Set the Printer Profile menu to the appropriate ABW printer profile:

      • Example #1: Let's say you want to print on Epson Velvet Fine Art. I have build an ABW profile for this paper, downloadable from this page. Choose "3800 VFA ABW 1440" from the Printer Profile menu.
      • Important note: Do not choose Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, or other profiles from the Printer Profile menu! You have to specify a printer profile here, not a RGB working space profile.
    3. Set the Rendering Intent menu to Perceptual and uncheck the Black Point Compensation checkbox.

    Click the Print... button, then the Properties... button.

  3. The Epson 3800 printer driver box comes up. In the Main tab:

    1. Choose the appropriate Media Type for your paper by referring to the table on this page.
    2. Set the Color menu to Advanced B&W Photo.
    3. Set the Mode to Custom.
    4. Click the Advanced... button.

  4. In the Advanced driver settings:

    1. Choose the appropriate Tone setting (Dark, Normal, Light, etc.) for your paper by referring to the table on this page.
    2. Choose your desired Print Quality. I recommend and use 2880 dpi for reflective papers (i.e., papers that use Photo Black, such as glossy, luster, and semigloss papers) and 1440 dpi for matte papers (i.e., papers that use Matte Black).
    3. I recommend unchecking High Speed, Flip Horizontal, Finest Detail, and Edge Smoothing.
    4. If you plan on printing close to the edge of the paper (e.g., the bottom paper margin is less than 1 inch) I recommend clicking on the Paper Config button and setting the Platen Gap menu to Wide. This will help to avoid head strikes.
    5. (Optional) I recommend clicking on the Save Settings... button and giving your setup a descriptive name. This will save you time when making future prints, because instead of repeating Steps 3 and 4 again, you can simply choose your assigned name from the saved settings menu.
    6. Click the OK button.
  5. That's it. You're ready to print!

 


How to print images from Lightroom

The above steps were written for printing from Photoshop. Printing from Lightroom is similar, but the interface is different (and, in my opinion, made much easier through the use of presets!).

Steps:

  1. In the Grid View in the Library module, select the image (or images) you wish to print.
  2. Go to the Print module.
  3. Click the Page Setup... button from the Left Panel in the Print Module.

    Check that both the appropriate printer (e.g., Epson 3800) and paper size (e.g., US Letter) is chosen in the Page Setup dialog box. Note that for some paper sizes, you may have a choice of which printer feed to use. If you intend to print from the Rear Feed, for example, be sure to choose it along with your paper size selection.

    Click OK.

  4. Click the Print Settings... button from the Left Panel in the Print Module. This takes you to the printer driver settings dialog box.

    If you wish to print in the Epson RGB color mode, follow the instructions above on configuring the Epson RGB driver, steps 3 and 4.

    If you wish to print in the Epson Advanced B&W (ABW) Photo mode, follow the instructions above on configuring the Epson ABW driver, steps 5 and 6.

  5. In the Right Panel in the Print module, configure the Layout Engine, Image Settings, Layout, Guides, and Overlays sections the way you wish. In particular, check the Layout section and make sure the margins and cell size are the way you want. If you want the image to be centered, make sure the left, right, top, and bottom margin values are all set to the same value (e.g., 0.25 in).
  6. In the Print Job section in the Right Panel:

    • Set "Print to" to Printer.
    • Check the "Print Resolution" checkbox and set its value to 360 ppi.
    • Check the "Print Sharpening" box and set its value to Standard.
    • If printing on glossy, luster, semi-gloss, or an F-type or Baryta paper, set "Media Type" to Glossy. Otherwise, set "Media Type" to Matte.
    • Check the "16 Bit Output" box if available.
    • Set the "Profile" popup menu to your printer profile, as described in Step 2b of these instructions.
    • Set the "Rendering Intent" popup menu to your desired rendering intent, as described in Step 2c of these instructions.
  7. (Optional step, but highly recommended!)   From the Left Panel, click the + button next to the Template Browser. This allows you to create a preset (i.e., template) for this entire printing configuration, capturing all of the previous steps into a single convenient location. In the subsequent dialog box, give the preset a descriptive name (e.g., "3800 Premium Luster 11x17"). You will see your new preset appear inside the Template Browser section.
  8. From the Right Panel, click the Print One button. That's it!
To summarize, in Step 1 you select which images you want to print. Steps 3 through 7 involve establishing your print settings (page layout, profile, driver configuration, etc.). This is quite tedious and error-prone. However, the great thing about creating a preset in Step 7 is that it greatly simplifies printing images in the future. All you need to do is: select your images, click on your named preset in the Template Browser in the Print Module, and click the Print One button.

In other words, by using presets, you can skip Steps 3 through 6 entirely and you don't have to see any more printer dialog boxes! And you can create as many presets as you want (e.g., one for each common printing configuration).


How to configure the Epson driver on the Mac

The above instructions were largely written with Windows in mind, since that's the platform I was using at the time. Printing on the Mac is very similar, but the Page Setup and Epson printer driver dialog boxes look different. If you are printing on the Mac, the following screenshots should help you configure the Page Setup and Epson driver dialog boxes properly:

Screenshots for printing on Mac OS 10.5.x to the 3800, driver 6.11 (RGB color mode)

Screenshots for printing on Mac OS 10.5.x to the 3800, driver 6.11 (ABW mode)

In the example shown in these screenshots, I was configuring the driver to print on Red River Arctic Polar Satin, without borderless. Notice how in the PageSetupSize.jpg screenshot you have to select not only the paper size, but also the feed mechanism. This is important. If you wish to print, say, on Velvet Fine Art but you don't select the Manual - Rear option shown in the screenshot for your selected paper size, then you won't be able to select the Velvet Fine Art option from the Media Type popup menu in the driver.


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