Specifications

The Digital Fine Print Course

Printing a Fine Print

Changing Epson Black Ink Cartridges in Mac OS X

Th Epson Stylus Photo printer driver under the Mac OS X Printer Setup Utility is not

updated when a Black ink cartridge is changed from Matte Black to Photo Black (and vise

versa). The most obvious problem is that this does not reset the Epson driver, therefore

the additional Photo Black Media Types, such as Premium Semigloss Photo Paper, are not

available. Changing from Photo Black to Matte Black does not create the same problem

because all the Matte Black Media Types are also available with the Photo Black ink.

Fixes that don’t work:

The only way to force Mac OS X to load the correct driver Print Settings is to:

1. Delete the Epson driver from the Printer Setup Utility/Printer List.

2. Leave the Epson Stylus Photo printer connected to the computer and turned on.

3. Restart Mac OS X.

If there are no other printer drivers such as a GIMP driver or QUADTONE RIP already

loaded for this printer, a driver with the correct Print Settings will be automatically

loaded. However if another driver for this printer is already loaded you will have to man-

ually load the new driver by pressing the ADD button in the Printer Setup Utility/Printer

List, then select the correct manufacturer and data connection (eg. Epson USB 2.0).

In a some studios it may be easiest to only ever use Photo Black ink for all media, or to

connect the printer twice, via USB for Photo Black and via FireWire for Matte Black.

Selecting the correct driver then loads the required Matte or Photo Black driver settings.

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Deleting and reloading the Epson driver in the Printer Setup Utility does not reset

the driver Print Settings Media Types.

Updating the Epson Status Monitor in the Epson Printer Utility recognises the

changed black ink cartridge and correctly indicates the amount of ink remaining, but

does not reset the driver Print Settings Media Types.

Resetting the printer spooler by turning printer sharing on or off in the System

Preferences Sharing Pane resets the driver’s Presets but doesn’t reset the Print

Settings. Unfortunately it also doesn’t delete the name of the Presets it has reset so

you don’t know the Preset settings have changed unless you check or waste paper and

ink making a print.

Deleting the printer from the User/Library/Printers folder does not force a reset of the

driver Print Settings Media Types.

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