Hello - just got an Epson R3000. Printing on Lasal Duo 235. Downloaded and installed profiles, and got to printing. I'm getting simply awful dark and muddy prints using the Lasal Matte profile for R3000.

I tried the same image on Epson Premium Presentation Paper using Epson's profiles as a test and the colors are more true to my monitor.

I then tried printing the same image on LASAL - using Epson's profile for Presentation Paper - and the results were very similar to the test Epson print, except not as smooth - probably due to paper texture.
Finally, I switched to the Entrada Bright profile (still printing on Lasal paper) and it's pretty close to the Epson Premium Presentation profile results on Lasal.

Is there something I'm missing? It would be nice to not have to guess at the profile to use for Lasal Matte... I'm about to do a large print run on the Chinle 12x13 (Lasal Matte) portfolio paper. Any advice would be appreciated. At this point, the Entrada profile may be the way to go, but I'm hoping for better results than that.

Cora, are you using our recommended media type when printing? This is definitely essential in the process. All of our recommended media types can be found right next to each ICC download link, and the one you should use is Ultra Premium Presentation Matte. The media type setting controls the amount of ink that is put down onto the paper, as well as which black ink to use.

The printer driver for the R3000 on my Mac (OSX 10.7) does not have Ultra Premium Presentation Matte as an option for media type. For media type, matte paper it has Epson Archival Matte, Epson Matte, Epson Photo Quality Inkjet, and Double-Sided Matte Paper. For media type Fine Art Paper it has Velvet Fine Art Paper, Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper, and Watercolor Paper - Radiant White. I have done one test print using the Epson Archival Mette setting and it loks OK, but I do not want to try every possible media type to see which is best. Any advice?

Ross, have you downloaded the latest driver from Epson? A while back Epson changed the names of their media types. For example, Enhanced Matte became Ultra Premium Presentation Paper.

Well, I thought I had. I only installed the printer on this Mac in January, and I could have sworn it downloaded something during the install. I will check. Thanks for the reply.

Just checked--went to Epson, their site says updates to the Mac driver are available only through the Apple Software Update facility. I keep that up to date but checked (ran software update) just in case. Apparently I have the latest driver, or at least software update thinks I do, because it only wants to update my Java. So, in what Apple seems to think is the current R3000 driver, the names of the available Epson media types are those I mentioned before.

As I said, the Archival Matte setting does seem to work, but of course it would be nice to have something even better. Nice paper (Lasal Matte 235 gsm), anyway.

Enhanced Matte is the same as Archival Matte which is the same as Ultra Premium Presentation Matte. All the same when it comes to media types.

Thanls a lot for the clarification. Epson hasn't made it easy, have they?