It may be strange to start a photography blog talking about setting up a printer, but I guess any excuse is a good excuse to get started. And the truth is that setting up my new Epson SC-P600 printer has been quite some work, so I want to believe this article may help other people.
In my first attempt, I tried to follow the installation steps on the Epson installation website for Mac OS. Mixing it up with some manually downloaded drivers from Epson’s website. Who knows who’s fault it is, but it all went wrong. For instance, I could not install the right ICC profiles because it showed several printers and a few subfolders - so impossible to know which ones to choose. In my second attempt, I managed to get it right, after a few configurations back and forths. Let me explain how I think you should make it to get it right.
Number one, read the information provided by Keith Cooper here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/epson_sc-p600.html and here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/epson_sc-p600-setup.html. It will give you a good perspective on the printer and its usage. You should also read the official user manual that comes with the printer, at least the relevant sections.
Number two, install the printer physically. For that, you can use Keith’s guide or the one that comes with the printer. These steps are not too difficult, although I got a few times a very scary error message: “Fatal error. Error code: 011A”, which I still do not know what it means. I just turned the printer off and on again and the machine came back to life. I also had a bit of trouble configuring the wifi, since it could not find the network, but after a few attempts and a few fatal errors, it was there.
Three, use the Epson Setup Navi website (at http://epson.sn) to install and configure the software. You will get all the drivers, software programs and settings that you need. You can also install some of it manually, but I would recommend to run the installation from the Setup Navi site.
This is how it looks in my applications list after the installation, although it may differ from yours:
In case you want to do a manual installation from Epson support website: http://www.epson.co.uk/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/products/mainunits/support/13682?searchKey=sc-p
Four, if it is not there already add the printer to Print & Fax, in System Preferences
Now, here it is where I made a very important (although honest) mistake. I want to use my printer via wifi, without cables, and I chose Bonjour/AirPrint, which are Apple generic protocols. As result, I could not launch Epson Utility 4 program, and even more importantly, I could not chose Epson paper types in the Epson driver, for instance, when I tried to print from Lightroom.
The solution was simple. Just removed the printer using the “-“ symbol icon, and added it again, but this time using the following option: EPSON TCPIP, which uses EPSON SC-P600 Series. The result is what you see in the screenshot above. Notice that after Kind, it reads EPSON SC-P600 Series
This is the error message I got when I had the wrong protocol:
Epson Printer Utility 4 cannot be launched. Check on the following
- The product is turned on
- The product is connected to the computer correctly
- The product is loaded in the printer list box.
If the error is not fixed, Epson Printer Utility 4 is not available for your computer.
Plus the media types / paper types in the selection screen were not the ones I was supposed to get. This is how they look when it is correct:
And five, Copy the ICC profiles from Library -> Printers to: Library -> ColorSync following the article below. This way, you can use the default ICC Epson profiles (for Epson paper) in programs such Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.
http://www.epson.co.uk/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/products/mainunits/faq/13682
This is it! Now you should be able to print. The installation and configuration process should be quite easy, but you can be unlucky and run into problems like me. By the way, I also found that the Epson support chat is quite friendly and efficient, if you even need it.
I am definitely enjoying printing now. Still exploring the options, different type of paper with different type of images. This is so much fun! And an incredible pleasure to see your images printed after your own creative process, with full control over the end results. It is not easy, and for sure not cheap, but in my opinion, totally worth it!
Enjoy!
