Photoshop Elements 8 - printer settings overidden by Editor.

[Omega892]

System Windows XP SP3 + all later updates. Screen resolution 1600 x 1200 32 bit. Protected by up to date Kaspersky IS software.

Default printer a new Epson R2880 with the latest driver, being only recently set-up and working as expected from a laptop using Elements 6.

I have made a default setting to ensure that suitable colour space settings are loaded in the printer driver by default through the Printers and Faxes > Epson Stylus Photo R2880 (control dialogue) as in image R2880PropSysDef.jpg

The following issue only occurs in the Editor (so far at least) and not with printing selected through the Print option in the Organizer.


Only Photoshop Elements 8 misbehaves in the following described manner (PE6, Lightroom 2 and Paintshop Pro and Xara Xtreme do not mess with the above default settings but allow adjustments to be made and to be retained until explicitly changed or application restart as one would expect.

Photoshop Elements 8 can sometimes allow the above default to display and stick for printing and allow adjustments to be mad and stick. But then for reasons I have not been able to establish, and I have tried many things in an attempt to find a trigger (I have been used to troubleshooting systems by changing one procedure at a time so as to isolate a fault throughout life with e.g. computers and aviation systems) PE 8 decides to modify the driver settings as in image R2880PropWrong.jpg:

Note the Off [No Color Adjustment] indicated in the lower right corner of the Current Settings panel. When this becomes the case no attempt to restore correct settings once in the Print dialogue via either Page Setup or More Options > Color Management > Printer Preferences will be successful for the Off [No Color Adjustment] stage is reverted to as one closes the final dialogue on return to the Print dialogue.

For example with the Page Setup route with which one sees as in image PageSetUp.jpg any settings made whilst within the Printer driver Printing Preferences are held until one finally exits by clicking OK on the larger Page Setup dialogue (the one with Paper, Orientation and Margins selections).

Sometimes PE8 seems to behave and the next moment nothing can make it retain required colour settings. I have tried recreating a new Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 Prefs.psp file several times but this to no good effect.

It has to be Photoshop Elements 8 Editor stomping over even the default printer driver settings.

To be honest I feel like installing another copy of PE6 (installed on a laptop and which gives no trouble). I am ware that the license does not allow two copies of one to be run simultaneously but that is the only way I am going to be able to compare notes between the systems to see if it is PE8 only at fault. If PE6 has no trouble on the desktop I feel that you owe me the right to run two copies simultaneously and that I have paid for the right to use PE8 which is not fit for my purpose.

Otherwise I deactivate PE8 and uninstall it and re-install PE3 which also printed without issues.

EDIT:
PS. Yes I have been following the Adobe support pages but to no avail. I have tried without other applications running and carried out system houskeeping tasks e.g. blowing away temporary files.

[bakubo]

I'm sorry I can't help with your problems, but I just wanted to say that I have PE6 and have been amazed at how buggy the UI is in this program. I have used it on WinXP and Vista. I only use the editor. The editor works well, but the UI has so many bugs that I often want to uninstall the program from my computer. I use ACR to convert my A700 files though so I have lived with it. How can a program that is version 6 have so many basic UI bugs that none of my other many programs have? Even several free programs such as Faststone, etc. don't have the simple, basic Windows UI bugs that PE6 has. If this was beta version 0.4 or something then I would be forgiving, but version 6???? How can any company still not figure out how to do basic Windows UI stuff properly after all these years and many versions? The answer is they don't care about it at all.

[Omega892]

I'm sorry I can't help with your problems...

Nonetheless thank you for your reply.

PE8, by default, loads a banner screen at launch where one can chose, if one notices the two very small symbols in the top right hand corner and guesses the purpose of the leftmost one, to have the Editor launched by default.

I must say that I have a fairly recent responsive computer system but the delay in the Editor launching after the banner screen has displayed makes one think the process has gone off into the weeds (hung).

There is a neater way to access the Editor directly, which I discovered on an internet search (but it may have occurred to me at some time as I have used this approach in the past) and that is to drill down through the Program Files directory and send the PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe file to the desktop as a shortcut. The editor still takes awhile to load but it is faster than through the front door.

I have a feeling that the trouble is with screen layers and may be related to that PE8 start up banner as when the printer settings are overridden, as seen in the second image in my above post, I had great trouble getting PaintShop Pros screen grab to work whereas there was no problem in the case when the correct settings (Color Control Adobe RGB) were preserved.

It is most odd too that the Print route through the Organizer does not exhibit this problem and the Organizer would otherwise not often be used.

I do wish that software developers would concentrate on stability with the core features rather than adding on song and dance band troops which are often not required.

As I use Lightroom I have no great desire for the Organizer – perhaps I am missing something.

[Omega892]

Well, 15 days and counting since my last interchange with Adobe on this issue and I have:

had an online chat session with an Epson tech' support

no fixes - not the driver,

had an online session with a Photoshop expert and freelance driving my computer by remote and discovering that indeed whatever one does within the PE8 Editor the driver settings are overriden into the state shown in the second of the images in a previous post. This Photoshop guru also had similar experiences with PE8 on XP at his end. I had to pay for this service but I do not begrudge the guru that. Hardly his fault.

A conversation at ***************** Photo Equipment dealers appraised me that others had had this problem with PE8 and led me to come away with my suspicion confirmed that Adobe may have crippled printer colour profile control deliberately in PE8 in order to force us to the very much more expensive CS range.

So I have spent about £70 (+ £50 for the remote guru assistance) on something that is not fit for purpose. Anybody other than a software developer would get their knuckles rapped for this behaviour.

I am angry, very very angry.

Have gone back to PE3 on the desktop while I consider my options which may include ditching Lightroom too, another Adobe product that I use.

There has been not a dickie bird since from Adobe despite my two additional comments on the case notes, with a third going up about an hour ago.

I have now gone back to PE3 on the desktop (not trusting Adobe to not cripple me if I try to run two PE 6s simultaneously, and achieved correct colour as expected from the Lyson profiles on the Tony Riley sample image.

PS Also wasted much ink, paper and time trying to find an answer!