Major Color Management Breakdown

I'm at my wit's end. For no reason that I can fathom I'm suddenly overwhelmed with printing issues. I've been outputting excellent prints on my Epson 3880 for over a year, using a custom profile created with ColorMunki, out of PS CS5 and LR3. Suddenly prints came out with a light cyan block outside of the image area.
I (we) narrowed it down to an issue with the custom icc profile, as I could print the same image fine as a pdf or out of Preview. I also could print ok with the canned Epson profile.

Created a new paper profile, no cyan block, but from now on the image looks double-profiled. Not at all accurate, but could still print ok with the Epson profile. Then things really turned to ****.

I've uninstalled and installed the latest Epson driver, uninstalled and reinstalled ColorMunki and created new profiles, and now uninstalled and reinstalled PS. Now my print dialog will not even let me choose the Print (e.g. b&w) or Color Mode.
I couldn't print a b & w with the excellent Epson controls if I wanted to.

To add to the frustration, I have an near identical system at work (same OS, printer, softwares) and I have no issues, custom icc is fine, print dialog displays all options properly. only diff between the tow is it's an older Macpro, with a different card.
I'm on a new Macpro, but I've been breezing along for months with no problems. Epson, Adobe, X-Rite support has been virtually useless, they all say there's no problem with their product, it's someone else's issue-- yeah, mine!

Does anyone have a clue, because at this point, I sure don't... (calling René...)
I just want my digital visual life back...

To clarify, I've deleted the custom profile and uninstalled ColorMunki, and am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8
More: Printer dialog presents correct options in LR and Preview. Guess that means the issue is in Photoshop. But there are never any issues in PS (at least whenever I talk to Adobe support...)

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So, what does your Photoshop print dialog look like? Have you inadvertently chosen a rendering intent like Absolute Colormetric, or have you checked the "Proof" radio button instead of the "Document" radio button or something like that? If you checked "Proof" then you are printing your image as it would appear on the device or profile you are simulating in your proofing set up. Is this a problem for all of the images you try to print, or just certain images?

How did printing successfully from other applications identify this as a custom profile issue? Aren't you using your custom profile in those other applications? Why not?

I had custom profiles of Epson papers made for me by Chromix and compared them to the Epson profiles for Epson papers and they were almost indistinguishable. Are you printing on non-Epson paper (or with non-Epson ink) or do you just insist on printing with your custom Epson paper profiles?

Have you cleaned the print heads and printed a test pattern? This won't make any difference if you can get successful prints from other applications, but just checking.

Your ink is low...

kirk

How did you create the custom profile? PSCS5 / OSX don't play that nicely there…
(It's a "feature" apparently)

http://kb2.adobe.com/c​ps/834/cpsid_83497.htm​l
http://blogs.adobe.com …tility-for-photoshop.html

I've had some issues with my R2880 not being found or not knowing what ink was installed on OSX 10.6.8. Resetting the printing system and then re-installing the printer worked for me on those occasions. You will loose al settings however. (OSX > System prefs > Print & fax, right click in the list, reset)

And there's this: http://www.josephholme​s.com …photoshopCS5pri​nting.html

Lion might not be the best idea either: http://macperformanceg​uide.com …lls-PrintingProblems.html

Latest driver is v8.64. : http://www.epson.com …e/support/suppo​rtLion.jsp

Kirk and René, thanks for your response.
I'm familiar with all the print dialog options and haven't made any mistakes there. There is no issue with the printer hardware, nor with the papers, trust me. The initial problem was related to the custom profile because the image (all images) printed OK with the Epson profile. Soft proofing revealed that the initial problem was probably not the profile itself, even though I have not sent it to X-Rite for analysis, but somewhere in the software/OS pipeline-- as mentioned, PS was evidently not turning off color management when using that profile, as the prints looked double-profiled. I have a hunch the issue may have had something to do with the "App-set" feature of ColorMunki, which is designed to tell CreativeSuite what profile to use.

I was using a custom profile, created with ColorMunki because when I first started using the 3880 I received superior results with that profile than the Epson. More accurate color, which was esp. important printing extremely subtle grayed tones in the architectural renderings I do for my boss. And my personal photos also came out better.

That said, I've deleted that profile and the ColorMunki app, I'm using the latest Epson driver, re-installed, etc. The attachment above shows the specific issue that I'm trying to resolve now: note the grayed-out (unavailable) settings for Print Mode and Color Mode. The former is especially troubling because it won't allow me to choose Advanced Black & White mode and use the excellent controls Epson has built into that driver for b&w printing.

I was also familiar with the Adobe post on their removing No Color Management from the PS printing options. (That may effectively make the ColorMunki print profiling useless, as I believe their software only allows you to print a test chart from that program, not use a standard test strip printed outside it. At this point, I don't care, especially since Epson may have improved their profiles.)

I feel better that I can at least have all functionality printing out of LR, but I need to print out of PS as well. As mentioned, I have the same system at work, and have no problem with the print dialog with even the CM profile installed on that system.
I guess I will be calling Adobe and Epson again today, I saw something somewhere about resetting PS settings by holding down keys at start-up, maybe that will do it. Re-installing did not, maybe I'll also try (again) to delete and re-select my printer in Snow Leopard.

If I get this straightened out I will post it-- maybe I can prevent someone else from dealing with this frustration and waste of time.

Note: René, thanks for posting the Joseph Holmes article. It looks like I have one of those bugs, and I'll be trying one of his work-arounds. It shouldn't be this hard...

Since I don't use the ColorMunki I can't really help there, but it sounds like the software that is installed with it controls some communication with other apps that may be causing a problem?

Good luck, this stuff is frustrating.

kirk