Trying to move away from Sawgrass...

It does seem odd, ICC profiles are universal, photoshop is available for OSX obviously, and so are the Epson drivers.
So where are things going ŵrong, and are they still, or have Apple fixed it?

I've dropped you a quick PM with a link to try the software. Clearly we need to clarify the support on the Epson through the Mac, I'm assuming that Ink Experts can't offer their support (just PC) but no reason why the printer shouldn't work?

Be good if InkExperts could chip in here with an explanation on what the issue is with OSX.

Good idea, I've tagged them into the thread.

I had emailed them and received a response yesterday saying:

'Macs that have been updated past Catalina can no longer make use of ICC profiles correctly'

and advising against one of their Epson bundles if using a Mac unfortunately. When I updated to Catalina my prints on the Sawgrass SG400 went completely haywire so I know it was an issue. I was sent the Color Sync profiles to use with it though and from then on it was fine - so it recognised and utilised those profiles ok so I don't know why it can't recognise other profiles. I'm now updated to Ventura and was still using these profiles with no issues - until I upgraded to the SG500 ��

How do everyone? It's Christian from Ink Experts.

Happy New Year to you all!

The Mac conversation is a long and arduous one, so I'll try to condense it down as best as possible.

Mac update OS every year, and in doing so always change the way printers operate thanks to some new fangled code.
This wouldn't be an issue if Apple sent out an SDK of these changes to various manufacturers before release so they can develop new drivers and make sure products work as intended on day one.

However this doesn't happen, and every September we would be imploring all Mac users not to update their machines as it would cause colour issues, or would completely wipe out their drivers leaving their printer useless.

The wait for new drivers to be developed could take as long as 6 months (here's looking at you 1500W), and caused grief for all parties involved.

We'd do our best to work around this every year, until one year Catalina completely messed with us.

Apple changed the directory that profiles needed to be installed to, and it took some figuring out, even by Adobe!
On top of that, the old drivers went haywire thanks to a shift to 64bit and new drivers were required to ensure the printers worked as normal.

Manufacturers couldn't keep up with the new changes, and drivers took a long time to come out which left everyone who had updated stuck with an expensive paperweight. Bad times.

It took 6 months, multiple updates, and long hours to get everything working as normal again, and we did it, despite my thinning hairline. Good times.

But, just as we did they released the next version of OS... Big Sur. Dark times.

The big kicker with this one was ColorSync, Apple's colour handling program, would no longer switch off entirely to allow an ICC full control over what was being printed, and this is still occurring in the latest version of OS.

Oh, you can click to turn it off in nearly all print programs, but check your system logs. That bugger is still running.

The next bit is speculation on my part, but it comes from 3 years of personally testing all updates on our Mac with an ET2714 that we get perfect prints out of from Windows.
We use this to compare how prints should look, to how a Mac makes them look.

So...

ColorSync now "helps" photographers get the best print quality out of their Mac by adjusting prints on the fly.

That's great when your final product is a printed sheet of paper, but when your actual final product is a sublimate that has ink transferred to it from that printed sheet, we run into an issue.

When printing anything with a sublimation printer, your prints have been adjusted by ColorSync to make your printed sheet look "nice" when it comes out, but when you press this to your mug/t-shirt/acrylic/etc, those colours change drastically and no longer look accurate.

The whole purpose of your ICC is being wiped out due to what the program thinks is best, and there's nothing we have found that you can do about it natively.

For 3 very long years of testing...

Don't get me wrong, we have found work arounds because that's what we do, but those work arounds aren't what we would deem accessible for end users, and require a fair bit of tech savviness.
They're a pain, and require you to install virtual desktops or dual boot your system into running Windows, and really, at that point why bother?
A Windows laptop can be picked up cheaper than a Virtual Machine program and Windows license.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

We still have our coffee stained Macbook, running the latest updates, and I'm still testing not only different software and updates, but with profiling directly on the Mac trying to find some way of getting these things to work natively again.

It's got to be possible, as Sawgrass have their PM working on Mac, but if you're saying colours on this are awful now too I still have my doubts that this problem can be overcome without help from Apple.
Plainly put, you've got a snowballs chance in hell of getting them to lift a finger for the likes of us.

TL;DR

Printers physically work on a Mac as the drivers are available, but colour correction using an ICC does not work.

ColorSync refuses to shut off entirely and messes with your colour correction.

You can manually alter settings in your driver to achieve passable prints, but this changes with each print and is a long process to keep repeating. It's not recommended.

Running Windows on your Mac is an option, but kind of defeats the purpose.

For all of these reasons, and more I've not gone into, we had to make the hard choice of discontinuing Mac support as of November 2020.

I'll continue to work on the issue, but I can't with good conscience tell you all a fix will come soon, or even at all.

To save everyone a headache, and to keep what little I have left of my hair, I wholeheartedly implore sublimation users to use Windows until that fabled day of Mac support comes.

Brilliant response Christian, thank you for taking the time to do this.

I don't want to open up the whole Apple/Windows debate...who am I kidding of course I do! but it does leave me questioning why users would be loyal to the OS when Apple are making it so very difficult for their customers.

I guess if you must design on a Mac you need to export to a PC or as Christian mentions, run Windows inside your Mac OS which always makes me chuckle :-)

Hi Chris

Thanks for this - you've explained it very succinctly. It's so frustrating for us, God knows what it must be like for you having customers asking for help all the time!

It's so annoying when you've been working for years and trying to run a business only for something to go so wrong - I don't think Sawgrass have helped with forcing people to use the SPM. I am totally set up on Macs, I much prefer them to PC's, I have to have a PC set up for another type of printer and software and I hate it - it's so clunky. But we don't use this set up that often so it's ok to just transfer the files when we need to but for sublimation it would be way too much hassle. Looks like I'm going to have to look into getting rid of one of the Macs and setting us up on a decent PC.

Thanks again for your help

Hello there,
Does this mean that if I run macOS Mojave (10.14, the final macOS that runs 32-bit app), say under Parallels, would give me the ability to apply ICC or to have better print output?

My understanding on ICC for macOS Catalina (10.15) and later needs to be under users' profile.
~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

If you're using Mojave then colour correction still works as intended.

You may be limited to the models of printer you can use due to drivers/DMG, but you can follow our Mac guides here;

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...skGdQqIzY9Hdah