Print Studio Pro not working with XPS printer driver

[PeterD]

After changing to Windows 10 OS I'm finding the Print Studio Pro software will not print when the 16 bit XPS driver is selected. When the final print command is given the image data loading indicator loads and then the program feezes and doesn't allow the user to cancel printing or exit the program and a reset of the PC is required to exiit the program.  

With the same software and image file the printing proceeds normally if the standard PRO100 printer driver (8 bit type) is selected.

It is possible to print a Windows test sheet using the XPS driver straight from the Windows printer driver test facility but printing fails when the image is loaded into Adobe CS5 and then opened in the Canon Print Studio Pro plug in for printing.

Currently I'm using the updated drivers  (Canon Pro100 and Pro100 XPS) for Windows 10 and Print Studio Pro version 1.4.1 for Windows 10.

[PeterD]

Further to my last post regarding freezing of Print Studio Pro when attempting to print using the XPS driver (16 bit) I can advise that I have also since installed the latest version (vers 2.0.0 for Windows 10) and find that the fault I'm experiencing remains unchanged from vers 1..4.1 (updated for Windows 10).

Both versions of this software enable 8 bit printing using the standard driver vers 1.05 (for Windows10)  but freeze on the final print command if the XPS 16 bit driver (vers 5.85a)  is used. 

[ebiggs1]

My Win 10 also locked up when I first tried the XPS driver but I re-downloaded it.  Reinstalled it.  It now works as it should.

I am using Photoshop 6 and Lightroom 6.3.  I rarely use the Canon software but the XPS driver works with it also.

As to the question, it is better?  In a word, yes, it is.  But it isn't better for every print.  I also use AdobeRGB.   Is it better?  In a word, yes, it is.  Will you see it one every print? No, you won't.  Prints are too different and subjective.

If the print has a lot of blue for instance, the graduation between shades is smoother.  The AdobeRGB color space maybe larger than the range of the Pro-100 but the steps between shades in the colors it can produce is smoother.  It is more gradual.

It is slight, I admit but there never-the-less.

Delete all your drivers. Completely! You must get rid of every trace of the old driver.  If you don't it will still fail.  Reinstall new d/ls.  Do not turn on the printer until you are told to do so.  BTW, Task Mgr, will/should shut down the XPS lock up instead of a computer restart.

[PeterD]

Hi ebiggs1,

Great to hear from someone who has experienced the same problem as I currently have.

Thank you very much for your interest and suggestions to resolve the issue.

I did in fact uninstall the drivers using "control panel" as recommended in the Canon driver notes accompanying the software.

According to them the XPS driver can only be removed by this method if the standard driver is removed, ie. removal of the XPS driver by itself is not an option. I also checked under "device manager" that the Pro100 printer option had been removed.

I then reinstalled the latest drivers and do recall disconnecting and reconnecting the printer USB cable as part of this proceedure.

It is possible I made a mistake though and didn't follow exactly the same proceedure for the instalation of the XPS driver (also there were frequent interuptions to my internet connection during the day that I did the downloads) so I'll repeat the whole proceedure soon and report back to this forum.

[PeterD]

Sadly I've done the uninstall and reinstall to the best of my ability two more times following all the recommended proceedures regarding disconnecting the printer etc., all without success. 

BTW I've also found that once the printer freezes just after the final print box is ticked in the PSP program it is not possible to cancel the printing of the document from the Windows Device Manager as it seems to be stuck in a spooling loop and only a shut down or restart of the OS seems to unfreeze the program.

Interestingly I can print an XPS driver test page from the Canon utility "My Printer" troubleshooter and it shows all 5 possible eroors that it can diagnose are clear of problems.

I'll contact my Canon national agent here in New Zealand when they return from the holiday break to see if they can unravel this problem. All the driver updates etc that I've loaded for Windows 10 are from the Canon NZ website so should not conflict with my printer.

[jrhoffman75]

This doesn't solve your problem Peter, but I have tested direct Lightroom printing with regular and XPS driver and Lightroom through PSP with regular and XPS driver.

I could see no difference in print quality. This is consistent with many threads on the Internet.

[PeterD]

Thanks for that observation John.

Possibly the best article I've read on the subject of 16 bit verses 8 bit printing is this one by Mike Chany :

http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/hype-or-hero-take-2-16-bit-printers.html

It would appear that the saturated cyan/green are the colours to look out for when comparing prints, even so the limitations imposed at the image capture end (camera sensor) of the whole process look likely to have already limted what is available in the image file for that part of the colour spectrum.

A print I made recently using the 8 bit driver and featuring mainly yellow to red colours with greys and light blues in the sky part of the image is indistinguishable from the older 16 bit image that I made before changing the OS to Windows 10.

Both prints where made with a colour space of  Adobe RBG1998  (16 bit tiff) and I've yet to see what happens if the colour space is expanded to Adobe Pro Photo for printing.

The new 2.0.0 version of Studio Print Pro does have some nice addtional features including a soft proofing tick box option that clearly shows the difference between Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric rendering for example.

[jrhoffman75]

Interesting article Peter.

I do almost all my editing and all my printing using Lightroom. With that workflow I agree with ebiggs1 that PSP adds very little to the game.

But, many posts on the forum deal with printing from Photoshop. Based on the informative PS printing guide posts by ebiggs1 PS looks more complicated. Adding in Mac OS increases that. PSP does a great job of ensuring all the correct "switches" are thrown.

But, like almost any plugin, it doesn't do anything an experienced user can't do.

It just saves reinventing the wheel. At least in my opinion.

[ebiggs1]

Not being a Mac user, you guys have it all over me there.  But I suppose growing old with PS helps.  I will say Canon is making improvements in both DPP and PSP.  Some are very good. They just can't seem to get over the top.

[PeterD]

Hi again ebiggs1,

As you seem to have been having sucess with Windows 10  and the XPS driver I have to ask whether you are using CS6 in Windows 7  compatability mode or straight with Winows 10 (it is a feature of Windows 10 that you can run older programs with a previous wersion of Windows OS). I'm currently running CS5 and Adobe support for that version stopped ages ago.

Also I got a message window during the reinstallation of the Canon standard printer driver that informed my that the the software was removing a previous driver version. This seemed at odds with the fact that I'd already manually removed the previous driver using "control panel" and checked that the Canon Pro 100 printer was no longer showing in the Device Manager section of the OS.

The Canon software consultant here in New Zealand was encouraging me to contact Microsoft for their thoughts on the driver removal issue.

Microsoft's technical advice was to check that my motherboard drivers (and even the Bios) were compatable with Windows 10.

The plot thickens.