Category Archives: Technique

Rosetta is dying

Mac Mini M4, OS X, Printing

But your old Brother laser printer does not have to.

Extensive reports from beta testers of Apple’s latest desktop operating system – Mac OS 27, or Golden Gate – suggested that the software was robust and reliable, so I updated from Mac OS 26 (Tahoe) to OS 27 the other day …. and promptly lost the use of my USB wired Brother HL-2300D laser printer.

Reading the Apple Community discussion board disclosed that Apple was no longer including Rosetta with Mac OS 27, and that old but reliable Brother printer used Intel era code to do its thing. Meaning it needs access to Rosetta.

Rosetta – some background:

Two CPU generations ago Apple’s hardware was running on IBM G-series CPUs – the G1 through G5. Apple’s notebook, the Powerbook, was widely regarded as the best laptop on the market and was running the G3 CPU. Steve Jobs wanted to up performance by installing the latest G5 but the CPU ran so hot that it was unusable, unless you liked a scorched lap. I recall owning a G5 iMac desktop and, indeed, it put my kitchen toaster to shame when it came to heat output. The fans would race to maximum under the most modest tasks. Not Apple’s proudest moment.

Anyway, Steve concluded that the IBM CPUs were …. err, toast, and migrated the hardware to Intel CPUs. Cooler, faster, cheaper. To aid in the migration Apple developed a brilliant piece of software named Rosetta, after the Rosetta Stone, whose multi-language engravings acted as a Greek-to-Egyptian hieroglyph dictionary. Hieroglyphs could now be understood. Apple’s smartly named Rosetta performed a like task in translating IBM G generation applications to Intel code, meaning that all those old G apps would run seamlessly on Intel machines. The performance penalty was minor and Rosetta ran completely invisibly. A nod in the direction of that old Apple marketing slogan, “It Just Works”. Eventually developers rewrote all their application to run natively on Intel CPUs and the need for Rosetta disappeared, meaning you forever lost the use of old apps which were never rewritten, though those were few and far between.

History repeats:

When Apple started developing its own desktop and laptop CPUs, Apple Silicon, meaning the M1 through M6 range, they crafted a new version of Rosetta which did for the Intel-to-Apple Silicon change what the original Rosetta did for IBM-to-Intel. Old Intel applications would run perfectly well on M CPU hardware, performing the translation task invisibly in the background. The seamless implementation testifies to some serious programming chops in Cupertino. As before, with most applications now rewritten to run on Apple Silicon, the need for Rosetta went away, so much so that Apple warned that Rosetta would no longer be shipped with Mac OS 27. And as that old Brother printer needs Rosetta to work, it ceased doing so.

The fix is simple, as this extract of the Apple Community discussion discloses. Install Rosetta.



From the Apple Community discussion board

The Terminal app can be found in the Utilities folder, and the whole process takes under a minute. And, Bingo!, my old Brother HL-2300D is as good as new. That printer is hard wired to my Mac Mini M4 and is no longer supported by Brother, so the chance that Brother will update the driver for Mac OS 27/Apple Silicon is exactly zero. But there’s no need to throw it away. Further it works perfectly well with dirt cheap aftermarket toner cartridges and I expect to get many more years from mine. Will Mac OS 28 include Rosetta as a downloadable option? Unlikely, but I’m confident some smart programmer will come up with a new fix.

Running old Intel-era applications:

If you have old Intel apps you like and if these were never rewritten for Apple Silicon, installing Rosetta in Mac OS 27 should allow them to continue functioning.

Lightroom use:

The current desktop version of Lightroom is Lightroom Classic. It requires an Apple Silicon CPU to work and I print using a wirelessly connected Epson ET8550 color ink jet printer. There are no issues using LRc with the ET8550 running Mac OS 27.

Hanging huge prints

Printing

Not a lot of fun.

Having mounted and framed the three 24″ x 36″ prints for my living room it came time to hang them. The post production time for printing, mounting, framing and hanging is a multiple of the time required to take and process the images, but there are no short cuts. Scrupulous cleanliness is dictated as even the smallest particle of grit will destroy the mounted print’s surface and white cotton gloves for handling everything are mandatory, if greasy fingerprints are to be avoided. In other words, the whole process is a royal pain.

First my son and I debated in which order the prints should be hung. After trying all the variations we decided on this:



Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

The print location is above three sets of louvered window shutters and we used a self-leveling laser level which projects a pair of 90 degree laser light lines on the wall, making alignment with the center of each pair of shutters a simple matter:



Laser level on the Linhof tripod.
A very tall ladder is involved.

As this location has a 19′ ceiling and we wanted the prints approximately half way up a very tall ladder was called for. Not much fun, I confess.

Here is the result after much struggling with this monster ladder, not to mention moving furniture around to accommodate it.



Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

A lot of work, with much fun finding the wildflowers in my community and photographing them, followed by hours of mirthless, hard labor to complete the project.

This will convey a sense of the enlargement ratio. I am holding the original of the Common Blanketflower in my right hand:



Holding the original and the print.

Making huge prints revisited

Printing

It’s a little easier now.

Over a decade ago I wrote about making a 36″ x 48″ print for wall display. You can read about that here. Now that was a bit of a cheat, really, as I had to assemble the final result from four tiled 18″ x 24″ prints, the largest my HP DJ90 could output. Still the result worked pretty well.

Today the largest my Epson ET8550 printer can manage is 13″ x 19″, and while that’s fine for most purposes, not to mention easy to mount, mat and frame, I recently got a hankering for something larger, and luckily have wall space to accommodate it.

The Postal Annex nearby recently installed two very large printers, a 44″ Canon and a 64″ Hewlett Packard, selling their services to those requiring large banners and posters. The HP, according to the proprietor, can print on vinyl paper for waterproof outdoor displays, but is limited to eight inks, whereas the Canon boasts no fewer than a dozen. Given that making very large prints is a once-a-decade exercise for me ownership of either of these monsters makes no sense (the HP costs a stunning $38,000), so when it came time to make three 24″ x 36″ prints I duly delegated the task and emailed the TIF files – each some 60mb in size – to Postal Annex. Four hours later saw the job completed and I was on my merry way home to attend to mounting and framing tasks, poorer for the modest sum of 3 x $45. Not at all bad, and the print quality, on Canon’s satin photographic paper, is everything one could wish for. Too bad they do not offer a glossy option.

Until mounted these prints are very fragile so the quicker this task is completed the better. I use 24.5″ wide mounting tissue and my Seal Jumbo 160M heated dry mounting press requires six ‘bites’ (90 seconds each @ 170F) to do the task after first tacking the print, tissue, and mount together using a heated tacking iron. The prices for a new press and iron are ridiculous, and given that’s there’s little to go wrong I recommend a search on eBay where the press can be found for $500 and the iron for under $50. Much of the cost of the press is for shipping as this whopper weighs a stout 60lbs. Repair parts for the press, should anything fail, are available. The press is now marketed under the D&K name, though it’s otherwise unchanged,



Six passes needed for a 24″ x 36″ print.
Release paper protects the print’s surface.

I opted for plain wooden frames with plexiglass – cheaper than glass and, more importantly, much lighter. Given that hanging the framed prints involves my least favorite pursuit – ladder time – light weight is an issue. The unstained pale wood contrasts nicely with the black backgrounds in my wildflower images. The plexiglass has a protective clear film on both sides and it does well to remember to remove this as it robs definition. Here’s the first of the three framed prints ready for hanging:



Ready for hanging.

After removing the pressed wood backing board I retain the print in the frame using a framing points driver tool. Owing to the thickness of the mounting board the backing board can no longer be installed, so a couple of hanging hooks is attached to the frame for the hanging wire.



Framing points replace the backing board, which no longer fits.
The hooks and wire came in this kit.

The all in cost of each framed print including printing and all framing materials is a reasonable $102, each.

Now it’s ladder time. Ugh!

Linhof Twin Shank Pro tripod

Technique

Über Alles.

I have been a contented user of a Linhof S168 tripod for some four decades. A sturdy support it weighs 6lbs 5.3oz. and you can see the extension in that link.

However, as I really need that tripod for display purposes in the home theater, when the opportunity came along to acquire a mint 1950s Linhof Twin Shank Pro for all of $125, I snapped it up. Weighting a light 7lb 2.0oz thanks to all alloy construction the dual shank cantilevered legs provide for just one extension and, with the center post extended that means a maximum of 73 3/4 inches from the low point of 29 1/2 inches. That’s good enough for basketballers, and while I used to be 6 feet tall age seems to be taking me down a bit. Anyway, it’s more than tall enough.



Tall enough.

All that was needed was a very thin swipe of silicone based Silglyde on the sliding parts to remove stiction. WD40 and related paraffin-based lubricants are probably not a good idea as they may rot the seals over time. Luckily the retractable rubber feet are in excellent shape, no cracks showing and a coat of rubber preservative on these is just what the doctor ordered.

The head has a 3/8″ thread and I use a heavy duty Artcise ball head atop. Despite the width of the Linhof’s mounting plate the controls on the head are easily accessed. The Linhof Twin-Shank Pro, without a head, retailed for $89.95 in 1957, which figures to $1,350 today and, indeed, Linhof still makes tripods which you and Elon Musk can find at B&H.

These Linhofs regularly turn up on the used market – they made a vast range – and if you can find one that has not been brutalized in a pro’s studio at a good price I say “Go for it”.

Epson ET-8550 – troubleshooting

Epson ET8550

A period of no use sees issues.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

Having upgraded (meaning Adobe forced me to upgrade using a strategy of planned Mac hardware obsolescence) to the subscription version of Lightroom, I went to print a favorite image the other day and everything was wrong. The 13″ x 19″ print shot out in seconds and what little color there was in the printed image was completely wrong.

The problems were twofold.

First, Adobe managed to lose all my preferred printer settings on the upgrade to the latest version of Lightroom. In the print module LR switched to Print Job->Color Management->Managed by Printer. This is exactly wrong. What you want is for Lightroom to manage color, not the Epson printer. This permits use of the right paper profile for the printing paper used. It means you control – through Lightroom – color matching rather than having some unknown profile used by the Epson printer. Here’s what you want to see:



The color profile is the one for Canson Photogloss Premium RC paper.

You can check that LR is using this profile in the Print module by going to Printer->Printer Options->Color Matching, where you will see two options, neither selectable (both are greyed out) with ColorSync being the selected option, thus:



ColorSync is invoked by Lightroom.

Click ‘OK’ NOT ‘Cancel’ to make sure this setting remains undisturbed. Next, click on Print Settings and you should see:



Print Settings after dialing in the correct Paper Source, Media Type
and Print Quality. All three were incorrect.

Now in that same dialog box click on Advanced Color Settings. You should see:



Confirmation that the printer is NOT controlling color.

So now I had LR set up for the right paper, paper source and paper specific profile, but the print quality was still awful.

Going to the touch control panel of the Epson ET-8550 go to Maintenance->Print Head Nozzle check, load some 8.5″ x 11″ plain paper in the second tray, and run the check. Mine came out showing bad clogging of both the Magenta and Grey print heads, disclosed by jagged lines in the print out. After running the Maintenance->Print Head Cleaning process twice, again using the touch screen on the printer, I finally got continuous lines for all six heads, thus:



Six clean ink nozzles, designated by continuous lines in the print.

Finally I checked Settings->Printer Settings->Bidirectional and, sure enough, either dastardly Adobe or dastardly Epson had switched this setting to ‘Bidirectional->On’, which is sub-optimal for best print quality, if faster. I switched Bidirectional ‘Off’ and had at it with LR. A couple of minutes later a pristine 13″ x 19″ print was lying on my desk:



Perfect printing once more. Leica M10, 135mm f/4 Elmar at f/8 – as good as lenses get.

So a conspiracy of errors – Adobe’s poor ‘upgrade’ engineering and the printer’s recent lack of use resulting in clogged ink nozzles – is the sort of thing to expect in that most fragile of hardware devices, the ink jet printer. In conclusion, if your printer has not been used for a few months, run a nozzle check using plain paper before inserting costly photo paper.