I was a QImage user up until 2007, when I switched to Mac, and started printing out of Lightroom. I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard, and discovered that Epson has not actually released a compatible driver for my antiquated Epson R1800. So I installed VMWare and Windows 7 on my Mac, and have gone back to QImage.

Before the Snow Leopard upgrade, printing with the Epson driver's color management turned off, and the correct paper profile selected in Lightroom, my prints matched my Spyder-calibrated screen quite well.

Now, printing out of QImage under Windows, the driver set to ICM/Off, and QImage using the correct icc profile, my prints are coming out a good stop darker than my screen. But, if I tell QImage to let the driver manage color, and use Epson Vivid with gamma 1.8, the brightness level is just about right (note that my monitor is calibrated to a gamma of 2.2).

Any ideas what is going on? I did some searching here, and it looks like the standard answer to "my prints are too dark" is "your monitor is too bright", but trust me, it is properly calibrated, and again, when I had a working driver on the Mac side, printing with an icc workflow worked just fine, so I think there is something else going on.