Apple and Adobe, Canon and Colormunki

Unwanted printed grey background
(A photo of the print)

With the printing of photographs gearing up to full production for my July exhibition, I have been rather concerned that a conflict between my Mac Pro, the new CS5 software, my colour management and my Canon Pro printer still wouldn't be resolved and I would again be wasting precious time, paper and ink. However, I think I can cautiously announce that the conflict has finally been resolved.

It all began last Autumn, when I upgraded both my computer and software but not my printer or colour management. All had been perfect prior to this, then post upgrade, my prints produced through Photoshop were sporting an unwanted ink-wasting grey background. Forums didn't seem to help but during an opportune visit to a Canon trade show in October, I posed the problem to the printer gurus who were equally perplexed. However, isn't there always the over-the-shoulder ear-wigger who has 'the' clever answer but not solution?
"Apple and Colormunki conflict!"

Now, we have to admit that we all do it. Push problems to the back, try to forget about it or work around it, and it might just go away because we don't want to be bothered with it. That was me! I did manage to work around it but it certainly didn't go away as back in January, I had another reason to have a go at trying to resolve it. This time I approached the Colormunki crowd who, after a lot of 'It's not us', sent me an email with a suggestion to change some profile settings but with no apparent success, yet anyway. I continued to work around it - until today, when I finally resolved to fix this frustrating issue once and for all. After all, eight months should be plenty of time to fix a problem- shouldn't it?

Who to try this time? Adobe. With nothing readily available on the forums, I grabbed the phone as I had the need to talk to a real person. After half an hour of music, Max was finally there to help me. She logged into my computer (big brother?) to watch how I sent work to print, thought for a while and suggested 'Try-this' (no.1)
No change to the print.
Then 'Try-this' (no.2)
Still no change.
So, after 1 hour and 8 minutes, Max was terribly sorry but there was no obvious solution to the problem. "Perhaps you should phone Apple?"

Did I phone Apple? Well, a dig around in an obscure corner of their on-line support page threw up the whole assortment of printer drivers coupled with reference to OSX Snow Leopard, and a disclaimer regarding third-party software. Hmmm, an issue here?

Five minutes later, driver downloaded, computer restarted, I tentatively fed yet another piece of paper into the printer, and 'hey presto', no grey background.

I'm certainly not going to waste time pointing any fingers - I've got around forty prints in a queue now.
Just hope my ink doesn't run out.

Finally, no grey background
(A photo of the print of the photo of the print!)

(This is for all those out there who might be suffering a similar issue right now and in the hope it might just help)