Low Contrast, Desaturated Results from Printer profiles

“Gee Whiz…If I only had a brain…” - The Scarecrow

There must be something fundamental that I’m missing here. All printer profiles I have made with Monaco EZColor produce low contrast, desaturated images both in Colorworks and in print. I have disabled color management in the drivers for both my scanner (Microtek 1000XL) and printer (Epson Stylus Pro 3800), and have done my best to follow every instruction in the EZColor User Guide. My EZColor monitor profile is installed with Monaco Gamma, Adobe Gamma has been disabled, and the ambient light conditions are set to the proper levels.

I created a test image in Photoshop Elements 3.0 and saved it with the imbedded Adobe RGB profile. The image looks fine in Photoshop Elements 3.0. When I read the file into ColorWorks with Source Profile = (Embedded) RGB 1998, and Printer Profile set to the profile I created with EZColor, the image is very low contrast and generally “washed out.”

I’ve never felt more stupid in my life.