Epson L8180 (ET8550) no Ultra premium luster paper type

Ok, so do you suggest to use Ultra Glossy as paper type? Actually I would like to use Canson Luster paper, for which they provide an IICC profile and prescribe to use Epson Ultra Premium Luster as paper type

The paper type selection does a kind of pre-profiling the paper - it provides some information to the driver - which are mainly the ink limit for the coating - actually different ink limits - one as a total of all inks mixed and another parameter for each ink color. And the paper selection does a another kind of pre-profiling which is called linearization because the response of a paper coating is not linear over the ink density. So you can assume that an Epson Ultra Premium Glossy and an Premium Luster use the same data. It is getting more difficult when 3rd party suppliers get into the game - you are getting most likely valid information from serious suppliers but this can be quite different with produccts from other sales platforms. You for sure can profile all such papers individually but you may not get the most out of it since you may start with wrong parameters to start with the profiling. It's alawys about the gamut - the max color saturation you can acheive with a particular paper for all hues.

The german printer driver does not offer lustre paper either. I use the "premium semigloss" paper setting.

I'm starting to think it has been removed for some reasons everywhere. I tried to install the US driver but it seems exactly the same, and even tried to set the OS to English language with no luck. The firmware version is the same as listed on the japanese EPSON site, but no luster in the printer menu either, and I hope that the printer does not use geolocalization via internet.

Update from interaction with Italian EPSON support: completely useless and really disappointing! The first level support continued to say that Luster paper is not supported (first everywhere, then only in Italy, then again everywhere), even if we know that several users have luster in their driver, and the US documentation report it! They were unable to explain why, if the paper is not supported, I have an ICC profile on my Mac specifically for ET-8500 and Luster paper installed by their software. They refused to pass me to second level support, and added that according to their technical office the driver could contain options "non available or not compatible with a printer" (???)

I will try using the semigloss as suggested.

Thanks to all, and keep away from EPSON support.

You should differentiate between color profiles and media settings in the driver.

The media settings are used to define how much ink is used, thickness of paper etc. The color profiles are used to get the best possible color rendition (mixture of base colors).

While there is a huge difference between "matte papers" and "glossy (coated) papers" concerning ink usage, this difference is mostly neglectable in between lustre/pearl/satin/semi matte. It's all smooth textured glossy material needing more or less the same amount of ink.

So using "premium semigloss" on "lustre" (or "satin" or "pearl"...) works perfectly fine.

Using a good color profile is mandatory non the less...

What you say it's very clear and reasonable. I would have expect such a reply from Epson. Probably they decided to simplify driver option and left only Semigloss. Nothing wrong, but they should say that in the manual. Otherwise why do they provide a profile for a paper with no suitable media setting? This is nonsense, as you said, as they account for different aspect. Wrong media setting -> possibly horrible prints (too much/too few ink). Wrong ICC -> possibly wrong colors.

I don't want to defend Epson's behavior.
They also only offer their own media to choose from. Then you just have to select the right paper and the corresponding color profile will be set automatically. Even beginners can manage this.

But for the advanced user this is not very intuitive. What is the difference between “Paper glossy”, “Ultra glossy” and “Premium glossy”? Same ink application but different color profiles?

Yes, but this is the point. They DO sell Premium Luster). They DO provide an ICC profile. But then there is no Premium Luster type? It seems to be a sort of bug, or some weird commercial strategy poorly implemented (i.e. at some point they decided to reserve Luster only to Pro printers, but forgot to remove the profile from the ET-8500 driver).

Just for curiosity, I compared the ICC profile provided by EPSON using and Hex editor and ColorSync Utility. All Glossy, Semigloss and Luster profiles are identical apart for the name of the file. I strongly doubt that all these profiles are from real profiling...