LumaPrint — Fine-Art Print Layout Color Studio

LumaPrint is a fine-art print layout, live softproofing, and 16-bit color management application for Linux, written in Rust. Inspired by Epson Print Layout and TurboPrint Composer, it combines a studio-style layout workflow with ICC color management (LittleCMS 2) and CUPS / IPP integration.

Warning

Beta. Developed and tested on Fedora (KDE Plasma, Wayland) with an Epson SureColor SC-P900 and the companion driver epson-p900-escpr-cups. Verified so far with real prints: ICC color management (relative colorimetric + BPC) and Advanced B&W Photo on Epson Photo Paper Glossy, A4. The data sent to the printer was compared with Epson Print Layout captures (see below). Other printers, drivers and layout modes are implemented but less tested.

LumaPrint is printer-independent and works out of the box with any printer installed in CUPS (such as the custom Epson SureColor SC-P900 epson-p900-escpr-cups driver, Gutenprint, vendor PPDs, or IPP Everywhere queues), while automatically preventing double color management between the application and the printer driver.

Documentation

Online manual: English | Deutsch

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Quickstart

1. Supported Systems & Prerequisites (Linux)

• Distributions: Developed and tested on Fedora 43/44 (KDE Plasma 6); works on Debian 13+, Ubuntu 24.04+, Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and other modern Linux distributions.
• Display Server (lumaprint GUI): Wayland (recommended: native wide-gamut wp_color_manager_v1 support under KDE Plasma 6 / KWin >= 6.2 and native Wayland file drag-and-drop) and X11. lumaprint-cli runs headless without a display server.
• CUPS: >= 2.3 (lp, lpstat, lpoptions, ipptool).
• Rust Toolchain: >= 1.85 (Rust 2024 Edition).

Install pkg-config, LittleCMS 2 (liblcms2), and standard Wayland/X11/OpenGL development headers:

# Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config liblcms2-dev libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev libgl1-mesa-dev cups-client

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install gcc pkgconf-pkg-config lcms2-devel wayland-devel libxkbcommon-devel mesa-libGL-devel cups-ipptool

# Arch Linux / Manjaro
sudo pacman -S base-devel pkgconf lcms2 wayland libxkbcommon mesa libcups

2. Launch or Install the Desktop Studio (lumaprint)

Install the .deb (Debian/Ubuntu) or .rpm (Fedora/openSUSE) package from GitHub Releases (includes lumaprint, lumaprint-cli, desktop entry, icons, and the offline English & German HTML manuals):

# Fedora / openSUSE (.rpm):
sudo dnf install ./lumaprint-*.x86_64.rpm

# Debian / Ubuntu (.deb):
sudo apt install ./lumaprint_*_amd64.deb

Or build and start directly from a source checkout:

cargo run --release -p lumaprint

# Or install into ~/.local/bin and ~/.local/share for the current user:
./bin/install-desktop              # builds --release and installs into ~/.local/{bin,share}
./bin/install-desktop --uninstall  # removes the installed files

3. Your First Fine-Art Print in 4 Steps

(The UI defaults to English and automatically switches to German on German systems; switchable anytime under Settings → Language.)

1. Add Images to the Pool: Click ➕ Add (➕ Hinzufügen) in the Image Pool dock (or drag & drop image files/folders directly from your file manager into the window).
2. Place Images on Sheets: Drag an image from the Pool onto the dashed slot on Sheet 1, or click 🪄 Distribute to Sheets (🪄 Auf Bögen verteilen) to automatically distribute all unplaced images across one or more print sheets.
3. Select Printer, Paper & Color Mode:
   • In the right Print (🖨 Print) dock, choose your CUPS printer queue, Media Type (including custom media imported from ep-media-installer (epmi)), Paper Size, and Paper Feed.
   • Under Color Management, stay in Normal view for automatic, foolproof operation:
     • Color-Managed (ICC Paper Profile) (Farbverbindlich (ICC-Papierprofil)): LumaPrint transforms the 16-bit image using the paper's ICC profile (Relative Colorimetric + Black Point Compensation) and instructs the CUPS driver to disable internal color adjustment (NoColorAdjustment).
     • Printer Auto (Drucker-Automatik): Sends the image in Adobe RGB (1998) and lets the printer driver perform color conversion (automatically switches to ICC mode if you select third-party custom media or enable Softproof).
   • Switch to Advanced (Erweitert) if you need Advanced B&W Photo (ABW), manual ICC profile selection, custom rendering intents, or raw Calibration (No Color Management) targets.
4. Softproof, Print, or Export:
   • Toggle 👁 Softproof (with optional Paper White simulation, viewing light D50 / D65 / 3200K, and ⚠ Gamut Warning) in the top toolbar to preview how the print will look on your specific paper.
   • In the sticky footer at the bottom right, choose [ 🖨 Print ] to verify printer reachability and spool at native 720 DPI to CUPS, or switch to [ 💾 Export ] to export 16-bit TIFF/PNG sheets (300 / 360 / 720 / 1440 dpi).

4. Headless CLI Quickstart (lumaprint-cli)

Every feature of the layout and color engine is also accessible without a GUI via lumaprint-cli:

# Show detected CUPS printers, media database, and ICC profiles
cargo run -p lumaprint-cli -- info
cargo run -p lumaprint-cli -- printers

# Render a 16-bit ICC color-managed print sheet to a TIFF file (720 DPI)
cargo run --release -p lumaprint-cli -- render \
  --input photo.tif \
  --paper A4 \
  --media VelvetFineArt \
  --color icc \
  --intent relative \
  --dpi 720 \
  --output sheet_a4_720dpi.tif

# Send a print job directly to a CUPS printer queue
cargo run --release -p lumaprint-cli -- print \
  --printer Epson_SC_P900 \
  --input photo.tif \
  --paper A3+ \
  --media PremiumLuster \
  --color icc \
  --dpi 720

# Query live printer status and ink levels over IPP
cargo run -p lumaprint-cli -- status --host 192.168.178.50

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Companion Projects & Version Compatibility

While LumaPrint works with any CUPS printer (Gutenprint, TurboPrint, vendor PPDs, IPP Everywhere), it forms a complete Fine-Art printing suite on Linux together with two companion Rust projects for Epson SureColor printers:

Project	Version	Compatible With	Role
LumaPrint (this repository)	0.1.x	Any CUPS queue epson-p900-escpr-cups >= 0.3.0 ep-media-installer >= 0.1.0	Printer-independent 16-bit Fine-Art print layout, live softproofing, and Advanced B&W studio
epson-p900-escpr-cups	0.3.x	LumaPrint >= 0.1.0 ep-media-installer >= 0.1.0 Any CUPS client	Native Rust CUPS filter (rastertop900escpr), dynamic PPD generator, and privileged helper for Epson SureColor SC-P900 / SC-P700
ep-media-installer (epmi)	0.1.x	epson-p900-escpr-cups >= 0.3.0 LumaPrint >= 0.1.0	CLI & GUI (epmi-gui) for managing the printer's 30 NVRAM custom media slots via SNMP, .emx / cloud media, and system-wide ICC profiles

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Key Features

Multi-Page Image Pool & Sheet Workflow

• Non-Destructive Image Pool: Load individual 8-bit/16-bit TIFF, PNG, JPEG, or PPM files or entire directories into the Pool without cluttering your active sheet. Usage badges (○ Unplaced, ● Placed (S1), ● 2× (S1, S3)) track where each image is placed.
• Multi-Sheet Navigator & Light-Table (⊞ All Sheets): Work on a single sheet in detail (▢ Single Sheet) or switch to the multi-sheet light-table overview (Ctrl+2) to drag & drop images across slots and sheets.
• Freely Configurable Docks: Drag & drop the Image Pool and Sheet List docks by their tab headers to dock them on the left, right (tabbed), bottom inside the canvas, or full-width across the bottom; collapse any edge with F8 / F9 / F10.

5 Studio Layout Modes & 2-Stage Template Studio

• Standard (Single Image): Size by Margins or exact Image Size with proportional aspect-ratio locking, one-click centering, custom frame borders (mm + custom color palette), and borderless printing (Auto-Expand Min/Mid/Max vs. Retain Size).
• Collection Sheet (Free Composer): Place up to 25 images of arbitrary physical sizes (9×13, 10×15, 13×18, or custom mm) on a sheet with automatic 2D bin-packing and multi-sheet overflow balancing.
• Template & 2-Stage Template Studio:
  • Stage 1 (Grid & Bento Wizard): Configure an $N \times M$ grid with exact outer margins and gutters, then select adjacent cells on the canvas to merge (🔗 Merge) or split (✂ Split) into custom Bento layouts.
  • Stage 2 (Free Slot Editor): Unlock free positioning and 8-handle resizing with magnetic alignment snapping and exact millimeter input (X, Y, Width, Height).
  • Supports corner crop marks and automatic slot captions (#01, filename, dimensions).
• Gallery Wrap: Calculates required paper dimensions, frame depth, back-wrap margin, corner cut marks, and 6 edge-wrap modes (None, Solid Color, Mirror, Mirror with Soft Shadow/Blur, Extend Image, Extend Image with Soft Shadow/Blur).
• Panorama: Roll-paper and banner printing with automatic length calculation.

16-Bit Color Management (liblcms2), Wayland Wide-Gamut & Advanced B&W (ABW)

• 16-Bit Pipeline: Images are decoded, scaled, toned and color-converted in 16 bit with LittleCMS 2 (liblcms2), supporting ICC v2 and v4 profiles (including mAB / mBA LUT-based profiles of third-party fine-art papers). Embedded source profiles are converted via their real colorants and tone curves. Only the final spool image is rounded to 8 bit, because CUPS raster and the printer protocol carry 8 bits per channel.
• Compared With Epson Print Layout: Print jobs captured from LumaPrint and from Epson Print Layout (Windows) on the same chart: identical printer command headers; ICC mode deviates by 0.16 of 255 levels on average (max. 3), Advanced B&W by about 0.5 (EPL uses the Windows color engine for its sRGB conversion). Side-by-side prints show no visible difference.
• Native Wayland Color Management (wp_color_manager_v1): Automatically detects wide-gamut displays (Adobe RGB, Display P3, sRGB) under KDE Plasma / KWin Wayland and tags the window surface so your monitor displays its full native color gamut without sRGB clipping.
• Live Softproof & Gamut Check: Real-time proofing transform (cmsCreateProofingTransformTHR) with optional Paper White simulation (tinting both the image and the surrounding sheet canvas to match warm cotton/baryta papers), viewing light temperature (D50 5000K, D65 6500K, Gallery Warm 3200K), and out-of-gamut overlay.
• Advanced B&W Photo (ABW): Interactive 2D tone wheel, presets (Neutral, Cool, Warm, Sepia), tonal curve controls, shadow/highlight toning, max optical density, and Highlight Point Shift (places trace ink on pure white to eliminate gloss differential). With epson-p900-escpr-cups the toning runs in the printer firmware like in Epson Print Layout (EpsonColorMode=AdvancedBW + EpsonAbw* options); other drivers get LumaPrint's software toning.

Everyday Comfort

• Settings are kept across restarts (~/.config/lumaprint/settings.json): printer, paper, quality, color settings, theme, presets, custom media and templates.
• Original size: The resolution stored in TIFF, JPEG and PNG files is read, so an image can be placed at its original print size with one click.
• Delete key removes the selected image from its slot or from the pool; undo restores it.

Generic System Printer (CUPS) & IPP Integration

• Automatic Queue & PPD Discovery (lumaprint-cups): Reads installed queues (lpstat), supported paper sizes, media types, input slots, resolutions, and *cupsICCProfile rules directly from /etc/cups/ppd/<queue>.ppd and lpoptions.
• Automatic Double-Color-Management Protection: Detects the driver family (epson-p900-escpr-cups / Epson, Gutenprint, TurboPrint, generic CUPS) and passes the exact flags (EpsonColorMode=NoColorAdjustment, StpColorCorrection=None, zedoColorCorrection=0, cm-calibration=true) when LumaPrint manages color.
• Custom Media Integration: Reads the system paper database that ep-media-installer installs (“Install for this computer”: /etc/epson-p900-escpr-cups/custom_media.json, ICC profiles in /usr/local/share/color/icc/epson-p900-custom/; development override $EPSON_P900_CUSTOM_MEDIA_JSON) and passes UserMediaID, PrintDuty, DryingTime, BottomEdgePriority, and RubbingReduction to CUPS.
• Pre-Flight Reachability & Post-Spool Verification: Verifies that the target CUPS queue is enabled and network printers (ipp://, ipps://, socket://, http://, lpd://) are reachable via TCP before rendering, and cancels stuck jobs immediately if the CUPS backend reports the printer offline.
• Generic IPP Status (lumaprint-ipp): Queries live printer state and ink/toner marker levels (marker-names, marker-levels, marker-colors) over IPP (RFC 8011).

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Architecture (L0–L6 Layered Workspace)

LumaPrint enforces a strict, dependency-acyclic layered architecture where the core engine is 100% independent of the GUI:

Layer	Crate	Responsibility
L0	crates/i18n	Bilingual UI localization (English / Deutsch)
L0	crates/geom	Physical units (mm, inch, pt, px at DPI), paper size catalog, aspect-ratio fitting, and layout geometry
L1	crates/color	16-bit buffers (ImageBuffer16), 16→8-bit conversion, and Advanced B&W (ABW) synthesis
L1.5	crates/cms	ICC v2/v4 profile parsing, LittleCMS 2 (liblcms2) 16-bit transforms, softproofing, paper-white adaptation, and gamut checking
L2	crates/codecs	Lossless 8/16-bit TIFF, PNG, JPEG, and PPM decoding/encoding with embedded ICC profile extraction and DPI metadata
L3	crates/doc	Serializable print job document model (PrintJobDocument), media database, color settings, export settings, and user backup
L3.5	crates/layout	Sheet layout solver for Standard, Collection Sheet (bin-packing), Template (Bento/Free), Gallery Wrap, and Panorama
L4	crates/render	16-bit high-DPI print & export compositor and wide-gamut screen preview renderer
L4	crates/cups	CUPS queue discovery, PPD parser, custom media loader, reachability verifier, and lp spooler
L4	crates/ipp	Generic IPP (RFC 8011) client for live printer status and ink/toner levels
L5	crates/engine	Stateful Session, undo/redo history, command execution (EngineCommand), and media constraint solver
L6	crates/ui-egui	Hardware-accelerated egui/eframe desktop studio with Wayland color management (wp_color_manager_v1)
App	apps/lumaprint	Desktop GUI binary
App	apps/lumaprint-cli	Headless CLI binary for batch rendering, scripting, and CI testing

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Development & Verification

# Run the full test suite across all workspace crates
cargo test --workspace

# Run strict Clippy lints (zero warnings policy)
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings

Troubleshooting

• Inspecting CUPS filter logs: Enable verbose logging with sudo cupsctl --debug-logging and watch sudo journalctl -u cups -f (or /var/log/cups/error_log).
• Custom media from ep-media-installer do not appear: Click “Install for this computer” in epmi-gui (or run epmi install-system) so /etc/epson-p900-escpr-cups/custom_media.json and the queue PPDs are updated, then click 🔄 next to the printer selector in LumaPrint.
• SELinux (Fedora / RHEL): Check for denials with sudo ausearch -m avc -ts recent and restore contexts via sudo restorecon -RFv /etc/epson-p900-escpr-cups /usr/local/share/color/icc/epson-p900-custom.

Third-Party Code

vendor/winit is a patched copy of winit 0.30.13 (Apache-2.0, see vendor/winit/LICENSE), used via [patch.crates-io]. The changes add native Wayland file drag-and-drop and reject unsupported drag-and-drop types; see the git history of vendor/winit.

Trademarks

Epson, SureColor and Epson Print Layout are trademarks of Seiko Epson Corporation; TurboPrint is a trademark of ZEDOnet. LumaPrint is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by these companies. Their names are used only to describe compatibility and the workflow LumaPrint is modeled after.

About the development

LumaPrint was developed with extensive help from AI. The code, the tests and the documentation were written by Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude under my direction. Requirements, design decisions, review and all tests with real hardware are my own.

License

LumaPrint is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version (GPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE.

The patched copy of winit in vendor/winit remains under its original Apache-2.0 license.