Printer Calibration help please

[davegraham]

Hi guys. I got a little problem here at the office and I'm outta ideas.

We bought a new printer since the one we had before died. Its an HP Photosmart C6100 All-In-One (i hate all-in-one printers, not my choice). Anyways, the problem is that our prints don't come out right. Here's the things I've tried:

-files are in CMYK format
-Gamut Warning has been checked
-I turned off any HP "color enhancements" (minor improvement with them off, but still way off)
-Changed the printer Color Profile to Adobe's 1998 (we use Photoshop 7... boss won't upgrade to CS3... :banghead: )
-did a Diagnostic print and Cleaned the Cartridge heads.

After all that our prints still look way darker than on-screen and the colors are off too, for example, instead of reddish wood, we get dark crap-brown. instead of a light beige color, we get like a toned down mustard yellow.

Hope you guys can help me out because this is really frustrating and HPs' website is useless.

it's a terrible inkjet printer, what can I say?

anyhow, PrintFIX Pro (http://www.colorvision.com/product-pp-pfps.php) looks like a solution and you can read over this thread (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t12775.html) to see that you're not alone in this problem.

If i can find anything else, I'll let ya know.

dave

EDIT: your printer isn't supported (based on this page (http://www.colorvision.com/pfplus_printers.php)) but i don't know if they might be able to better direct you via tech support. give 'em a holler.

[davijin]

your prints will always come out darker but the colors shouldnt be that far off. I have the lower model, the c5100, but they use the same printing system so the quality is the same on both of em. The prints I did were a little off but not much most of the difference is a little bit darker but thats it. I was using cs 2 so it may be possible since the 6100 is a newer printer that cs2's adobe color profile was able to match the colors better. It also could be the paper that you guys are using to print on, if you are using "advanced glossy HP paper" that will definatly change the colors of your prints too.

hey dave, it does look like his printer is supported, its the c6100 is a photosmart printer.

[evanfotis]

Desktop printers are not optimized for CMYK files. So no need to work in that colour space. Work in RGB, and use the ctrl+Y to check the colours.
Also, are both PS & printer using the adobe rgb colour profile?
As mentioned, prints will almost always come out dimmer/darker.
Its the medium, they are not backlit as a monitor is.
As long as you don't have major colour shifts etc.
The proper way to go though, is get a spider, which calibrates both monitor and printer using your enviromental lighting condintions.

[Clondike7]

thanks for the replies guys.

I knew the printer wasn't gonna be great, my boss just grabbed it in Cost Co. without asking me so I'm kinda stuck with it. And yeah I know prints are always slightly different from on-screen, but they aren't supposed to be so different. And I've tried different papers, 2 types of glossy and plain paper, its not the problem.

I'm pretty sure my only solution is the Spyder calibration system but my boss will never pay the $$$ for that. Ugh... I'll play around with the manual controls to see if i can get closer to whats on the screen.

thx again.

[davijin]

yeah a spyder should help, that printer is good but its not made to do professional print work. The designjet series are more ment for that but seeing that your boss seems how do you say? ahh yes. really cheap and the designjets start at about $1000 where as that printer can go on sale for about $250. even the highend photosmart pro printers like the B9180 even that retails at $699. I think the epsons pro line starts at about the same pricepoint. your probably going to have to play around with the settings in photoshop and come up with a formulaic solution that you can apply to all your renders.

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