Color Issue With HP 7660/7760/7960

[conrad]

I recently purchased a HP 7660 printer, and had issues with color

printing similar to that reported by some others. In my case, the

prints had a red cast and were posterized. However, I think I got the

issues straightened out. If you have a 7760 or 7960 and have this

problem, this may help. Keep in mind that I am using Windows 2000 and

driver version 5.1, and my monitor and the image I was testing with

are both in the AdobeRGB color space. I never had an issue with B&W

from the start.

 

First, I pulled all the cartridges and dicsonnected USB and power.

Left it sit for a minute and reconnected the cables. I installed the

#57 and #58 carts and printed a test page. The test page came out good.

 

Then I ran some test prints. The first test showed the posterization

is now gone, but there is still a red cast. After several tests I

found that I had to go to the Color tab on the Printing Preferences

window and switched the Color Space option from AdobeRGB to sRGB, and

set the Saturation and Color Tone sliders one notch to the left. Now

the colors are extremely close to what I see on the screen and the red

cast is also gone.

 

So, it appears HP screwed up the color management in the Windows

driver. If you open Printers in Windows and go to the Properties

there you find a Color Management tab, and I have it set to Automatic.

It seems to me that Color Space option in the Color tab in the

Printing Preferences window is out of place. Why would you have to

pick a color space if Color Management is set to auto? Oh, well. HP

is known to continually update their printer drivers, so maybe they

will have this issue fixed in a future release.

[jay_gondek]

Hi, "Auto" color management through ICM often causes double processing because there is no handshake between the app and the OS on color management. So, if you specify a printer profile in photoshop, and specify a profile through the OS, the image will go through the profile twice, and colors will be incorrect.

 

For a variety of reasons, such as control, usability and prevention of double processing, these drivers don't support the OS-based profile selection you mention. You basically need to set up your color management in the application, and make sure that your driver settings are consistant with your application settings.

 

To print Adobe RGB files from photoshop, go to "Print with Preview" and make sure your source image is identified as Adobe RGB. If it isn't, you can assign teh AdobeRGB profile to it in Image... Mode... Assign Profile. Then, for the printer, you have two or three options:

 

1) Set the printer space profile to sRGB, and set the driver colorspace to sRGB.

 

2) Set the printer space profile to AdobeRGB and set the driver colorspace to AdobeRGB

 

3) For the 7960, Set the printer profile to one of the HP provided media-specific profiles, and set the driver colorspace to "ICM Color Management"

 

In all cases, you also need to select the correct media type in the driver also.

 

Maybe in your case, Photoshop was converting your AdobeRGB file to sRGB prior to printing, which is OK if the driver is also set to sRGB. Whatever the case, if you are getting output that is close to your expectations, making some small adjustments to the color sliders in the driver, as you mentioned, is a good way to dial in more precisely the output that you expect.

[conrad]

Thanks for the input, Jay. I checked and the source file is in the AdobeRGB space. I set the printer space and driver space to AdobeRGB and tried another test, and the red cast reappeared. Clicked the Saturation and Color Tone settings to the left one notch and tried again. The cast was much reduced but still apparent. Switch back to sRGB on the Color tab and the cast is gone.

 

Of course, it is entirely possible that the printer is doing everything right under the AdobeRGB settings and my monitor is just off. I plan to get a Spyder and PhotoCAL in the next few months so I will find out what happens when I get the monitor profiled.

[husnu_helvacioglu]

I bought a 7960 a few weeks ago and I'm having the same problem when I use the printer in AdobeRGB color space. My monitor is calibrated and profiled with a ColorVision Spider using OptiCal. The red cast is most iritating on skin tones. Using selective color I dialed off some magenta from Red (-18 Magenta) and Yellow (-20 Magenta) to get a closer match. This looses the dark red punch of the whole image, but still better. sRGB is more accurate but the print looks a little washed out to my eyes, compared to AdobeRGB. And I'm still trying to get a decnt printout using ICM setting with my choice of color space. I guess it's best to have a custom profile built.

[raymond_van_weeghel]

Hi,

 

I'm new here (warning!). I have the 7960 just a few days, and I like it over my previous 7350.

I'm trying to learn more about color management, and more importantly: how to print images so that they turn out at their best. I have found a piece of software called "qimage" that makes sure that the image prepared the best way for printing (making sure it has the correct resolution, so the driver doesn't have to interpolate etc). It also supports colormanagement, and that is what made discover this webpage. When I played/fooled around with it, it made the photo's appear way too colorfull. Cool to look at, but not realistic.

 

The new driver (5.1 for windows) has colormanagement support built in. I now have everything set to srgb, and am letting the driver manage the colors. But there is an article on the HP website (which I didn't know existed, but I found the link on this website):

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/hub_search/document.jhtml?lc=en&docName=c00063336&prodId=hpphotosma305383&cc=us

 

It describes in some detail how to work with colormanagement with this printer. I have just discovered this, so haven't tried it out yet. It states that setting the colorspace to ICM in the driver completely turns of colormanagement by the driver, and let's the other software handle the colormanagement. In photoshop you select an ICC profile supplied by HP (that is correct for the paper/settings you use) and then it should work like you expect it too.

 

I have no experience with colormanagement whatsoever, so I hope you could post your results here. That way I can learn something too :)