Bob:
Do you have a good printer profile for the particular ink/paper combination you are using? If so, when you let PS manage color, are you specifying that profile instead of letting PS pick one? And do you have the printer driver set for no color management?
If you tell PS to let the printer manage color, and the color is better (but still not good enough) it could be that you are inadvertantly double-color managing the output when letting PS manage color. And, it could be your printer profile isn’t as good as it should be.
Once you know you aren’t double-managing color and it still isn’t right my suspicion would be there’s a problem with the profile. Either it’s bad, or the paper’s bad, or the ink’s bad, etc. I haven’t seen any problems with CS3 and the three color printers we use (four different installations of CS3).
Thanks Sid,
Yes I am using a color profile for the correct paper type and printer. I also have check the box on the printer dialogue to allow the application to manage the color. I would not be surprised that the printer profile is bad and it is very hard to find profiles on the web for the HP printers. I want to use PS for my color management, but cannot accept the quality of print that is coming out. I hope you have some more suggestions or others have run into a similiar issue with HP printers and can help.
Thanks again,
Bob
If the printer driver is set to allow the application to control color, and if you have selected the correct profile in PS, then I suspect your profile. And I see what you mean about profiles – I couldn’t find anything on HP’s website or through Google.
I read a couple of reviews that said their canned profiles were good and another that said they weren’t, and that you needed a custom profile. For a high-quality printer like that one, I would seriously consider having a custom profile made for the most frequently used ink/paper combination.
Just for grins, did you try printing the same image out of Illustrator or InDesign? How does that compare to your PS output?
Thanks for your time on this Sid. I tried one last act. I replaced the half full ink cartridges with new ones and gave it a go. The pictures look better and are acceptable. I still would need to try this on different paper and see if it maintains the quality, but I am hopeful. Thanks a lot for your time.
Bob
I’m glad to try and help. Were the cartridges old? I still can’t imagine the inks deteriorating so much they affected color that badly. But it’s good that you’re getting acceptable prints now.
The cartridges were not that old, but I do not have the original package to look at the expiration date. I also got rid of Huey for the screen calibrator and purchased Eye One Display 2. I think it is working much better.
Thanks for you involvement.
Bob
