Hp z3200 ps - new iMac and LR CC and black point compensation not working?

[EricWHiss]

Hi,
After replacing the print mech board, and then the carriage belt on my 44 in z3200 ps - its been running like a champ.  Along the way I also upgraded my computer to a new iMac 27inch and got LR CC.   I also decided to update the HP drivers too.  Hmmm all seems good but somehow something has gotten messed up with the black point compensation. Maybe someone out might know what's happened?   Did the new drivers mess something up?   Prints seem right on in the mid tones, and colors accurate, but the shadows are blocking and also for that matter the whites are as well.   I can't see the black point compensation anywhere in LR CC print panel and think it's automatic always on.  I am using a new profile and the printer has been calibrated. So I can't figure out what's going wrong.

I want to use the raster version the printer driver yes?   What's the PS version good for anyhow?   

Thanks for any suggestions,
Eric

[Doug Gray]

Hi,
After replacing the print mech board, and then the carriage belt on my 44 in z3200 ps - its been running like a champ.  Along the way I also upgraded my computer to a new iMac 27inch and got LR CC.   I also decided to update the HP drivers too.  Hmmm all seems good but somehow something has gotten messed up with the black point compensation. Maybe someone out might know what's happened?   Did the new drivers mess something up?   Prints seem right on in the mid tones, and colors accurate, but the shadows are blocking and also for that matter the whites are as well.   I can't see the black point compensation anywhere in LR CC print panel and think it's automatic always on.  I am using a new profile and the printer has been calibrated. So I can't figure out what's going wrong.

I want to use the raster version the printer driver yes?   What's the PS version good for anyhow?   

Thanks for any suggestions,
Eric

LR always enables black point comp. If you want to turn BPC on and off and check the differences you have to use Photoshop.

[EricWHiss]

update - I seem to have fixed my problem by reinstalling both HP Z3200 drivers again with the PS driver first followed by the raster driver and restarting my computer.  That was weird! 

I still don't know what I would use the PS version for and or why there are two separate versions of the driver...

[Ernst Dinkla]

update - I seem to have fixed my problem by reinstalling both HP Z3200 drivers again with the PS driver first followed by the raster driver and restarting my computer.  That was weird! 

I still don't know what I would use the PS version for and or why there are two separate versions of the driver...

The PS driver has a CMYK input side too with driver CM on, next to RGB input, the PCL3 driver does not have that.  Together with the RIP like image handling in the HP Print Utility (or Acrobat/Photoshop etc) it allows you to print CMYK data and have Postscript interpreting next to the usual RGB input.  There is also a difference in the way print margins and the resulting print  page sizes are shown, PCL3 transfers them differently to applications than PS3 does. The PS driver actually behaves a bit more compliant to Windows printer driver protocol too. For example with Qimage Ultimate where you make a large print page in the settings and drop images that nest on that page you can crop out the remaining print page white with a tool that works with the PS driver but not with the PCL3 driver. Mike more often refers to the HP drivers as not complying well with the protocols. Another feature is in either the HPGL driver or the PS driver that it extends longer lengths in printing. It has been some time ago that I needed that so can not be more specific. When installed it extends it for the PCL3 driver too.

Make sure that you the default in the drivers is at Application CM ON,  too often it tends to fall back to driver defaults and you may have double profiling if the default in not on Application CM ON. At least in my Windows set up it has been an issue. Also with Qimage Ultimate any new driver install can wreck printing with recalled jobs from log files. I keep an eye on the date of a driver install and with older jobs recalled I rely on a driver reset to default and setting the choices in the driver again. I have no knowledge whether that can happen with Qimage One on a Mac too.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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