HP B9180 problems

[Ronny Nilsen]

I'm having some problems with my HP B9180. Somtimes when i make a print the color will be wrong and it looks like the printer is using the wrong type of black ink or something.

Making a new print with the same setting will later give a perfect result. It's almost as if the setting in the driver is not always what it says...

When this happens when I print a profile target (TC9.18 i1 target) it will show up clearly when looking at the generated profile in Gamutview.

Here is some gv shots from a bad profile (Moab Entrada Fine Art Bright White 300):

[attachment=2111:attachment][attachment=2112:attachment]

And here is the profile from a god print (same Moab paper):

[attachment=2113:attachment][attachment=2114:attachment]

It's not the generation of the profile that is the problem, re-reading the aame print gives the same bad profile, and this is also visible (horrible) in prints. All profles are mede with GMB Eye-One Match 3.

Have anybody else seen this, and is there somthing I'm doing wrong?

This problem is really anoying as I can't know if a print is going to be horrible or perfect.  

[neil snape]

It could be that you have a defective batch of paper.Rare, I know but something is going on there that is quite strange.

[EricWHiss]

I'm having some similar trouble with my B9180...mostly good prints but occasionally I'll get a bad one.   I've been meaning to dig into this for a while now but haven't had any time.

First off, I'm using a mac g5 running OS-X 10.49  and using PS CS2.   I think the problem has to do with alternate use between the HP plug-in and printing directly from PS...the printer gets the paper type and profile confused.  It may have to do with custom paper set-ups for the plug in messing up things.  Why it only does it occasionally, I don't know. It's frustrating.

Take a look at the attached screen grab...I had configured a set-up for a crane art card using the museo profile provided by crane.  Sometimes when I go to print the driver is pulling the wrong profile and in this case has the Hahnemuhle smooth fine art.   Why?

http://www.eh21.com/HP_b9180_problem.tiff

I hope to look at this more this week, and will post anything I find back here. Hope you will do the same.

Eric

[Ronny Nilsen]

First off, I'm using a mac g5 running OS-X 10.49  and using PS CS2.   I think the problem has to do with alternate use between the HP plug-in and printing directly from PS...the printer gets the paper type and profile confused.  It may have to do with custom paper set-ups for the plug in messing up things.  Why it only does it occasionally, I don't know. It's frustrating.

Take a look at the attached screen grab...I had configured a set-up for a crane art card using the museo profile provided by crane.  Sometimes when I go to print the driver is pulling the wrong profile and in this case has the Hahnemuhle smooth fine art.   Why?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107371\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You seem to be on to it! I have fiddeld  around with the systemk now and this is what i observe on my Win XP pro machine:

First off I'm not printing with the PS plugin, I'm always using the normal printerdriver, and I set up my custom papers in the color center with the paper name and set the right mediatype. I never assign a profile to the paper, I always print letting LR or PS CS2 do the colorhandling.

The main peoblem is that when I open the printerdriver properties window and set the custom paper to the paper I want to use, this will mostly be ok as long as I select another paper than what the dialog is showing. If you have made a previous print and the dialog is showing that paper and you press ok, then that is not the paper the driver will be using, it will default back to the HP advaced glossy paper!

So a sort of solution until HP fixes the printerdriver GUI is to always select your custom paper, and never trust the printerdriver GUI information to tell you what it's going to use.

To see what settings the printerdriver actally used, you can (on windows) look at the printer queue and right click on the job and selct properties and it you will se what it's doing, and that is not what you saw when submitting the print-job unless you have selcted your paper.

And your obeservation that it migth mess up and assign a random proifile as well is interesting, that might acount for me seeing to types of ugly print: ugly and butt ugly. Buit I cant see what profile is used in the printerdriver GUI, so that is harder to check.

[neil snape]

That's interesting. Does HP know about this?
If the do it'll bring a fix faster.
What about adding a custom paper and profile tag ? Does this also incur errors?

[Ronny Nilsen]

That's interesting. Does HP know about this?
If the do it'll bring a fix faster.
What about adding a custom paper and profile tag ? Does this also incur errors?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107405\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Have not reported it to HP yet, as I just found out.

Without having tested it now, I'm resonably sure that assigning a profile to the paper does not solve the problem, as I did that earlier and got ugly prints (probably because of the bug above), and stopped assigning profiles to papers and have since let LR do the colorhandling.

[EricWHiss]

Ron,
Thanks for the workaround and also the tip on how to check to see what profile was used.  I'll have to see if that information is also available from the printer cue on the Mac.     Edmund Ronald had pointed me to a link where some printers in the Mac environment had incorrectly assigned a paper profile in their conversion space instead of a regular color space like sRGB or adobe rgb and that caused some users to get a double helping of profile and bad prints too.  I don't think that is happening on my machine, but with the wierd profile swap going on in the driver, I want to make sure.

Neil,
I contacted HP when I first had the problem, and while I have heard great reports about HP support, let's just say that the staff for the smaller HP B9180 had to put me on hold to go ask someone what a 'rendering intent' was and came back and suggested I just use the plug-in. That was 30 minutes wasted on the phone for nothing and now I am being asked every other day to fill out a form to provided feedback to HP about their support.

Eric

[neil snape]

I was or am very against the tech support style for the 9180, as you have seen. That is the type of answer I got when I was first starting in color management with my Epson printers, long distance , on hold, didn't even know what a profile was at the time.
This is the first HP Photosmart that is in my opinion every bit as professional as any printer out there but the support is long from the level of the DesignJet series.
I've not had much time to test configs on Mac and Pc with the 9180 lately , hence a lack of experience with the driver and plug ins on both platforms. For my own printing I use Photoshop and I've not had any differences. Yet I have seen other reports of the odd print coming off all wrong.
If you care to carefully note all the details of when and how it happens, platform, workflow, exactly what settings; I'll forward it directly to the software engineers.