Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: HP Z3200ps report and question  (Read 3583 times)

Marty919

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
HP Z3200ps report and question
« on: December 27, 2010, 01:18:37 pm »

Got my brand new HP Z3200ps 44 inch printer last week, set it up and wanted to post this report, as well as ask a question.

Set up and installation was quite simple, and the included instructions were very easy to follow - no problems whatsoever with set up and installation, EXCEPT  that the set up CD that came with the printer FAILED repeatedly on the auto install.  I tied the autorun, the setup.exe, still failed every time.  So I stopped trying to use the CD, went to HP's web site, downloaded the latest drivers and firmware and the HP Printer Utility and presto, everything worked fine.

Calibrated my 27 inch ACER monitor with the included X-rite, all went smoothly.

Calibrated and profiled 3 different papers: Museo Portfolio Rag, and 2 papers from Digital Art Supplies in San Diego (great folks by the way, and very helpful): DAS Cool White Matter, and DAS Photo Satin.  All calibrations and profiling went perfectly smooth.

Then tried printing several color and b/w images I've printed before on an Epson 7600 to compare quality of prints.  The color prints (on both the Satin and the Matte) came out flawlessly - perfect screen to print match, excellent color rendition and gamut, sharp, I was totally pleased.

Then printed several b/w images I've printed and exhibited and there is where I ran into problems (so any advice is greatly appreciated, PLEASE)...

With correctly calibrated monitor and printer, and all paper presets and profiles done correctly, my prints lost most of their shadow highlights and printed much darker than they should have, and much darker than what I saw in the previews and on screen.

I ran them as Photoshop manages color (using CS5), rendering intent Perceptual, black point compensation on, best quality, and I tried them both as 'print in color' and 'print as greyscale'... no help either way, still lost shadow highlights and prints filled in and printed much darker than they should have.  By playing around with my screen image (making it much lighter and much higher contrast) I was able to get a 'usable' print, but not the gallery quality I need.

Not sure where to go next, and would really appreciate some guidance here from the pros...

Also, here is an interesting (and bothersome) quirk of the HP Z3200.  To save paper in my initial tests I ran 24 inch rolls.  My images were sized at 18 x 22 and I wanted to print them landscape to save paper - could not get this to work.  In the paper choices you have 24 x 30, and cannot seem to set it up in any way to print landscape so the 22 inch (longer) dimension of the image printed along the leading edge of the paper roll, so I'd only use the 18 inch dimension along the roll, thus saving paper.  I set the image to print at 22 inches horizontally (in landscape mode), leaving a 1 inch border on the left and right side in landscape mode.  I tried rotating the image in Photoshop and printing portrait mode as well.  No joy.  The ONLY way I could get it to print was to run the image portrait and use the 24 x 30 setting so I got a much larger print than I wanted.

Any help or advice on this one?

Another quirk: I use Firefox as my default browser.  But when you set the HP Printer Utility to SHOW PREVIEW before printing, it automatically opens a browser window to show the preview in.  It does NOT work with Firefox.  Even when I then set Explorer to be my default browser it still tried to open a Firefox window, so I wound up having to totally DELETE Firefox from my computer, and then it worked fine.  This is annoying as I actually dislike Explorer.

Any ideas on this issue?

Otherwise, the HP Z3200ps is a great printer, and as I said earlier the color prints were spectacular on all papers I used.  But I need help on the black and white side of things.  No matter what I've tried, I can't get my prints to match my screen or to print shadows and highlights as per my final Photoshop images... same results on both Matte and Satin papers.  And yes I saved my files as .tif files.

Hope this brief review was helpful, and I thank anyone in advance for any help on the issues I mentioned above.  I have a big gallery exhibition coming up and really need some help getting my b/w prints to print much better than I've been able to do so far.   Am I making mistakes in my settings?  Does someone have a list of the best settings for great b/w prints from Photoshop on the HP Z3200???   HELP and thanks.

Martin

« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 03:58:10 pm by Marty919 »
Logged

Ernst Dinkla

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4005
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2010, 06:17:03 am »

Marty,

Read my review of the Z3200 PS first. The last part shows the B&W issue. There are also links to other reviews there, check Keith Cooper's review too, bottom page. Mention here what OS and application you work from and forget about HP's Preview in my opinion. There are better ways to get there.

http://www.pigment-print.com/review/Z3200FirstPage.htm


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/



Logged

artobest

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 287
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #2 on: December 28, 2010, 12:06:28 pm »

To change the orientation of your print you can select Rotate by 90 Degrees in the printer driver. However, I agree with you that the HP is less than intuitive in this regard. If only the driver gave an intelligible snapshot of the actual orientation, but it doesn't.

As for the dark print issue, have you tried printing b&w using Relative Colorimetric rendering intent?
Logged

Marty919

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2010, 12:15:42 pm »

Marty,

Read my review of the Z3200 PS first. The last part shows the B&W issue. There are also links to other reviews there, check Keith Cooper's review too, bottom page. Mention here what OS and application you work from and forget about HP's Preview in my opinion. There are better ways to get there.

http://www.pigment-print.com/review/Z3200FirstPage.htm


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/


Ernst:

First, thank you for the reply and links.  I will read them carefully.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate, CS 5 Ultimate with Topaz Plug-ins, the Z3200ps is networked to my computer.

A few questions are raised with your response and the links which I just read quickly...

First, you say to ignore the HP Printer Utility, that there are better ways to 'get there'.  Could you be more specific... please.  Do you have a specific suggestion or workflow you could recommend?  Right now here is my workflow for printing:

I finish my image in PS CS5, save as a .tif, and invoke the print command through PS.  This opens a console with setting choices, and I confess I am not sure what settings to use all the time.  For some reason my color images print almost flawlessly, although I do see some softening of colors in the print.

Since I selected to preview before printing, the file RIPs, then opens in an Explorer browser (as I mentioned, I had to delete Firefox completely from my computer, not sure why, but there is apparently some conflict).  When the preview finally opens I hit 'continue' in the utility window and the image prints.

As I am mostly (35 years) a darkroom printer, I am a little unsure on my legs about proper settings for digital printing.  Any guidance, or pointing me to proper settings would be greatly appreciated.  I do print on Satin and Matte papers, and I believe I have properly calibrated the printer with these papers, and calibrated my monitor properly, and then synched the presets and profiles.

I select rendering intent as Perceptual, with Black Point Compensation selected.  I also select Match Print Colors in the print dialogue box.

As I said, my color images print fine, but the b/w images fill in significantly so I am working around this by screwing up my images on screen until I get a usable print, but this is a total waste of paper, time and ink of course, and I am sure it's the wrong way to do this, but I don't know what else to do.

If it matters, my print files are large - often 400 - 600 Mb, and since I can't figure out how to properly set up for landscape printing to save paper length on the rolls, I am a bit frustrated.  Any help on how to do this properly?  As I mentioned in my OP, I don't see any paper size settings other than (for using a 24 wide roll) a 24 x 30 choice.  On an older Epson 7600 I was able to set the paper length I wanted very easily, don't see how to do this with the HP.  Is there a way?

In Richard from imagecraft's post, he says:

I think the matte prints are better in this regard. I have finally made a
adjustment curve to compensate (and not use the ICC profile at all) and the
results look really great. However, I am now wondering whether I am the only
one with the problem! :-)

Do you know what he's referring to in terms of a curve adjustment, and how I would set the system to NOT use the ICC profile??  I'll try writing to him as well, but thanks in advance for your reply and help.  I have a huge exhibition coming up and really need to get this down right asap.

What else can I provide in terms of information that might help you help me better?

All best and danke...

Martin
Logged

Marty919

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2010, 12:18:44 pm »

To change the orientation of your print you can select Rotate by 90 Degrees in the printer driver. However, I agree with you that the HP is less than intuitive in this regard. If only the driver gave an intelligible snapshot of the actual orientation, but it doesn't.

As for the dark print issue, have you tried printing b&w using Relative Colorimetric rendering intent?

Thank you!  I tried selecting Rotate by 90 Degrees, but it still cut the paper at the pre-set 24 x 30 length... so I wound up with a landscape print with a huge margin of blank paper on the long sides...  did I do something wrong here?  I am still pretty new to this printer and gallery level digital printing, having spent my life in a darkroom...

I will try using Relative Colorimetric this evening and see if that makes a difference and let you know on here tomorrow...

Thank you for the reply.  I need all the help I can get...

Martin
Logged

artobest

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 287
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2010, 03:31:19 pm »

Using the Postscript driver you can set an ad hoc custom paper size for every job. The option is under Advanced/Paper-Output. Scroll down until you find Postscript Custom Page Size. Set your page size in the dialog and choose Long Edge First. You can save this paper size for future jobs if you wish.

Print using the Embedded Web Server with Show Preview selected. The Embedded Web Server preview will show you the correct orientation of the print (The PCL driver may do this even better, but I rarely use it, so can't comment). BTW, on my browser, the EWS preview has a bug, in that it doesn't show the edges of the paper, just the image. However, if you click on the small preview, the paper edges are revealed.
Logged

Marty919

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #6 on: December 28, 2010, 03:37:42 pm »

Using the Postscript driver you can set an ad hoc custom paper size for every job. The option is under Advanced/Paper-Output. Scroll down until you find Postscript Custom Page Size. Set your page size in the dialog and choose Long Edge First. You can save this paper size for future jobs if you wish.

Print using the Embedded Web Server with Show Preview selected. The Embedded Web Server preview will show you the correct orientation of the print (The PCL driver may do this even better, but I rarely use it, so can't comment). BTW, on my browser, the EWS preview has a bug, in that it doesn't show the edges of the paper, just the image. However, if you click on the small preview, the paper edges are revealed.

Once again, thank you!  Quick question for clarification:  If my image in PS is portrait, but I want to print in landscape (rotated) to save paper length, and I use the Advanced/Paper-Output as you suggest, do I need to do anything in terms of rotating my image?  Is it better to select the 'Rotate 90 degrees' choice, or rotate the image in PS and print it that way?

Thanks,

Martin
Logged

artobest

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 287
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #7 on: December 29, 2010, 03:53:59 pm »

Most likely you'll need to rotate the image in PS before you print - the PS print preview window should make this clear. Once again, though, the best solution is to print with preview and check then.
Logged

Ernst Dinkla

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4005
Re: HP Z3200ps report and question
« Reply #8 on: December 30, 2010, 05:35:57 am »


Then printed several b/w images I've printed and exhibited and there is where I ran into problems (so any advice is greatly appreciated, PLEASE)...

With correctly calibrated monitor and printer, and all paper presets and profiles done correctly, my prints lost most of their shadow highlights and printed much darker than they should have, and much darker than what I saw in the previews and on screen.

I ran them as Photoshop manages color (using CS5), rendering intent Perceptual, black point compensation on, best quality, and I tried them both as 'print in color' and 'print as greyscale'... no help either way, still lost shadow highlights and prints filled in and printed much darker than they should have.  By playing around with my screen image (making it much lighter and much higher contrast) I was able to get a 'usable' print, but not the gallery quality I need.


Another quirk: I use Firefox as my default browser.  But when you set the HP Printer Utility to SHOW PREVIEW before printing, it automatically opens a browser window to show the preview in.  It does NOT work with Firefox.  Even when I then set Explorer to be my default browser it still tried to open a Firefox window, so I wound up having to totally DELETE Firefox from my computer, and then it worked fine.  This is annoying as I actually dislike Explorer.

Any ideas on this issue?


Martin


The Z drivers tend too return to default settings after you change settings, the last do not stick then. I described that in the review. I use the PCL3 driver. For color management it is wise to create defaults that cover your workflow better than the existing default. I guess color prints will be more important for you so go to faxes-printers settings in Windows and change the preferred settings to Print in Color, Application managed colors. Do so with more settings you prefer. Save it as a printing shortcut. Let that be your default for the color workflow. Now create a B&W printing shortcut, this time Print in Greyscale + Printer managed colors. The last is HP's recommendation for B&W. Save it as a printing shortcut. Select the color printing shortcut, ok the settings and close the preferred settings window.

I use Qimage so am not that familiar with PS printsettings. Check your color settings in PS, for color use the colorspace you prefer, for greyscale use Gamma 2.2. If you print through the B&W mode of the driver either use an R=G=B neutral B&W image with AdobeRGB or sRGB colorspace assigned or a greyscale image with Gamma 2.2 assigned. In the PS editing phase it should have had that space embedded as well. The B&W printing shortcut selected in the driver so printer CM on and PS set to let printer manage color. The printer driver CM expects an image with a Gamma 2.2 assigned, AdobeRGB, sRGB, Gamma 2.2 are suited to that. With a properly calibrated HP paper this should deliver a correct tone range.
With a third party paper create a custom media preset first from a suitable existing media preset and calibrate that paper/media preset. Some media presets have flaws like I explained at the end of part 2 of the review.

For B&W in color mode use the printing shortcut for color work. R=G=B neutral B&W image edited and printed with the assigned color space. Use PS with CM on. On a calibrated HP paper/media preset + the HP profile the tone range should be correct. For third party media create a custom media preset, calibrate + profile that paper/media preset, select the new printer profile in PS. Right now this is probably the safer route on the Z3200. Some loss of Dmax but a good tone range with shadow detail.

If the print is too dark you might check how low you can go with your monitor, I can set mine to slighty less that 110 candles and still calibrate and profile it. Not all monitors allow that. Check your viewing light output that it corresponds.

Rendering selections: Perceptual, Relative Colormetric +BPC, should both work fine in color mode.

With the PCL3 driver that can be installed next to the PS3 driver I can create a landscape print page on a roll, length less than width, width approaching the roll paper width. On Vista and XP, I don't think W7 is a problem either. Start with portrait mode set, create a custom size, save it with a name and when the warning comes just continu and change then from portrait to landscape. You will see the small graphic printer/roll representation and the print page turn 90 degr. on it. Continu by ok etc. Then you will notice that the new created print page size is lost in the setup. A driver bug. If you return to the settings and select the print page size by name and close again it will stick. This bug doesn't happen with an existing custom print page size name even when you change the sizes and save again. I'm using the PS3 driver too little but it could be that it has more problems with that issue.

I use Qimage (Ultimate) to print from, PS to edit and didn't bother to get the HP driver preview running as Qimage does that very good in more ways, image(s) position on the print page, soft proofing. There have been more complaints on the HP preview function. Firefox on all the systems here. I can't help you if you like to figure it out in another way. As I wrote there is another way and I have a suspicion it is the better way, on reliable CM, image quality and more. Even if Qimage doesn't always work so well with the HP drivers.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Spectral plots of +190 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm






Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up