HP Z3200ps Color Center problems

[Lewando_Images]

      I started using the Z3200ps 44inch last February which I have learned to love. Output is so much better then the 7890 i used previously. When I setup the printer originally I couldn't get the Color center to work, I was using a Windows 8.1 computer. Tried contacting HP software support.....that was a lesson in futility. They never succeeded in getting it working either and messed up my computer in the process.
      I then proceeded to install the drivers and HP Utility, Color Center from the disc that came with the printer on an older Windows 7 computer. I installed the PCL3 drivers. Got things working and was able to create a paper preset and create a standard paper profile. Had a busy art show season so never had time to get back to problem solving the Color Center till now.
      The problem I am having is with creating a 1728 patch profile. I open Color Center, click on Paper preset management....window opens....no drop-down menus. No list of installed preset papers. On the right are icons starting at the top -
Profile paper, Install profile, Export ICC profile, Restore factory ICC profile and Color measurement. I figure I need to open "Color Measurement"... but when I do the window flashes and the "Color preset management" window disappears..... nothing happens. This happens on all the Icons on the right of the "Paper preset management" window. If anyone has any idea how to solve this so I can create a 1728 patch profile I will be forever indebted. If someone can tell me how to get this all working on my Windows 8.1 machine I would be even more grateful.
    Sincerely Peter

[Mark Lindquist]

You will need to uninstall your printer from your computer - both the driver and utility. Make sure you have windows 8.1 PCL-3 Driver downloaded from the downloads site on HP.  There is no HP Utility for 8.1, so Download the HP Utility for Windows 7 64 bit.  It’s there.

Make sure you are using LAN to connect to printer.

Restart both printer and computer, reinstall your 8.1 driver, then install the Windows 7 HP Utility.

Open Utility and make sure it sees the printer (check IP address on front panel of printer), then add printer in Utility by entering the IP address.

If that works, you should be good to go. It may require starting, restarting the printer a few times, unplugging it to reset the printer, but eventually this should work.

Keep in mind that almost all software instalation related issues are pilot error problems - the printer is fine, you may need to upgrade your computer if you can’t get it to work, but it should work the way I discussed above.

Keep at it - don’t loose heart.

Mark

[Lewando_Images]

        Thanks so much Mark......I installed the PCL-3 driver for 8.1 and the Utility for Windows 7 64 bit. Everything is working perfectly. I knew it was Pilot error that's why I called HP to see if they could get me going right. I originally tried installing the 8.1 diver package which didn't work at all. The HP tech installed the 8.1 single driver but insisted I had to use the Utility from Windows 10 (that was probably the problem it didn't work properly) and if that didn't work I would have to update my computer to Windows 10. I also noticed now the driver was dated November 2018 and the Utility was dated July 2018......so maybe the newer drivers and Utility made the difference.
         So thank you so much Mark for getting me going in the right direction and also thank you for your excellent Z3200 website. It has helped me so many times with the learning curve of this new printer you really should be on HP's payroll.
         If I may I would like to ask another question about making a 1728 patch ICC profile. I have always used canned or paper manufacturers ICC profiles for my previous printers. It has been very interesting producing my own profiles with the Z printer. The output is so much better then previous printers I'm now trying to learn to increase the quality even more with a larger patch chart. Plus wanting to be able to leave the patch chart to dry over night for more accurate reading.
         So reading about making a 1728 patch chart am I correct that I can print and read a 1728 patch chart with the Z3200. But I have to use another program like ICC Gen and ARGYllCMSll to produce the ICC profile. Then install it over top of a previously made paper preset in "paper preset manager". Or is it possible to do this all in the Z3200 software ?
    Again thank you so much for your help !

[Mark Lindquist]

        Thanks so much Mark......
         So reading about making a 1728 patch chart am I correct that I can print and read a 1728 patch chart with the Z3200. But I have to use another program like ICC Gen and ARGYllCMSll to produce the ICC profile. Then install it over top of a previously made paper preset in "paper preset manager". Or is it possible to do this all in the Z3200 software ?
    Again thank you so much for your help !

Hi Peter - glad you were able to get things working. The HP posted Utility for Windows 10 seems likely to not work, so I recommend rolling back to earlier ones. Actually just about any Utility will work with any version of Windows, hence the reason why the Win 7 Utility works with the Windows 8.1.
Unfortunately HP has not kept up with pairing Utilities for each OS version and the tech support guys don't know about work arounds.

So yes to your question that you have to use another program such as ICC Gen or ARGYII to convert the utility generated .TXT file to and ICC profile. You may use another program called "Drop RGB"

basICColor dropRGB 2

But it's expensive, so Argyll is the poor man's way to go.

A tip - just let the target dry for 30 minutes - HP did tests and found it didn't change things significantly.  That's my conclusion as well.

Another tip:  perhaps the most important one:  If you can, use a roll to make your target - you will save pulling your hair out.

Advanced profiles are not for the weak of heart.  It's a bit like "Jacob wrestling with the angel" you have to keep fighting until somehow the printer lets you win.
Once you get the knack of it, you can do them fairly easily, but using a roll is definitely the key.

MHMG and I keep saying we will publish our article, but we both have yet to find time to do it.

6,000 patch target ICC profiles are possible, but tricky and there is a lot of Feng shui required to do it. 風水

For the 1700 patch target, stick with rolls, (although it is possible to use consecutive sheets), and use ICC Generator or Argyll or Drop RGB and you'll do fine.

Really, you don't need to leave the chart dry overnight, but you can if you must.

Best,

Mark

[Lewando_Images]

      Thanks again Mark. I definitely need to do it the poor man's way...... I make my living doing art shows and printing for one other artist. I'll try installing ICC Gen and Argyll .....hopefully that goes okay. I don't necessarily have to dry it over night......just longer then the software in the Z allows. At the moment I would like to get a better profile for Breathing Colors Lyve. It seems to darken as it drys on Lyve and I think the default time is not long enough. I plan on using "canvas more ink" for the preset and will probably use a 17 inch roll that has a few to many seeds. Have some ends of 24 inch also if that would work better.  Plus I'm very interested in learning more about profiles so hence the desire to try making a 1728 patch profile.
      Thanks again for your help and knowledge

[Mark Lindquist]

I know that ICC Gen with Argyll works on a Mac, particularly as outlined in the instructions on Z3200.com

ICC GEN for Mac



The Windows version will probably work as well, but you may have to fool with it to figure out where to install it.
The trick is to create a folder called icctest and drag the package into it.  I believe it wants to go to you home directory, but you may have to experiment with it.
I need to see if I can get my son to tweak the Windows version to go to the desktop.

As far as letting the canvas dry over night - yes that's probably a good idea with LYVE.  If you can get it to work, you might want to coat a canvas and let it dry as well and then make your target and profile.  Although, just printing on Live, then coating it makes it pop anyways.  To control how much, probably best to actually print the target, let it dry, then coat it, then let that dry, then read that final combination.

Good luck -

And by the way, welcome to LuLa Forum -

Mark

[Lewando_Images]

     Thanks so much for all the info and the welcome to LuLa. This is a wonderful resource for printing and photography info. Hopefully I can get ICC Gen installed and working......I have read about coating the target then reading it for the profile sounds interesting. I get pretty good results just reading the uncoated and not even totally dry target. I might try making two profiles... read the dry uncoated target and make a profile. Then coat and read again to make another profile. Will be interesting to see the difference.....I'll report back with the results.... or more questions if I get stuck.
     Thanks again for sharing your knowledge

[zippski]

I might be able to offer some interesting insights into this discussion.  I recently purchased an Adorama z3200PS and finally got it up and running on my office network on November 8th using the [then] most recently updated PCL driver right off the HP z3200 driver download webpage.  It has been worked perfectly with my Windows 10 x64 system since (although I had to wrestle with it a bit to get the computer and HP utility to import the printer's factory installed ICC profiles into my computer .

However, I sure am glad that I installed the drivers on November 8th.  I had my IT guy back out to install the printer on my main office machine (also Windows 10 x64).  He noted that the PCL driver had been updated on the HP site on November 9th.  We downloaded the newly updated driver, and guess what?  Total disaster.  The paper presents on the HP utility were now completely blanked out, would not download, and the print size selector on the utility was some crazy  basic user interface that reminded me of how my old z3100 utility looked and worked circa 2008,  No amount of tinkering around would fix the issue.

Luckily, I had downloaded the previous ~July(?) driver  on the first install, and when I blew out the November 9th driver and reinstalled the older driver, the colour centre also began working perfectly on machine#2.

I am not sure how or where to access the earlier driver directly from HP, however, but I can tell you that the November 9th update is hot garbage.

BTW, the PS driver seems to be working the same in both versions.

Leigh
zippski

[Lewando_Images]

     Interesting....thanks for the input zippski.....but I got the PCL Driver on the 28th and it's running fine on my Windows 8.1 64 bit. Don't know about Windows 10 that you're running.

     The one bug I did find though is the driver window accessed from Photoshop....in the window for " currently loaded paper" I get a message "Printer information not available". Also don't seem to get the mismatched paper or obsolete paper calibration warnings. I can check them on the printer or in the Color center......but it was nice to get the warnings right before you print. But if this is the only bug I can live with it. My paper ICC's are in the drop down menu and everything else seems to be working. Color center all seems to be working. They definitely seem to have some driver and software problems though and with the official discontinuation of the Z3200 announced we probably shouldn't hold our breath on any new driver updates.....but then you never know. It really is a great printer even with these problems and hopefully no other bugs appear.