Greetings to all --
As a recent owner of a z3100 44", I've been putting it through the paces for about the last 10 days. I have read numerous posts in this and other forums about banding issues on HP Pro Satin paper, but no combination of settings has worked for me. I came up with a workaround, but it's not optimal
I thought others might be interested in the email exchange I had with HP tech support.
I wrote:
"i am printing on HP professional satin paper with the gloss enhancer turned on. i am printing grayscale images scanned on a drum scanner, and the images are quite large, for example a 2 1/4 negative scanned RGB @ 8000 dpi, and the resulting file size is about 1 GB. when i convert to grayscale, the file size is ~600MB.
when the image to be printed has large dark areas and i select "application managed color", i can see bands across the print that are quite distracting. i then tried "printer manages color", and although the output was much, much darker, the bands were not present. i had to brighten the image severely, and then i got a good print with "printer managed color"
i have tried countless ways to solve this problem, but to no avail.
here are some of the steps i took, in addition to initially updating the firmware and other HP software:
1. cleaned the print heads, both manually and automatically
2. calibrated the printer
3. re-calibrated the paper
4. created/installed a new ICC profile for the paper
5. cleaned the optical drop detector inside the printer
6. calibrated the paper advance
thanks very much for your help."
HP wrote:
"Hello ,
Thank you for contacting Hewlett-Packard's Commercial Solutions Center.
We understand that you have noticed banding on dark areas of grayscale prints from your Designjet Z3100, which you have been able to resolve by lightening your images and selecting Printer Managed Color in the driver.
Because you have arrived at the same solution as we would have if we had been troubleshooting your issue with you, we really cannot offer any further advice regarding this issue.
Should you experience any further issues, please remember to calibrate for the paper on which you are printing, create an ICC profile if one does not already exist, try turning off gloss enhancer if using any non-glossy paper, clean printhead and carriage contacts, and check expiry dates and usage of all inks."
I have the banding issue on all types of grayscale prints, both light and dark, but of course it's more pronounced on the darker images. I have tried just about every conceivable setting in the printer driver, including Best and Normal, More passes checked and unchecked. Nothing I have tried so far makes any difference, and I find it hard to believe that HP expects those of us in the grayscale world to apply extreme levels of brightening to images we must print on their equipment.
All feedback is welcomed --
Best wishes,
Ned Otter