I hoping to get some direction as to why I'm having the printing problem I'm having. I'm rather new to printing.
Sometimes printed colors are significantly off from what's shown on the screen, other times they are as perfect as can be expected. Using a test print (such as tss_printer_test.tif) gives great results.
The printer is an HP B9180 using (for these tests) HP's Advanced Glossy Photo paper - the same paper HP supplies for printer calibration.
I spent an evening with HP support and reinstalled all their drivers and software. The printer's test page says all the heads are in good condition. Results before and after reinstalling and are identical.
I get identical results printing with both Aperture 2.1.1 and Preview (OS X 10.5.4) so I assume the settings are correct for each application's print dialogs. But maybe not. For my own images, the Preview printing is done with a 16 bit tiff exported from Aperture.
The screen is an 23" ACD calibrated with a Spyder 2 and Color Eyes Pro set to D65, 120 cd/m**2, Gamma Target L*, and Black Point of "Target Min. Luminance." Screen brightness was set by CEP and appears to be about a bit less than 1/3 of maximum. The ACD's brightness controls are disabled.
When profiling is switched on and off, I do see slightly different renderings on the screen.
