New Snow Leopard Drivers for HP and Epson

[Colorwave]

I read about them being released today and downloaded the new drivers for HP direct from Apple.  For some reason, the Software Update feature didn't pick up the update, so you may need to do the same thing manually.  For me, with a Z3100, I know that it has solved a communication problem that meant I was only able to select the Bonjour connection method and not the HP DirectJet connection that I have always used.  Accessing the HP Utility was slow as molasses through Bonjour before, and now it is snappier than ever.  The printer setting within the Photoshop print module seem somewhat faster, as well, although still not as responsive as it was with CS4 on 10.5.  I haven't printed with it yet, but I'm really hoping that a bug that allows the driver to get confused when I switch from roll to sheet media, or vice versa, has been squashed.  I had to ask it to print and then wait for it to upload to the printer before canceling the print before, only to have it work the second time around.  That's really time consuming and annoying, so I will see if this if fixed when I'm back up and running again in the morning (fingers crossed).

[Colorwave]

I guess nobody else has connection issues with their HP printer and Snow Leopard.  

The new drivers proved to only be a illusory fix for me.  As I mentioned last night, after installing the update, it finally made a normal connection over my ethernet network without invoking a Bonjour connection, and it was quite snappy.  Unfortunately, it only worked one time, then failed to connect after that.  Both printer and print utility stopped working with HP JetDirect, LPD or IPP protocols.  

I reinstalled the drivers, setup my printer again, made another swift connection and then did a precautionary permissions repair.  Naturally, it stopped working immediately thereafter and would not connect with anything but Bonjour.  I"m back to my pokey status quo from before the new driver upgrade, so no fix for anything, as far as I'm concerned.  The printer utility takes about a minute to find my printer and files take an extra several minutes to load to the printer, even for small files.  

HP and printer drivers, like gasoline and fire, a great combination.

[kers]

HP and printer drivers, like gasoline and fire, a great combination.

Hello,
I also am on a mac with a Z3100 and has updated the driver- it went from 4.2 to 4.21

I did not notice any change at all...

I have a ethernet connection with a manual address- - in my case 192.168.2.2 for the printer and 192.168.2.1 for the second port of my computer- it is a very good connection that never fails and very responsive.
Not very responsive is the printing menu in photoshop....I hoped turning to 10.6 it would be fast (or normal)  at last but as you already mentioned it is the same or maybe worse...

I do not understand these software-guru's-
new does not mean better.... ( like CS5- i miss al the goodies in curves that i had in CS3)

[Colorwave]

Kers-
Not sure how the second port address for your computer impacts the printing pipeline.  In 10.5, I used a manually entered IP4 address (like yours) and connected over ethernet using HP DirectJet protocol.  Now, with 10.6, I can't get it to recognize anything but a Bonjour connection.  I've tried manual and automatic connections with no luck.  I can create a printer in the Print and Fax settings panel with an IP address, but the computer says it can't find it when I go to print. Is there someplace that you tell the printer what the host computer's address is?

As for you comment about curves in CS5, I'm not sure what you feel you have given up, but are you aware that you can set the curves to automatically sample the image without having to select the eyedropper in curves?  With a curves adjustment layer selected, go to the options menu in the upper right corner of the curves palette and choose auto select parameter.  I also have expanded view chosen in the same list of options.  I wasn't crazy about the way that the adjustment palettes changed in CS4, at first, but now keep my adjustments palette in the bottom corner of my image monitor and open and collapse it as necessary.  Once I got used to that, it seems to actually work quite well.  I have a full monitor of open palettes on my second screen, and a custom palette of nothing but buttons creating one step menu items that I made custom in Configurator.  It's like having an expanded list of custom command key actions.  Now that I'm used to it, I wouldn't go back.  

The printing connection and the print dialogue box with Snow Leopard and CS5, on the other hand . . . yechhh!

[kers]

Kers-
Not sure how the second port address for your computer impacts the printing pipeline.  In 10.5, I used a manually entered IP4 address (like yours) and connected over ethernet using HP DirectJet protocol.  Now, with 10.6, I can't get it to recognize anything but a Bonjour connection.  I've tried manual and automatic connections with no luck.  I can create a printer in the Print and Fax settings panel with an IP address, but the computer says it can't find it when I go to print. Is there someplace that you tell the printer what the host computer's address is?

allways difficult to clearup these kinds of problems by fora, but here is my connection in detail( see the images for the computer part)
on the printer is    Fast ethernet/manual configuration  192.168.2.2  - default gateway 192.168.2.1  (computer )

after setting the computer and printer the driver installer did the rest.

As for you comment about curves in CS5, I'm not sure what you feel you have given up, but are you aware that you can set the curves to automatically sample the image without having to select the eyedropper in curves?  With a curves adjustment layer selected, go to the options menu in the upper right corner of the curves palette and choose auto select parameter.  I also have expanded view chosen in the same list of options.  I wasn't crazy about the way that the adjustment palettes changed in CS4, at first, but now keep my adjustments palette in the bottom corner of my image monitor and open and collapse it as necessary.  Once I got used to that, it seems to actually work quite well.  I have a full monitor of open palettes on my second screen, and a custom palette of nothing but buttons creating one step menu items that I made custom in Configurator.  It's like having an expanded list of custom command key actions.  Now that I'm used to it, I wouldn't go back.  

The printing connection and the print dialogue box with Snow Leopard and CS5, on the other hand . . . yechhh!

thank you for this info- i will dive into it.

Kers-
The printing connection and the print dialogue box with Snow Leopard and CS5, on the other hand . . . yechhh!

Yes _ i agree fully, it is not obvious what is handled where- you need to recheck everything because of that- it is not responsive at all and in short - you make more mistakes because of it and waste hours
and center is not centered


----something else Do you use the 16bit  printoption and see results?-----------

[tonywong]

No detectable change for me, good or bad.

Did the update, had to re sync paper profiles (without incident), but CS5 photoshop 12.01 still crashes at the drop of a hat whenever I'm doing a print job...usually every second job it will wig out and crash when I'm in the printer options (to select the paper type) in the HP printer config dialog.

[kers]

I went back to the old 4.2 driver that seems to perform better than the update in my case.

the old better working one i got from the hP site

http://h10088.www1.hp.com/cda/gap/display/...printerid=17820

but boy- HP should be ashamed !