HP C6180 Photo Paper - colours skewed - no black?

[Tim]

Hi,

I just bought an HP Photosmart C6180 all-in-one to hook up to my debian box.

Anyone else seen this effect, printing from CF card onto glossy photo paper?

http://www.infomax.co.uk/hp/Calibrate-PhotoPaper.jpg

(That's a 300 dpi scan of the result)

Looks to me like the printer has "forgotten" to use any black ink. However,
printing from CF card onto plain cheap A4 seems to work fine, cf:

http://www.infomax.co.uk/hp/Calibrate-PlainPaper.jpg

original JPEG is here: http://www.infomax.co.uk/hp/Calibrate-Original.jpg

I was careful to select the correct output media - in fact I tried
several "photo paper" output options. Similar effects occur when printing
from the PC, plain paper is fine, photo paper is missing black.

One might assume the printer is FOOBAR'd - in fact it's had this problem for
all of the 3 weeks I've had it. Returning it is a hassle, so I was just
checking out before sending it back in case it is one of those id10t
errors!

In every other respect, the printer is excellent, and the ability to perform
network scanning to xsane under linux is superb.

Unfortunately, HP's sub-continental nohelp-desk are about as useful as a
cotton-wool ashtray No surprise there then.

Cheers

Tim

 

[Arthur Entlich]

I am not familiar with this printer, but I do agree that the first scan
appears to not be using the black cartridge.

Is it possible that for this paper and ink combination the printer
requires a different cartridge set?

I know some HP printers require you exchange the black cartridge with a
Light Cyan/Light magenta/ dye photo black cartridges rather than using
the pigment ink black cartridge, so perhaps in that case, it only uses
the other CMY cartridge?


Art

 

[Tim]

Hello Art,

I am not familiar with this printer, but I do agree that the first scan
appears to not be using the black cartridge.

Is it possible that for this paper and ink combination the printer
requires a different cartridge set?

I know some HP printers require you exchange the black cartridge with a
Light Cyan/Light magenta/ dye photo black cartridges rather than using
the pigment ink black cartridge, so perhaps in that case, it only uses
the other CMY cartridge?

That's an interesting point. Now, the printer already has light-cyan and
light-magenta (it's a 6 cartridge jobbie), but I was wondering about the
fact that I've used the "big" black cartridge (7ml IIRC, rather than
the "small" (4ml IIRC) - so I am wondering if big=pigment, small=dye?

I shall go and actually read the instructions and see if it mentions
anything. I would have thought though, that the printer would whine if it
knew it was deficient, but who knows...

<rant>
Unfortunately the HP-sauce Hell-desk bloke just gave me the "30 days or less
and talk to your vendor" load of b*llocks, instead of even going through
his script... Why do they even bother with such a charade of a
help-system... </rant>

I might ring back and say it's 31 days old...

I'll be back if I find anything out. Many thanks for your thoughts

Cheers

Tim