HP Color Laserjet CP1215 - Colors too dark

[DocMike]

Hello all,

First off, I know that a color laser printer isn't the best thing in the world for printing photos. However, I already know in terms of resolution and color saturation this printer performs just fine - with one exception. Everything comes out dark, and unreasonably so.

At first I thought my monitor might be uncalibrated, but by viewing my pictures on other monitors and then finally getting my prints done at a store, I realized that my monitor was just fine and that it's my printer that prints everything too dark. (I noticed this on my documents, too.)

I ran the auto-calibration on the printer and that didn't seem to make a difference. I played with the different colorspaces, making sure that my printer and photoshop colorspaces were the same (sRGB.)

Does anyone have any experience with HP Color Laserjet printers? If so, I would appreciate some help in terms of any of the following:

1. Manual Calibration
2. Third Party Print Drivers
3. Other solutions?

Please don't suggest "get a different printer" or "print all your photos at store/service." I understand those are options, but they're not something that I want to do all the time - I know the printer is capable (for my purposes) and just needs some fine tuning, and I would appreciate any help I could get with that.

Thanks in advance!