HP printer profiles?

I just aquired a hp photosmart d7460 printer from a friend who is moving. Seems to be a nice printer and alot newer then the one i have now! This will hold me over untill i get a large format canon printer!

My question is this. I have my monitor calibrated and i am going to review the color managment thread that is on here. I remeber reading a whle ago about printer profiles. How do i get ahold of printer profiles for this printer? The prints are close but do not resemble the screen. The screen seems to be brighter, by brighter, I mean lighter in colors by a few shades.

I use photoshop cs3 and lightroom 2.1. Please advise me! I also have eye one screen calibrator.

The drivers should include ICC profiles for the main 3 HP papers Premium, Premium Plus and Advanced. I could never find any decent profiles for other papers which is why I moved away from HP printers.

When you see prints that are darker than your on-screen display that frequently means that your monitor brightness/luminance settings are too high. An automatic calibration doesn't alway catch that, so that's something to check out.

I'm not familiar with that particular printer, but HP photo printers do have ICC profiles included with the drivers so you can work with a color-managed system. The driver should also have an option to let the application manage colors -- when you are in Photoshop try the View->Proof Setup->Custom dialog, and in the dialog open the Device to Simulate list. Toward the bottom should be a list of monitors and printers with ICC profiles for a combination of printer, paper and inks -- does your printer show up?

If not, you might go onto the HP Web site and look for drivers for that printer and download everything you can find. Bear in mind, though, that these profiles are for printers that are designed for photo printing. "Generic" printers will not likely have ICC profiles.

If the profiles are there, you could run tests -- try a print letting the printer manage the colors (make sure Photoshop/Lightroom turns off its color management and the printer has its own scheme in the Preferences/Color Management tab) and then having the app manage the colors. You have to explicitely set this both in PS/Lightroom and in the printer Preferences/Color driver utility.

Aso, if printing out of Photoshop, you can use the View->Proof Setup utility to proof you print, that is, to see what Photoshop "thinks" a print will look like, but that will only work if the ICC profiles are there.

I have two HP photo printers, and they do OK as long as I folow the right process. But I only print with them using HP papers and inks -- I haven't experimented with third party papers or inks to compare results. If you can find a third-party paper with HP printer profiles, then you should be OK.

Thanks. I will try all that.

I went to the view proof setup thing. under customer i did not see anything that said hp? I saw a bunch of other stuff includeing the profile i set up when i calibrated my monitor. I did notice that when i changed to the profile, there was a box to check that said "preserve rgb numbers" should that be on. THat makes it look more like the prints.

tonylong wrote in post #7098067
When you see prints that are darker than your on-screen display that frequently means that your monitor brightness/luminance settings are too high. An automatic calibration doesn't alway catch that, so that's something to check out.

I'm not familiar with that particular printer, but HP photo printers do have ICC profiles included with the drivers so you can work with a color-managed system. The driver should also have an option to let the application manage colors -- when you are in Photoshop try the View->Proof Setup->Custom dialog, and in the dialog open the Device to Simulate list. Toward the bottom should be a list of monitors and printers with ICC profiles for a combination of printer, paper and inks -- does your printer show up?

If not, you might go onto the HP Web site and look for drivers for that printer and download everything you can find. Bear in mind, though, that these profiles are for printers that are designed for photo printing. "Generic" printers will not likely have ICC profiles.

If the profiles are there, you could run tests -- try a print letting the printer manage the colors (make sure Photoshop/Lightroom turns off its color management and the printer has its own scheme in the Preferences/Color Management tab) and then having the app manage the colors. You have to explicitely set this both in PS/Lightroom and in the printer Preferences/Color driver utility.

Aso, if printing out of Photoshop, you can use the View->Proof Setup utility to proof you print, that is, to see what Photoshop "thinks" a print will look like, but that will only work if the ICC profiles are there.

I have two HP photo printers, and they do OK as long as I folow the right process. But I only print with them using HP papers and inks -- I haven't experimented with third party papers or inks to compare results. If you can find a third-party paper with HP printer profiles, then you should be OK.

I'm not sure about what that check box does (mine is checked), but the fact that the printer profiles don't show up is not-so-good news. Did you set the Custom Proof Condition to Custom, then drop down the Device list? It sounds like you did, but the printers didn't show up, right?

Until you get profiles, or a printer that uses profiles, you are going to have to experiment with your software and printer until you get a decent routine. In your printer driver, you can adjust levels and colors to be pretty good. But that doesn't solve your full color-managed needs. In fact, it can be deceptive.

One thing to try is to find a good quality outside printer and have them print a batch of 4x6 shots then work with you workstation and printer to replicate those results. But, you have to be sure that the printer is consistently accurate. I've read that places using Fuji Frontier printers are a good source, and I had good results some time ago using a Walgreens that had one, but again it can be hit-or-miss unless you go to a reputable place.

Investigate getting some custom printer/paper profiles. I've gone that route with my new R2880 and the results are perfect. They are not expensive. About the cost of two ink carts per profile.

But it's important to be certain your monitor is properly profiled, I'm often reading complaints about calibrators not doing this or that. The user has to do some work, it's not a totally automated process.

bphillips330 wrote in post #7100134
I did notice that when i changed to the profile, there was a box to check that said "preserve rgb numbers" should that be on. THat makes it look more like the prints.

"preserve RGB numbers" in essence is the same as assign profile.
It should not be ticked.

Quite a good explanation on color managed printing and softproofing through (links in) the link from my sig..

tonylong wrote in post #7100922
I'm not sure about what that check box does (mine is checked),

Re-read the link in my sig.
Do *not* tick that box for normal softproofing.

ICC profiles for HP seem hard to find (harder even then Canon). There should be a few installed with the printer driver though.

If you use other then HP paper, try the paper manufacturer. If you're lucky, they have an icc profile for your printer.

Another option would be to have a profile created. (for each paper you use)

René Damkot wrote in post #7103532
"preserve RGB numbers" in essence is the same as assign profile.
It should not be ticked.

Quite a good explanation on color managed printing and softproofing through (links in) the link from my sig..

Re-read the link in my sig.
Do *not* tick that box for normal softproofing.

Heh! OK, I'm busted -- I do virtually all my printing in Lightroom, so I'm not up on these details!

OP, listen to René!

As far as the missing profiles, you could contact HPs Customer Service -- they have some people who are capable of helping sort things out, at least to tell if there are profiles for that particular printer.

So, I poked around on the HP support site and couldn't find anything explicitely saying whether profiles are provided with the D7460, but it is classed as a Photosmart printer, which leads me to believe they are.

What OS are you running? Did you install the driver from a CD or in some other way?

Like I said earlier, HP has a pretty decent support setup, including the ability to "chat" live with a support person, so you might take that route.

One thing to try is to do a search for .icc files on your system and see what you have profiles for.

The installation procedure for my D7360 requires that you start the installation with the USB cable not connected to the printer. You connect the USB when the installation program tells you to.

If the prescribed sequence for D7460 is the same and you missed that detail, you may have to uninstall the printer and reinstall it correctly.

In - C:\WINDOWS\system32\sp​ool\drivers\color - I have the following ICC profiles:

HP PS D6100_D7100_D7300-Advanced Photo.icc 173 KB 20.12.2005
HP PS D6100_D7100_D7300-Prem Plus Photo.icc 153 KB 20.12.2005
HP PS D6100_D7100_D7300-Premium Paper.icc 110 KB 20.12.2005

They are not displayed in the printer driver, rather they are called upon automatically, according to the HP photo paper that you have selected. Color managing programs should list them and let you choose, at least Qimage does.