HPLIP

Colour calibration makes colours very bad on Photosmart D7160

Asked by Russell Odom

Earlier this month I bought a Photosmart D7160. I plugged it in, set it up, calibrated colours using hp-toolbox and was mostly able to print OK, except when printing photos at 1200dpi, where the colours were messed up (looks like black is missing/far too light). Normal docs, the CUPS/HPLIP test pages, and the same photo at 600dpi are fine. When printing a test page from the printer's menu, all of the body text is almost unreadably light grey, and the colour boxes on page 2 show the black as pale green. After jumping through HP's support hoops they diagnosed a hardware problem (faulty printer head) and arranged a replacement, which arrived yesterday.

I plugged in the power (but not the USB cable), did the initial setup and printed another test page; all is fine. I then plugged in the USB cable, set it up using hp-setup (having removed the old printer), and printed out a photo on the supplied photo paper at 1200dpi; colours were a little dark but otherwise as expected. I then went into hp-toolbox and selected "Perform color calibration", printed it out, selected the best matching squares (F9 and Q7 in this case) and tried printing the same photo again. Now my printer is exhibiting exactly the same faulty colour reproduction as the old one!

There's a photo showing the problems at http://www.gloomytrousers.co.uk/hp1.jpg - the box that should be black is circled; the left-hand photo was printed before I performed the colour calibration and the right hand is after (the pink shadow around my niece in the right-hand pic is not a JPEG artefact, it should be a dark shadow from the flash).

I am running Fedora 8 on x86_64 with hplip 2.7.12 (when I got the original printer I was using 2.7.7).
[root@detritus ~]# rpm -q hplip hpijs hplip-gui cups
hplip-2.7.12-4.fc8.x86_64
hpijs-2.7.12-4.fc8.x86_64
hplip-gui-2.7.12-4.fc8.x86_64
cups-1.3.5-2.fc8.x86_64
[root@detritus ~]# uname -a
Linux detritus.local 2.6.23.9-85.fc8 #1 SMP Fri Dec 7 15:49:36 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

This appears to be a calibration bug, but can anyone point me in the right direction to recalibrate colours correctly, or at least reset the faulty calibration to the default?

Thanks,

Russ

Question information

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Status:
Solved
For:
HPLIP Edit question
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Solved by:
Aaron Albright
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Revision history for this message
Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#1

Russ,

Is it possible for you to email me the picture you are printing? You can find my email address in my profile. I'll try and reproduce and see what I can come up with.

Also please run hp-check and post the output.

Thanks!

Aaron

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#2

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the response. Pic on its way by e-mail in a moment

hp-check output follows...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@detritus ~]# hp-check

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 2.7.12)
Dependency/Version Check Utility ver. 12.2

Copyright (c) 2001-7 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

Saving output in log file: hp-check.log

Initializing. Please wait...

---------------
| SYSTEM INFO |
 ---------------

Basic system information:
Linux detritus.local 2.6.23.9-85.fc8 #1 SMP Fri Dec 7 15:49:36 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Distribution:
fedora 8

HPOJ running?
No, HPOJ is not running (OK).

Checking Python version...
OK, version 2.5.1 installed

Checking PyQt version...
OK, version 3.17 installed.

Checking SIP version...
OK, Version 4.7.1 installed

Checking for CUPS...
Status: scheduler is running
error: Version: (Not available. CUPS may not be installed or not running.)

Checking for Reportlab...
OK, version >= 2.0

----------------
| DEPENDENCIES |
 ----------------

Checking for dependency: cups - Common Unix Printing System...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: cups-devel- Common Unix Printing System development files...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: gcc - GNU Project C and C++ Compiler...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: GhostScript - PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: libcrypto - OpenSSL cryptographic library...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: libjpeg - JPEG library...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: libnetsnmp-devel - SNMP networking library development files...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: libpthread - POSIX threads library...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: libtool - Library building support services...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: libusb - USB library...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: make - GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: PIL - Python Imaging Library (required for commandline scanning with hp-scan)...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: ppdev - Parallel port support kernel module....
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: PyQt - Qt interface for Python...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: python-devel - Python development files...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: Python 2.3 or greater - Required for fax functionality...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: Python 2.2 or greater - Python programming language...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: Reportlab - PDF library for Python...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: SANE - Scanning library...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: SANE - Scanning library development files...
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Checking for dependency: scanimage - Shell scanning program...
OK, found.

Checking for dependency: xsane - Graphical scanner frontend for SANE...
OK, found.

----------------------
| HPLIP INSTALLATION |
 ----------------------

Currently installed HPLIP version...
HPLIP 2.7.12 currently installed in '/usr/share/hplip'.

Current contents of '/etc/hp/hplip.conf' file:
# hplip.conf. Generated from hplip.conf.in by configure.

[hpssd]
# Note: hpssd does not support dynamic ports
# Port 2207 is the IANA assigned port for hpssd
port=2207

[hplip]
version=2.7.12

[dirs]
home=/usr/share/hplip
run=/var/run
ppd=/usr/share/ppd/HP
ppdbase=/usr/share/ppd
doc=/usr/share/doc/hplip-2.7.12
icon=/usr/share/applications
cupsbackend=/usr/lib/cups/backend
foomatic=/usr/share/foomatic

# Following values are determined at configure time and cannot be changed.
[configure]
network-build=yes
pp-build=yes
gui-build=yes
scanner-build=yes
fax-build=yes
cups11-build=no
doc-build=yes
shadow-build=no
foomatic-xml-install=no
foomatic-ppd-install=no
internal-tag=2.7.12.10

-------------------------------
| DISCOVERED PARALLEL DEVICES |
 -------------------------------

No devices found.

--------------------------
| DISCOVERED USB DEVICES |
 --------------------------

  Device URI Model
  ----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
  hp:/usb/Photosmart_D7100_series?serial=MY737F11R704SF HP Photosmart D7100 series

---------------------------------
| INSTALLED CUPS PRINTER QUEUES |
 ---------------------------------

Photosmart_D7100
----------------
Type: Printer
Installed in HPLIP?: Yes, using the hp: CUPS backend.
Device URI: hp:/usb/Photosmart_D7100_series?serial=MY737F11R704SF
PPD: /etc/cups/ppd/Photosmart_D7100.ppd
PPD Description: HP PhotoSmart D7100 Foomatic/hpijs (recommended)
Printer status: printer Photosmart_D7100 is idle. enabled since Tue 29 Jan 2008 15:40:20 GMT
Communication status: Good

----------------------
| SANE CONFIGURATION |
 ----------------------

'hpaio' in '/etc/sane.d/dll.conf'...
OK, found. SANE backend 'hpaio' is properly set up.

Checking output of 'scanimage -L'...
device `v4l:/dev/video0' is a Noname Hauppauge Nova-T DVB-T virtual device

---------------------
| PYTHON EXTENSIONS |
 ---------------------

Checking 'cupsext' CUPS extension...
OK, found.

Checking 'pcardext' Photocard extension...
OK, found.

Checking 'hpmudext' I/O extension...
OK, found.

Checking 'scanext' SANE scanning extension...
OK, found.

-----------------
| USB I/O SETUP |
 -----------------

Checking for permissions of USB attached printers...

HP Device 0xc602 at 001:023:
    Device URI: hp:/usb/Photosmart_D7100_series?serial=MY737F11R704SF
    Device node: /dev/bus/usb/001/023
    Mode: 0664
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: dev/bus/usb/001/023
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
user:russ:rw-
group::r--
group:lp:rw-
mask::rw-
other::r--

-----------
| SUMMARY |
 -----------

error: 7 errors and/or warnings.

Please refer to the installation instructions at:
http://hplip.sourceforge.net/install/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that CUPS *is* running despite what it says above.

Regards,

Russ

Revision history for this message
Best Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

Russ,

Thanks for the info. I was able to reproduce this. If you select "factory default" settings while doing the color calibration it should get it to printing okay again.

I'm going to be working with the engineer on getting this fixed in the future, it may not be until after the next release, if that makes any sense.

Sorry about the inconvenience!

Aaron

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#4

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for that - I've reset to the factory defaults and will check that colours are back to normal tomorrow.

Are you filing a bug for fixing the underlying problem that I could keep an eye on?

Thanks once again,

Russ

Revision history for this message
Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#5

Russ,

Actually it's in our internal tracking system. Although I'll post any updates as soon as they occur if that works okay? And if you don't see any movement in awhile you can always post for an update. I don't have any ETA on when this will be resolved, however it is on our todo list.

Sorry about that!

Aaron

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#6

Thanks Aaron, that'd be great.

I have printed out another photo and the colours are now back to looking 'normal', but they're still too dark so I think I do need to perform a proper calibration (when it's fixed) before I print out many photos.

Russ

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#7

Thanks Aaron Albright, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Randolf (randolf-butzbach) said : 		#8

Aaron,

just would like to know, whether there are some news on this topic now after four months. It seems that I have experienced the same problem with hplip-2.8.5 as of May 8, 2008.

However, printing the calibration page contains just the letter-number codes, no color/gray etc is printed. Is this correct (and I didn't understand the idea of this page) or should this look different?

Thanks,

             Randolf

OpenSuSE 10.2
HP Photosmart C7280
hplip-2.8.5
Inks which came with the printer.

Revision history for this message
Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#9

I have confirmed this is still a problem. Sorry no ETA on when it will be fixed.

A

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#10

Hi Aaron,

It's been a while, any update on this? I'd like to start using my printer properly, but colours on my photos aren't quite right (too dark) when printed.

I also tried using the Windows drivers on another machine in the hope of using those to calibrate the printer instead, but after a 245MB (!) download I can't see any similar calibration option. Is there something I'm missing? Any other way to perform a similar calibration that you know of?

Thanks,

Russ

Revision history for this message
Stan Dolson (stan-dolson) said : 		#11

Russell,

I'm the engineer looking into your problem now.

I've been unable to even get color calibration to work on the D7160. The
printer I have will crash if color calibration is attempted. I'm unable to
understand how you were able to get it to work. It is possible that the
printer we have has old firmware. I'll try to work on finding out if we need
an updated printer or firmware.

As the Windows toolbox doesn't offer color calibration it is entirely
possible that it isn't supported for this printer. I'll try to find out from
the firmware group if that is the case.

Thanks for your patience.

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#12

Hi Stan,

Thanks for the response. Let me know if I can provide any info about my model/firmware version... from HP Device manager -> Tools -> Device Information, the only thing I can find that looks like a version number is "support-ver" which has the value 1.6.8.

Regards,

Russ

Revision history for this message
Stephane Epardaud (stef-inforealm) said : 		#13

I had the same issue with a C6180, colour calibrated it because photos were too dark, and I noticed I even had the problem (dark areas were almost white) when printing directly from the printer's card reader, so this is not an HPLIP problem but a printer problem.

Problem solved itself when I restored the factory settings from HPLIP. Now I can print using the printer's card reader with correct black.

I would love to see this fixed in the printer though.

Revision history for this message
Russell Odom (russ-gloomytrousers) said : 		#14

Hi all,

I just had another go with this, now on Fedora 10 with hplip 2.8.12 ... it looks like the "Perform color calibration" option has been removed, but the colour reproduction when printing photos is now correct without any calibration.

Regards,

Russ