HPLIP

cannot print black

Asked by William Barnett

Attempting to print black line art from GIMP results in "hollow" images. (Dark gray outlines instead of black lines.) The images look normal on-screen and even in "Print Preview" screen.

Printing the HPLIP test page is all grey, no color. The areas that should be BLACK are actually WHITE.

Printing a photo from the photo viewer prints color, but anything that should be black, is very strange color or white.

I just installed the most recent CUPS driver for Linux Mint 18.3, which is version 3.19.12 . The installation ran with no errors, uninstalling the previous CUPS driver, then installing the new one. This did not correct the problem.

The printer is an HP ENVY 5055 and is new. The ink cartridges report "GOOD" with over 80% ink in each one, including the black.

I've uploaded a photo of my test page here:
http://mymorninglight.org/test/page.jpg

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HPLIP Edit question
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Revision history for this message
William Barnett (willieb3rd) said : 		#1

I removed the black cartridge, gently wiped the print head, then ran CLEAN CARTRIDGES. The black has returned, but the printer test page still shows no color.

Revision history for this message
William Barnett (willieb3rd) said : 		#2

Note: Trying to run the CLEAN CARTRIDGES function from the computer appears to lock up, and does nothing. I had to run it from the touch screen of the printer itself.

Revision history for this message
brian_p (claremont102) said : 		#3

Hello William,

Unfortuately. I haven't any way of resolving your problems with HPLIP.
What I do have is a way of using your printer without HPLIP drivers,

Put the device on the network and run the command 'driverless'. This
gives a URI. Substitute the URI in

  lpadmin -p 5055 -v URI -E -m everywhere

Print to 5055.

--
Brian.

Revision history for this message
William Barnett (willieb3rd) said : 		#4

It's connected via USB, so that isn't going to work. It seems to print color OK from other apps, just not the printer test page. Physically cleaning the black cartridge also helped, but unfortunately it looks like I'll need to replace it even tho it's 70% full. :( (I used about 10% cleaning it.) That's the breaks I guess.

Thanks. :)

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