Wrong color balance on prints from new HP 8500 Officejet Pro [ Edited ]

[glnz]

Miles:  I appreciate your posts here also.  Please see what I just wrote to DexterM.  I very respectfully suggest that the two of you work together to get this fixed by Friday.  Thanks.

Message Edited by glnz on 05-04-2009 08:47 PM

[Bob_Headrick]

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glnz wrote:
Miles:  I appreciate your posts here also.  Please see what I just wrote to DexterM.  I very respectfully suggest that the two of you work together to get this fixed by Friday.  Thanks.

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Miles and Dexter work for HP, but they participate here on there own time outside of their normal job responsibilities.  It is hardly reasonable to expect them to drop what they are doing in their spare time to contact Mark Hurd or the driver developers.

The original response asking about ink levels had a background in the following:  "blue" is made of magenta and cyan.  If your cyan cartridge is running low on ink or the cyan portion of the printheads are clogged the result would have relatively too little cyan and too much magenta.  This could appear "pink".  Have you checked the ink levels and cleaned the printheads using the toolbox routines?

The first thread in each of the printing forums is titled "Want Good answers? Ask good questions!".  I would suggest reviewing that post, which starts with the following:  

Search before posting  Use the "Search" box to see if someone has already asked and answered your question.

 If you did that you would be directed to this thread, where a similar question was asked and solved for the printer you have.

 - Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

[glnz]

Bob: Just so I don't make a false assumption, are you also with HP?

I'm editing my response from last night as follows:

HP is deficient in failing to include color balancing features in its programming for the HP 8500 Officejet Pro.  As Miles, Dexter and your link indicate, HP does provide such obviously necessary features for its other models.  There's no excuse for forgetting it here.

Please let me know when HP will add color balancing to this printer's software and make it available for download from the HP driver site.  Yes, I am asking for a hard date.  If your driver team is busy ... too bad.

Second, to be fair to you and colleagues, I shall try again this weekend all the throat-clearing steps on the machine.  But the ink levels are OK for all four colors and we have not yet used up our initial ink cartridges -- this problem should not 

be occuring within the first few weeks of our use of this machine. 

Also, the pink color is appearing in the white portions of photos, not just the blue portions, which leads me to guess we have a color balance problem, not a throat-clearing problem.

Let's assume for the moment that throat-clearing doesn't help.  What's the next step?  Bob, I had previously searched the forum for 8500 and had not found your link.  Thanks for the link, but it's beyond my technical level, and I don't see why I should struggle with that type of expert fix after spending hundreds on this new model.  And I am guessing such a fix will be confusing to use and then cause us to miss many of the other features of the 8500.  Why is this our problem to fix and not HP's?

But understand (and please tell HP) - if I don't have a fix very soon, I'm posting my complaint on every site I can find.  Let everyone know that the programming for the 8500 is deficient and that my unit came with unbalanced color.

Finally, last night, I could not contact HP's tech support because "Server is busy" appeared on the tech links for all submodels of the 8500.  Nor would HP's web site show me my warranty info although I had spent extra hundreds to purchase three-year full replacement.  Very bad show, Bob.

But I do thank you for your time.

Message Edited by glnz on 05-05-2009 11:33 AM

Message Edited by glnz on 05-05-2009 11:35 AM

[Bob_Headrick]

I do not work for HP, I am a volunteer here like the other participants here.  Those that work for HP do so on thier own time and speak for themselves, not HP.  They also identify themselves as HP employees.

At this point it appears there will be no helping you from this forum.  I gave you a solution (install the driverfor the L7600) that should solve your issue.  You might also take a look at your source file and make sure the problem is not in the image you are using.  You may have success changing the color in your photo program.

As for a date that HP will have a driver to your liking, I have absolutely no inside information, but I would bet the answer is "never".  This printer is an office printer, not one of the Photosmart series.  That said, I would expect the printer to do an excellent job of matching colors.

If you want to sepak with HP you could contact support as shown here.  If you are in the US you can call 1-800-HPINVENt.

I will not be making further responses here, I can see that it would not be productive.or appreciated.

  - Bob Headrick, Microsoft MVP Printing/Imaging

[jmbreland]

For the benefit of those who followed this thread to the bitter end in hopes of finding a solution to the strange colors emerging from their HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless printer, I regret to inform you that the problem has never been resolved.

Four months have elapsed since the last post.  I am a new but not so proud owner of an Officejet Pro 8500, and I am encountering the same problems that glnz pointed out.  Judging from what I've learned from this forum, it's a hopeless cause.  The Officejet Pro 8500 works pretty well--so long as you stick with black and white.

[glnz]

Mr. Breland: 

Go to   

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=Printing&thread.id=5702

I'm following that thread, and it might be helpful.  Haven't yet done what it suggests, but at some point I'm going to try it.

I also found 

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=2512009&lang=en

Please post your experience here as well.

Thanks.

[Sidney]

I called HP about this problem. The HP 8500 does not have the color tab for adjustment but the other officejets in the past do have the color tab. Here's what Hp told me to do .I still had my old HP 7310 installed(but no longer USB connected  to this computer). This means that I actually had this printer hooked up and had not removed the icons  or programming for this older machine. This ony works if the printer itself was at one time connected to the computer that is now hooked to the 8500. All you have to do if you have had a a older machine that is compatible with yhe 8500 hooked up do the following. Go to 8500 properties and find which port the 8500 is connected to. Click on your old officejet icon that had the color tab and click on its properties. Select the same output port as the 8500 is using. Try runninig a test print and see if the 8500 printer prints out from  your old  officejet. If so , when you do phiotographs use the drivers of your old officejet to adjust your picture and print the result with the 8500. My old 7310 officejet is not actually hooked to this computer now but was at one time hooked to this computer. Hopefully at some point Hp will add a photo color tab driver to the 8500. 

[glnz]

Mr. Sidney - Whom did you call at HP, and at what number?  My calls ended up overseas and were less than useless. 

Also, we had an OfficeJet d135 before we bought the new 8500.  I tried your method just now with the drivers/print window for the old d135, first changing its port from Dot 4_001 to the special home network port for the 8500.  It tried to work, but the 8500 will not properly grab blank paper when it's sent a test page from the d135 printer window.  Machinery in the 8500 spins but doesn't grab the paper.  When I went back to the 8500 printer window and ran a test page, it worked fine.

(The driver/package for the d135 also does not have a color adjustments tab, but that machine had a different method for making color adjustments that the 8500 lacks.)

Now, I've received a recommendation elsewhere in this forum to download the driver package from the L7600.  Do you think that will work?  Will installing such package erase my drivers for the 8500?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Message Edited by glnz on 09-15-2009 08:56 PM

Message Edited by glnz on 09-15-2009 08:58 PM

Message Edited by glnz on 09-15-2009 08:59 PM

[DexterM]

Bob would not have suggested the L7600 driver workaround if he didn't think it'll work.

And NO, installing the L7600 driver will not erase the 8500 driver. Also, I suggest you just download the basic drivers for the L7600. Cos the Full software has the network scanner drivers and additional software that is not really required for printing.

[glnz]

This conversation continues at

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=Printing&thread.id=7922

Message Edited by glnz on 09-15-2009 11:37 PM

Message Edited by glnz on 09-15-2009 11:38 PM