Washed out colors - 5255

[Phil-D]

I purchased an HP 5255 all-in-one in December and had been printing mostly black and white documents. A few days ago I started some color print jobs and have noticed that the colors appear to be dull or under-saturated. This is based upon comparison to known documents and photos printed from an HP 3000 printer and an HP Photosmart 7360.

Searching this community and running the various trouble shooting methods suggested have not helped. This included uninstalling/reinstalling the printer software, running the internal trouble shooting such as cleaning the cartridges (which did not use any paper?), running the diagnostics and the Print and Scan Doctor.

My color printing which often contains company logos and photos produces unsatisfactory results from the HP 5255.

Unfortunately, the window to return the 5255 to the retailer has come and gone, so what can I do now?

I attached a scan of the print results from  the older HP 3000  and the newer 5255 mentioned above. To my surprise, even the scan to jpeg image appears washed out - the printed copy shows a difference but the scan to jpeg has exaggerted it. What is causing this?

[Betty0610]

@Phil-D

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

How are the copies from this Printer?

Align the ink cartridges for best print quality using the printer control panel.

1. Load the input tray with plain white paper.

2. Pull out the output tray, and then lift the output tray extender.

   

3. On the printer control panel, swipe left on the display, and then touch Setup .

4. Touch Tools.

5. Swipe up on the display, and then touch Align Printer.

   An alignment page prints.

6. Wait for the alignment page to fully eject from the printer.

7. After the alignment page prints, lift the scanner lid, place the alignment page with the print side down on the scanner glass. Position it according to the engraved guides around the glass.

   

8. Close the scanner lid, and then touch OK.

   The printer aligns the ink cartridges.

9. After the printer aligns the ink cartridges, touch OK on the control panel.

10. Try to print again.

If the issue persists, please perform the remaining steps from this document: https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-officejet-5200-all-in-one-printer-series/14095737/model/1409...

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution and Kudos buttons, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!

[Phil-D]

Hello Betty,

Thank you for responding to my problem.

Copies have the same washed out colors. The first copy of the same original shown above was so much different that I made a copy of that first copy, then a copy of the second copy, etc.  Below is a scan of a 4th generation copy – after a few more runs, I’m sure I would wind up with a blank piece of paper.

Even though I have performed the tests listed in your post and in the KB article, I will run them once more over the weekend and report back on the results.

Scan of 4th generation copy:

Scan of original printed document:

:

[Betty0610]

Sure, do keep us posted 🙂

[Phil-D · Accepted solution]

Current status is: 95% Improved

Over the past few days I followed all the steps outlined in your message and all the steps in the KB article. There was no improvement whatsoever.

However, the day after testing I was prompted to change the Black ink cartridge.  After installing the cartridge and running the alignment, I printed another of my “test” pages.

To my surprise, the colors seemed to be properly saturated with no washout. Copying a color document also yielded a very close match.

I don’t understand how installing a new Black cartridge could fix the washout on colors, but maybe this machine needed to be aligned multiple times since initial setup to get it to work right?

The only minor issue I have right now is that the colors seem to be slightly darker in tone than expected. I know not to expect an exact match to the computer screen, but is there a unique color profile associated with or built into this device?

[Betty0610]

@Phil-D

Good to hear that things have improved. 

So when you do color printing, the ink is also taken from the black ink cartridge, hence changing the black ink cartridge would have helped.

You can try printing in draft mode for the print to be light.

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the Accepted Solution and Kudos buttons, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!