Why does HP deliberately design printers to print too dark?

[Dmailman]

I've searched this topic to exhaustion, and found that it's an extraordinarily common problem that HP (and only HP) printers print too dark.  Every other printer manufacturer in the world has a driver setting for adjusting brightness.  Every single thread on the topic includes numerous completely unrelated troubleshooting steps, and is ultimately marked "solved" without being solved.

Does HP do this to sell more ink?  I'm willing to buy HP ink, which is why I spent $250 on extra ink when I bought the printer.  What I'm not willing to do is be completely unable to print what I need to, thanks to a longstanding, unique, seemingly intentional, and underhanded way to shake down customers.

This is shameful, HP.  

I can tell you that it'll be more or less pointless for me to buy anything else from HP related to printing, ever, since I can't print with HP products.  All this, because HP has outright ignored a problem that's apparently well-known to everybody but your newest customers.  But in all seriousness, this is how you increase sales?  By making sure people quit your products and never buy them again?  Whose idea was this, and how do they still have a job?

[Bob_Headrick]

My experience with a wide range of HP printers over several decades does not match yours.  I have a few questions:

• What are you printing - photo's, text, ???
• If printing photo's, what media type are you printing on?
• What program are you printing from?

If you are printing from a program like Photoshop make sure you are not selecting CMYK as the printer model.  Although the printer actually uses CMYK inks, the driver expects sRGB data.  Selecting CMYK will result in very oversaturated colors.

In recent times HP has "simplified" the user interface on the drivers, removing many of the advanced options.  You might find the Deskjet 6980 driver is a better choice, it is compatible with your Officejet 6960.

The Deskjet 6980 driver is compatible with the Officejet 6960 and provides page order as well as other features missing from the Officejet Pro 8620 driver including:

• Page Order
• Resizing options, including page scaling by % or shrink to fit, 
• Copy Count (with optional collating)
• Mirror Imaging (for printing T-Shirt transfers or decals)
• Watermarks
• Advanced Color (Brightness, Saturation and Color tone, individual sliders for CMYK)
• Overspray 
• Dry Time

The Deskjet 6980 driver can be installed as follows (instructions are for Windows 7, other versions would be similar):  Devices and Printers folder, right click on the Officejet 6960, select Printer Properties, Advanced, New Driver, Next, Windows Update, wait a while for the page to refresh, then select the HP Deskjet 6980 (HP) driver, OK.  It may be desirable to change the name back to Officejet 6960:  right click on the Printer, Printer Properties, General, type in the desired printer name, Apply.  While there it may be necessary to enable the duplexer:  click the Device Settings tab, set the duplex unit to Installed, Apply, OK.

Once you have the new driver installed you will have more options in the driver settings.  The color tab will have an option for Advanced, which will give sliders for Brightness, Saturation, Color Tone as well as Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.