prints <60% as bright white...

Archived from groups: comp.periphs.printers (More info?)

"Stefan B. König" <steve_bb@aol.com> wrote in message
news05230$8jd$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de...
>I got this problem with my HP 3820,
> when I print a greyscale image it prints no grey that is brighter than 60%.
> Looks very ugly on images, since I only used to print texts I havn't noticed
> this bug before.
>
> The 3-Color cartridge is empty so I can't try a color print...

If you mean that any gray lighter than 60% does not print then the problem is
probably that your color cartridge is empty. The black cartridge has a rather
large drop (about 6x as large) compared to the color drops. When printing in
grayscale the color cartridge is used for the lighter areas as the smaller
color drops can be mixed better to make the lighter areas.

You might check the driver and see if there is a "use black cartridge only"
option, which would print with only the black cartridge. The graphics quality
will not be as good as when using the color cartridge. Putting a fresh color
cartridge would probably improve your results considerably.

If you want to print B&W photo's you would probably be better off with one of
the HP printers that uses a grayscale photo cartridge such as the #59 or #100
or #102.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, not speaking for my employer HP