Help with PSE6 and HP Photosmart 7360

[Ric Cisson]

I have, or I should say, one of my students is having a problem with his printer an HP Photosmart 7360 as it relates to a new PC and O/S; Vista Ultimate and PSE6.

A little background, his former working PC was based on XP Home SP2 with PSE 4. Printer behaved well with that set up and he was able to print with PSE4 managing the colors. This monitor is calibrated, I should add.

Current set up on new PC, he cannot get PSE to manage colors for printing. Completely calibrated monitor with Spyder 3 Elite and all the profiles transferred over and latest drivers from HP site for Vista installed and confirmed. When in PSE 6 Editor and selection made for Elements to manage colors, prints come out sometimes dark and sometimes light with, no adjustments made, yet printed beautifully on XP platform. When printer manages color, prints are very close to what is seen on monitor. Seems the printer driver does a better job of managing colors than does Elements/Vista combo.

I have personally spoken to HP, said it was a software issue with Adobe, which I half expected to hear from HP and then they suggested just avoid printing out of Photoshop all together.:eek:

Installed PSE 6 on XP platform and installed the printer, drivers were never uninstalled. Same issue cropped up, lousy prints through PSE6 management, close to perfect when printer manages.:confused:

Again, on the XP platform with PSE4 everything is fine. New platform, after calibration and 3 hours of useless HP trouble shooting, countless uninstall and reinstall of monitor drivers, printer drivers, Elements, a single image will print up both light one time and darker the next time without a single adjustment through Elements print dialog with Elements managing colors and then almost perfect with printer managing colors.

I have thus far come to the conclusion that HP Tech Support is useless. Is there someone out there with a 7360 that could maybe shed some light as to what experience they have had with PSE6. I do not personally have the printer at my disposal, so I would have to reference what I recall in troubleshooting at his location. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

[Not4wood]

I have the 7360 but I also use XP Home SP2.

From reading everything you mentioned the only thing I can see is that you must make sure that the Printer Dialog is double checked to make sure that Adobe Elements is permitted to Color Manage the Printer. Also, you didn't mention what paper your student is printing on and also if you downloaded any ICC Profiles to click to make sure that Elements is looking for the Correct Paper to print. I have a little bit left of the HP Advanced Paper which has the small arrows on the back which this printer can see to automatically match paper to printer profiles to match.

The only thing I dont like in this printer dialog is that I have to make sure everything is clicked for me to print everytime I go to Print something. If I dont check it I will find this use program to manage color unclicked and if I do forget it will of course be unclicked and I now have another wasted ink and paper..

[Ric Cisson]

Mark, thank you for your response. I am going back over to his house on Wednesday to followup. I have done some research and have noticed that the HP Photosmart printers do not keep or "remember" previous settings, that they reset to default after each print job. Sounds like a pain. Anyway, noted that you have PSE5, but are not having problems with XP Home SP2, as is the case locally. I am beginning to wonder if Vista is trying to color manage.

All ICC profiles have been downloaded and installed, PSE6 sees them okay and so does the printer throuh its' driver. The aching question is, it works in XP, but not in Vista. At this rate, I am more and more convinced that maybe we are looking at a Vista issue...I believe I read somewhere that Vista has a color management asset within the software, I am going to do more research.

Again, thanks for your input, will look carefully at the ICC profiles loaded vs the paper being used. I know we tried a few times on the Advanced Paper, and he has a custom profile for Redriver Polar Matte. Both printed beautifly when printer managed, but lousy when Elements was left to manage.

Hopefully, others will chime in and maybe offer suggestions to consider before I go back over there on Wednesday. Thanks again.

[Not4wood]

I have a tendancy to agree with you, another probelm while using Vista....

From what I've seen in the latest Catalog, a lot of manufacturers are starting to go back and offer more XP choices with the new equipment if one so desires instead of using the existing new Vista.

[bobmark5]

All this discussion about the HP7360 and Vista has a lot of merit. There was no way to resolve the problem. Discussions with HP and Msft gave no answers other than who me? it's the other guy. Ultimately I went to the 7460 and that resolved it. Works great.

[Ric Cisson]

So you upgraded from a 7360 to a 7460?

So far, no resolving of this issue. It looks like my student is going to take a sledge hammer to the printer, send half of the remains to Microsoft and the other half of the remains to HP. He has had it with the two of them. He also went out and found a copy of XP Pro at Staples and uninstalled Vista, and is going to send that back to MS with a note, can only imagine what he will say:eek:. For now, new computer with XP Pro and the 7360 are very happy, but he ordered an Epson R1900 from Epson and I am sure he will be very happy...in fact I know he will.;)