Distorted colors on HP z3100

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blacksqr
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed May 08, 2024 10:13 pm

Distorted colors on HP z3100

Post by blacksqr »

I'm trying to print an image with saturated reds, blues and greens, but the printed colors turn out greyish or muddy, especially the greens.

I'm using a HP z3100 printer. When I print the image straight from GIMP using the Adobe 1998 profile with the HP drivers, the image turns out as I expect, mostly matching what I see on my monitor.

When I print through Printfab Composer, the colors are desaturated and distorted. They don't look anything like what is displayed in the softproof view in Composer

I have used various papers, including Hahnemuhle smooth photo rag. I have used both sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 color space settings. There are slight variations in output, but none of the Printfab outputs come close to the GIMP output.

I have tried:

Using a custom paper profile with no icc profile
Using the built-in "Plain Paper" profile
Using Hahnemuhle's icc profile for my printer downloaded from their site

Is there a way I can use Composer to send the image raw to the HP printer driver, so the printer can produce a result comparable to the GIMP output?

I'm attaching an image printed on the smooth photo rag paper using Hahnemuhle's icc profile. The print includes a patch file for shades of green, that shows how badly distorted the color outputs are. The original of the patch file can be seen at: https://www.color-meanings.com/shades-of-green-color-names-html-hex-rgb-codes/
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PXL_20250812_204248965.jpg
PXL_20250812_204248965.jpg (249.58 KiB) Viewed 385034 times
zedonet
Site Admin
Posts: 2305
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:02 am

Re: Distorted colors on HP z3100

Post by zedonet »

Hello and please excuse the delay. Of course this should not be the case. If you print on matte fineart paper directly from the PrintFab Composer, the settings

- Quality = Medium or High
- Mediatype = Hahnemuehle Smooth Fineart

below should produce a print in good color quality - see below:

PrintFab Composer Windows Z3100.png
PrintFab Composer Windows Z3100.png (31.18 KiB) Viewed 384999 times

Your print of the green color swatches looks as if no cyan ink was used at all. How did you print the other image (with the flower)?
I recommend to make a test print with a test image that contains more colors like the one I have attached below:

rgb-photoindustrie.jpg
rgb-photoindustrie.jpg (205.1 KiB) Viewed 384999 times
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