HPLIP printer drivers broken. Grayscale and dark colours wrong

[bascule]

There is a problem with the HPLIP printing system (drivers or filters), causing printed colours to be wrong. Apologies for double-posting this, but it does not belong in the hardware section any longer (http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,87414.0.html).

I've done some testing and summarise the results below in the hope that it may help investigation into this bug.

My printer is an HP C6380 All-In-One
I removed/deleted it completely, rebooted and started again:

Re-installed the printer using the CUPS web interface, choosing the driver hpcups 3.11.1.19. No foomatic driver option given, even though foomatic is installed on my system (other printers had both hpcups and foomatic driver choices available)
Printed the CUPS test page. The black/white gradient was broken, having a red line in the middle (link to scanned copy)
Ran PrinterDrake (PCC > Hardware > Set up the printer(s)...)
Printed the PrinterDrake Standard and Photo test pages. On the standard page the colour wheel again had broken black/white gradients, but the colour gradients were fine (link to scanned copy)
Strangely, the photo test page appeared to be completely OK (link to scanned copy)
However, my initial problem of photos printed from Picasa remains; all the pictures look slightly like negatives which, by the look of it, seems to be related to the broken black/white gradient problem (link to scanned copy). Just for info, the turquoise colour of the outfits is correct, it's the black highlights/lowlights/backgrounds that are screwed up.

Exactly the same problems/symptoms appear if I install the printer using PrinterDrake or hp-setup/HP Device Manager.

More proof (if any were needed) that the problem is black/grayscale-related:

On the colour charts linked below, where the colour wheel fades to white in the middle, there is very little problem, but where it fades to black, it seems to cross a boundary at about 70% black where it is printed as bright red and then the gradient starts at white again.

The more black in the picture, the greater the problem.

(Source colour wheel - sorry for the poor quality screenshot) and (Printed colour wheel)

Looking at some other stuff online, I'm guessing the problem may be to do with filters (/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups ??) rather than the driver itself?

I really hope someone is able to investigate this bug, as it is a real shame that I cannot print photos at the moment.

[bascule]

Well, colour me confused  

There are a few bugs on the HP bug tracker that deal with this exact problem:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/722067
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/718494
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/695962

Unfortunately, no great response from HP themselves, but other users have suggested using the hpijs driver instead of the hpcups one.

As I stated in my first post, there is no hpijs (foomatic) driver available for my model, but there is one for the C6200 series (which I figured would be similar).

Configured another printer using PrinterDrake, with that driver (C6200 GhostScript + hpijs) and IT WORKS!

A strange side-effect is that I now have printer options that don't exist on my printer and I've only tested it using one application, but for now I'm happy.

[j-retired]

I have an HP b109 all-in-one. 99% of the time it works perfectly, then once in a while I get effects something like your "printed colour wheel". Unfortunately I do not have a solution, I usually fiddle around without success then reboot whereupon it seems to be OK again.
So I will be watching this thread for ideas!

j

[Texstar]

So I will be watching this thread for ideas!

j

Me too!

[britbox]

Hi All

Noticed that there is a driver version 3.11.1.19 EN and 3.11.1 EN listed when going through the Control Centre to add / modify an HP4400 series printer. Version ending .19 gives colour but 'bad' blacks and the other gives good B&W but no colour...

[melodie]

Hi,

I don't know why but there has been some time now I don't configure my HP PSC 1610 printer with CUPS, nor with PCC because it just does not work. So I suggest you try what I did, in case it would help you : uninstall your printer completely and configure it with the HP Toolbox. It's provided by hplip-gui, which is included in the meta-package task-printing-hp.

I'll be looking forward to read if your printer works better if configured with it (HP Toolbox). Mine prints just perfect, be it colors or greyscale.

[bascule]

Unfortunately, melodie, the HP toolbox does not work fully on my machine:

...In desperation, I tried deleting the printer using the HP Device Manager, but that is not working properly either (i.e., I can't actually delete the printer).

I trying to diagnose the problem, I tried to run hp-setup from the terminal, but that wouldn't start, giving the following error:

Code: [Select]

[main@localhost ~]$ hp-setup

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.11.1)
Printer/Fax Setup Utility ver. 9.0

Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

**
GLib-GIO:ERROR:gdbusconnection.c:2270:initable_init: assertion failed: (connection->initialization_error == NULL)

So, I'm wondering if the problems are caused by a more fundamental problem with getting the various HP applications to run properly. I suspect that the reason I can't delete the printer is that HP Device Manager is hitting the same D-Bus problem behind the scenes...

And even it it did work, it would be exactly the same drivers that it was using and, for my money, it's the drivers (specifically hpcups 3.11.1 and 3.11.1.19 for the Photosmart C6300 series) that are broken.

But of course the frustrating thing is that all the types of problems tend to be different for different users with different printers and using different applications when printing. Printing (in Linux or Windows) seems to be a more complicated task than you would expect.

[melodie]

Hi,

At openprinting.org, some people said it works perfectly (I don't know when though)

http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-Colorsmart_C6380

I'll check the hp-setup here and see if I get the same thing as you do.

[bascule]

I had already looked at that site during my investigations, but that page does not have any actual useful info.

The same page for other printers has comments and a recommended driver section at the bottom.

For the C6380, however, there is mention of a 'User-contributed Printer Entry', but it states that 'This printer entry was contributed by a user but was not yet verified or proofread by the site administrators. Therefore it is not included in the Foomatic packages.'.

Unless I am missing something obvious, there is no link to the driver anywhere on that page.

If you click on the 'HP Colorsmart C6380' title link, it is just broken:

Code: [Select]

Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
It would be useful to find out how hp-setup works for you, as others seem to have no trouble with it. It just does not work on my machine.

[melodie]

Hi Bascule,

You have not told us if you have all the foomatic packages and so on installed. Have you installed with task-printing-hp for instance ?

The gui is simple, you just need to start it from the menus.

Here is a text that explains very well how our modern printers work, if you are interested to understand better the processes on which theses printers rely : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cups

you could even try to apply the debug mode as presented, to try to see why it does not work. For HP Toolbox, I'm not sure why the configuration done with it works better than the one done with CUPS interface, and I'm not keen enough (and motivated) to dig further. I didn't reinstall it here either, but I will, a bit later.

A bit later, task-printing-hp:

cups (version 1.4.6-1pclos2011) sera installé
cups-drivers-foo2zjs (version 0.0-0.20091014.1pclos2010) sera installé
foomatic-db (version 4.0-2.20091014.1pclos2010) sera installé
foomatic-db-engine (version 4.0.3-1pclos2010) sera installé
foomatic-db-hpijs (version 20090208-2pclos2010) sera installé
gutenprint-common (version 5.2.6-1pclos2010) sera installé
gutenprint-cups (version 5.2.6-1pclos2010) sera installé
gutenprint-foomatic (version 5.2.6-1pclos2010) sera installé
gutenprint-ijs (version 5.2.6-1pclos2010) sera installé
hplip (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
hplip-gui (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
hplip-hpijs (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
hplip-hpijs-ppds (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
hplip-model-data (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
libgutenprint2 (version 5.2.6-1pclos2010) sera installé
libhpip0 (version 3.11.1-2pclos2011) sera installé
libijs1 (version 0.36-76pclos2011) sera installé
printer-testpages (version 2006-3pclos2007) sera installé
printer-tools (version 2008-4pclos2010) sera installé
psutils (version p17-10pclos2007) sera installé
python-qt4-core (version 4.8.2-1pclos2011) sera installé
python-qt4-gui (version 4.8.2-1pclos2011) sera installé
python-reportlab (version 2.4-2pclos2010) sera installé
python-sip (version 4.12.1-1pclos2011) sera installé
task-printing-hp (version 2009-1pclos2009) sera installé
task-printing-server (version 2009-1pclos2009) sera installé

All theses are necessary... I hope you agree ?

[bascule]

Hi Bascule,

You have not told us if you have all the foomatic packages and so on installed. Have you installed with task-printing-hp for instance ?

Yes, I have got them all installed. The problem I have with hp-setup was by running it from the command line. However, If I uninstall the printer and run the HP Device Manager GUI from the menu it seems to run OK, but I can't delete a printer from with Device Manager and again, running Setup from within Device Manager also fails. There is an underlying problem with hp-setup on my machine.

The ArchLinux info was interesting, thanks, I'll go through it in detail later on.

As I said in my post, I do have the printer working successfully now, but using the drivers for a different printer model. This will be OK until I can investigate in much more detail and try a few tests. I don't have time to do that right now...

[melodie]

Hi,

If you have this printer working with another driver model could you remind me which one, and also try to add this information at the openprinting.org website ? It's a great reference for all printing matter so... Can you ?

[bascule]

I'm currently using the C6200 series 'GhostScript + hpijs' driver (for a C6380 printer).

However, I don't think that is very useful info for openprinting.org. There is an hpcups 3.11.1 driver for the C6300 series that I would use if it was not apparently broken and using this other one is just a work-around.

I'm not even 100% sure it is the hpcups/hpijs driver, it could be the PPD file that is the problem 

My point is that it would be more useful to try to get to the bottom of the problem than broadcast a work-around to the world. It feels OK to tell other PCLOS users who may be following the thread, but less useful to tell anyone else until the details are clarified. It may even be a problem specific to PCLOS due to a packaging error, or something like that 

[melodie]

It may even be a problem specific to PCLOS due to a packaging error, or something like that  Undecided

Then you could (maybe ?) get the driver and the ppd from openprinting.org, and give it a try ? (I usually has to be installed directly in /usr/share/cups/models directory)

[melodie]

Hi bascule,

Very strange coincidence...

My neighbour has a beautiful HP Laptop, powerful, with 3 GB ram and an nvidia GPU... and she came a few days ago with a broken distro, that the name starts with a "K" and ends with "untu".

We did the data backup, installed PCLinuxOS Openbox (ng, with lxpanel and all possible files translated to French) and yesterday I visited her and happened to configure her "All in one" printer. ^^

Guess what ? Her printer is a HP C6280 All-In-One : almost the same version as your's !!

I installed complementary packages with task-printing-hp, and tried to configure with hp-toolbox, but I kept getting a final message stating that the user should belong to the lpadmin group. I added her user to lpadmin group, in the PCC, checked that in console belonging to lpadmin group was also ok, and even tried to reboot : no way ! still the same message - must belong to lpadmin - I tried HP Toolbox several times, selecting manually the ppd driver in a huuge list.

Then I thought if I can't configure the printer right now, I'll try to configure the scanner to see what is going on there : I installed "task-printing-scanning", which happened to install many more cups drivers packages along with it !

Well after that I had thought to try out with cups configuration in "localhost:631" but decided to retry with HP Toolbox because it offers many nice features, and makes it easy to understand to the beginners.

So just after the install of all the additional package brougt by this task metapackage, the printer was recognised at once as well as it's specific driver, and then I printed a test page with success !! We tried the scanner too and without any additional config it worked at once too: in xsane and in gimp > new image > and so on.

One weird thing : her integrated webcam is seen as a scanner. :/
That will need some digging.

For the printer configuration, here lies the problem, I think  : some packages (cups drivers probably) should be depend  for task-printing-hp, and are not.

I hope this finding can help improve things.

Regards,
Mélodie