HP Photosmart 7960 printer
Page 14.
Day 7
Driver settings
I
have been using the HP Photosmart for seven days now and other than
one paper jam using plain paper, the printer had performed faultlessly.
Of course when you become familiar with any piece of hardware you can
adjust your images to suit the printer. I am still surprised at the
amount of people who expect spot on results by just pressing the PRINT
button, not many, if any, can claim to do this. The 7960 has given
consistent results during the test period, although I soon learnt that
the No 59 cartridge had a tendency to over saturate the colours, re
reducing the saturation by 10 - 15% brought images back to normal.
I have printed 26 6x4 prints, 11 A4 glossy prints (mixture of border
and borderless) and 28 A4 plain paper prints (mixture of Photo proof
and text documents). Here are the ink levels for one weeks usage. A
message on the palette says "Estimate only. Actual ink level may
vary", I expect this is accurate enough for most users.
For all the prints up to now I have used the default driver settings. HP uses the sRGB colour space as standard, but under the Colour tab there is the option to select Adobe RGB which is the print industry standard. If your camera supports Adobe RGB or you work in this space then you should use this setting for your printing. Adobe RGB has a wider colour Gamut than sRGB and is capable of printing more colours. Below left is a picture of my other daughter Elizabeth printed in sRGB and on the right the same image is printed using the Adobe RGB space. If your working space is sRGB and you print using Adobe RGB then the images can look too red.
The difference between the two swimmer prints is very subtle and you may not be able to see it on this web page. The Adobe print has just that extra richness in colour quality, if you place the actual prints side by side you will see this. Perhaps the ultimate test for any photo quality inkjet printer is to compare the prints it produces with wet chemistry photographic prints. I had the 10 x 8 picture of Sophie below printed on a £90,000 Kodak LED printer and the one on the right was printed on the HP Photosmart 7960 costing £249. HP Premium Plus photo paper-matte 280 g/m was used for the print, this paper texture is similar to matte photographic paper.
Now forgive me if I am sounding gibberish at this stage but after Five minutes printing time I have in front of me an inkjet print that not only feels like a traditional photograph, but actually looks better than the print I had made by a professional lab. Some of this could be put down to the lab operator not using the settings I would choose. As with all the sample pictures in this review the scanner settings were identical.
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Ink levels after one weeks use |
For all the prints up to now I have used the default driver settings. HP uses the sRGB colour space as standard, but under the Colour tab there is the option to select Adobe RGB which is the print industry standard. If your camera supports Adobe RGB or you work in this space then you should use this setting for your printing. Adobe RGB has a wider colour Gamut than sRGB and is capable of printing more colours. Below left is a picture of my other daughter Elizabeth printed in sRGB and on the right the same image is printed using the Adobe RGB space. If your working space is sRGB and you print using Adobe RGB then the images can look too red.
 |
 |
sRGB/sYCC colour space |
Adobe RGB colour space |
The difference between the two swimmer prints is very subtle and you may not be able to see it on this web page. The Adobe print has just that extra richness in colour quality, if you place the actual prints side by side you will see this. Perhaps the ultimate test for any photo quality inkjet printer is to compare the prints it produces with wet chemistry photographic prints. I had the 10 x 8 picture of Sophie below printed on a £90,000 Kodak LED printer and the one on the right was printed on the HP Photosmart 7960 costing £249. HP Premium Plus photo paper-matte 280 g/m was used for the print, this paper texture is similar to matte photographic paper.
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 |
Pro - Lab print |
HP Photosmart 7960 print |
Now forgive me if I am sounding gibberish at this stage but after Five minutes printing time I have in front of me an inkjet print that not only feels like a traditional photograph, but actually looks better than the print I had made by a professional lab. Some of this could be put down to the lab operator not using the settings I would choose. As with all the sample pictures in this review the scanner settings were identical.
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Pro-lab
prints
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HP
7960 prints
|
© Vincent
Oliver 2003 www.photo-i.co.uk
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