Monochrome printing

As far as monochrome printing (B/W to you photographers) goes, HP still packs a good punch. The prints I produced didn't display any colour cast whatsoever. I tried sending a file to the printer which was greyscale but in RGB and printed it as if it were a colour file. There was a very slight shift towards cyan but nothing when compared to the competition. Printing the same file but with the Greyscale box checked in the HP print dialogue panel produced a totally neutral grey print. I can't fault this printer for monochrome printing. HP achieves a neutral tone by the use of the 102 photo grey cartridge, this has a Light Grey, Medium Grey and Black. The various grey's are also used in colour printing to produce a richer colour. I also tried printing using the Black print cartridge only, there wasn't any noticeable difference in the output when compared to the High Quality setting.

Greyscale image printed using colour inks	same image printed using the Greyscale option

The 8750 printer properties panel is similar to other HP models. There are many options for fine tuning your prints. For those of you who like to mess with colour management, there are three options ColorSmart/sRGB, AdobeRGB and a Managed by Application. Use the last option if you have your own custom profiles.

Set up printing quickly	Individual Colours can be adjusted
Ideal for the non techno person	Monochrome printing options

The memory card facility proved to be quite useful, although I had my reservations about this for an A3 printer, especially as you can't preview the images first. I used a CF card and printed out several sheets of 6x4, the prints were very good but obviously I had no control on them at all. I also printed out two full bleed A3 prints. This took 13min 06:41 seconds per print - an unacceptable long time by any of today's standards. The prints looked spectacular especially the red dragon picture below (scan of an A4 version)

A3 version looks spectacular - photo taken at the Globe theatre London

Graphical images will benefit from strong colours (picture manipulated with Virtual Painter)

Files can be transferred from the memory cards direct to your hard drive. HP have included a useful Transfer utility together with an excellent image viewer - print selector. Generally I don't bother loading up these mini applications, but I have to give HP full credit for including some useful mini app's.

Transfer images quickly from printer to hard drive	View your images by folders - very fast display
Create creative projects, CD, Calendars, Albums etc.	Share your pictures on-line , better still put the prints in the post