12-18-2008, 11:46 PM

When I got my MBP this past summer, there was a rebate for this printer ($30 after all was said and done I think) so I figured why not because its biggest draw for me was that it prints wirelessly. In that regard, it's flawless. I have the Airport extreme, and it's fantastic. Printing low rez photos on to plain paper prints as I would expect it to, and it's not even bad for that sort of thing.

Tonight however, I have been trying to print photos on 4x6 high gloss paper to send as holiday greeting cards (first time being so cheesy, but we seem to be getting a lot of them from people so I figured why not.. let's be cheesy back !)
At first, I used photos that I imported to iPhoto and then tried directly from the HP utility menu. The quality was set to best previously, but then set it to highest DPI setting, but it made zero difference.

How to explain how they look.... Like low rez I guess ? Spotty and looking like colors are lacking. Dots everywhere, but especially visible on skin and light shades. Almost as if the pic was taken by a camera phone. The original resolution of these pics is pretty high, but jpg's , nonetheless. The file size of the last one was over 3 Mb, so I know it wasn't a thumbnail or anything.. In case anyone might have thought that.

My friend says that his prints come out good, and he also has an all in one, which is certainly older than mine. I just don't get it. One thing I noticed in the HP utility menu though, was that there is something called "photo ink" which is different from the "tri-color ink" that I am using right now. I also noticed that I am not able to use the "color calibrate" function unless the printer has BOTH the tri color ink as well as the Photo ink installed at the same time. I've personally never heard of this type of ink before, and certainly don't think that a printer should/does require need this in order to print decent quality photos.

The photos I've received from friends, I'm SURE are done with standard printers, standard glossy paper and definitely not special inks.

I'd love some input here, because this is frustrating, to say the least. Thanks !

doug

12-19-2008, 09:21 AM

quick bump.

12-19-2008, 06:16 PM

Been sick all day, so I haven't attempted to get an answer elsewhere. And wondering if anybody can tell me if they at least have experience with this particular printer, and what prints on high gloss 4x6 paper look like ?


Edit, and for the record, the printer model is actually 4385, not 4380