Color troubles printing to HP Color Laserjet 2600n

The HP CLJ 2600n will print with the drivers provided by OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), superfically o.k. but with a black haze and wasting toner by too much toner density. As you are left with a minimalistic printer dialog, you cannot adjust any printing parameters, such as individual color shift, toner density, hue, contrast etc. which was normal under OS X 10.5, in addition even through an in-situ printer website.

If one loads the original driver on Snow, provided by HP, but made for OS X 10.5, it may print until next automated update which will throw away incompatible drivers, replacing these by its own, apparently not always well working drivers.

I use an 24" Intel Core Duo iMac, with Apple airport Network. As I cannot load Snow leopard on my old 20" iMac G4, printing from this older machine is still fine and all modifications for printing outputs work as promised in the original manual.

I wasted days, toner and nerves. Apple arrogance castrated my initially good Color Laserprinter but i'm sure not going back to OS X 10.5 ...

Message was edited by: Woodley43

I have to agree, completely, with you. A fine printer i can hardly use because of the driver.

First of all, I apologize for my bad English. I think i found "something" that may work.

Running permission repairs on Print Therapy's new demo, it found that "cupsd.conf" wasn't the right version, so I changed it using the "CUPS Tools". It also found I had lost four different files:

-cups-calibrate.8.gz

-cups-genppd.5.2.8.gz

-cups-genppd.8.gz

-cups-genppdupdate.8.gz

I found them over the Internet (thanks Google) and put then in:

usr/share/man/man8 (the usr folder is invisible).

After a restart my 2600n prints seems to have lost the gray haze.

Someone should try and tell if it was just luck.

Thanks you for suggesting the "Print Therapy". Loading a trial version, its "CUPS Tools" suggested to replace two cupsd.conf* files, what I did. After "Permission Repairs" I was told, that 1 file or directory was missing, and I may need to reinstall OS X. I was not able to figure out the missing item, reinstalled OS X10.6. I removed all traces of HP printers in the. All a time consuming venture It did not help in my case. All the flaws I described earlier for printing with the HP CLJ 2600n were still there (too much toner, black haze, useless and truncated printer dialog, settings through printer website did not work, although the latter gave at least toner levels in the various cartridges).

If "Print Therapy" would have done the job, I gladly would have sent them a generous fee for a license...

I wasted some more hours reloading and updating OS X 10.6.8 on my iMac Intel Core 2 Duo

"Print Therapy" analysed the following direktory missing:

usr/share/cups/model

and the following files missing:

usr/share/man/man8/cups-calibrate.8.gz

usr/share/man/man8/cups-genppd.5.2.8.gz

usr/share/man/man8/cups-genppdupdate.8.gz

Im a skilled Program user on Mac but I always avoided to tamper around with the operating system.

I was able to download the missing files but how do I get these in place and how can I install the invisible directory "usr/share/cups/model"?

In the menu bar: go- go to folder, and put in there "/usr/share/cups/model/". The directory already exists.

Thank you. I always hesitated to dive into the invisible system folder jungle.

So I learned at least this one.

But all attempts to get rid of the print flaws of my HP CLJ 2600n and the driver from OS X10.6.8 (Snow leopard) did not work, although "print therapy" found everything correct :

Major flaws when printing from Snow: The print dialog offers zero adjustments, the "printer website" can test the toner level, but is unable to adjust toner density, contrasts etc. and the print outs are color over saturated with a strong black haze on colors and a light black haze on "white background". The same files printed from a OS X10.5 Leo G4 iMac are perfectly o.k.

In your case, "Print Therapy" was also missing a file named "cups-genppd.8.gz". This file is not in my folder, too, although "Print Therapy" did not miss it. I wonder if this could make a difference.

May be it is a matter of "PPDs". Did you use the OS X10.6.8 printer driver for the HP CLJ 2600?

The drive version i'm using is: 1.3.0.261

About the other missing file, "cups-genppd.8.gz", it came out after a second analysis after installing the previous files and a reboot. By the way, reading your previous post, I realized that the right path is: "usr/share/man/man8/cups" not "/usr/share/cups/model/".

As the driver itself, I noticed that I get the better results selecting "device", in color options, instead of "default (sRGB)".

luis manuelfromsevilla wrote:

About the other missing file, "cups-genppd.8.gz", it came out after a second analysis after installing the previous files and a reboot.

That file contains instructions for the use of a PPD generator from the Gutenprint package. MIssing that file will not impact printing.

Thanks for all the help.

"Print Therapy" found my configuration o.k.

The Gutenprint Package does not apply for the HP CLJ 2600n.

I spent another endless two days of deleting, downloading, rebooting, testing, reinstalling to get my 2600 running on OS X 10.6. With no success: Line graphs superficially look o.k., except that the colors are dark and the black haze cannot be seen readily. But including a photo in a document, the print becomes extremely dark, oversaturated and with a black haze. Apple Help admits, that print dialogs on Power PCs offer more options than Intel computers. That is not very helpful, indeed, and not at all a user friendly attitude by Apple. I also learned that OS X 10.6 Snow does not allow to switch the Color Sync off. I always depended on Adobes color management, so I am baffled. Switching "Color Sync On" in the print dialog of my G4 with OS X 10.5, I get exactly the same dark prints as with OS X 10.6.

One problem could be, that I cannot load an appropriate printer/paper profile which is mandatory for any decent printing (e.g. on my EPSON Photo Printer, which works fine after the usual Snow adaption problems). The automatic profile for he HP CLJ 2600 is "kn_screenmatch_plain5.icc". I tried all other profile options: hardly any difference, all prints came out much too dark

I definitely know now what to do: I shall put my formerly (OS X 10.5) so perfect HP CLJ 2600n on eBay for 10$ and get another brand – but only after having it tested with an Intel Mac and OS X 10.6. And cross my fingers that Apples next OS X version does not wreck printing again...

This issue has been driving me nuts.....I put in a bugreport to Apple and they sent it off to HP after they duplicated the issue.

The problem is somewhat of an issue with the firmware and print driver.

I was fine until I updated to the latest firmware and latest print driver. But I think its more of a driver issue, if you go back to an older HP print driver it works fine then. I think if you download the driver off the HP site you will be fine, however that won't work in Lion now. So I am screwed right now, I can't get it to print normal.

In 10.6 I just reverted the driver back to an older version, I don't recall the version number but I think it was the driver on the HP site.

Keep pesting HP and put in bug reports to Apple please.......I don't want to throw away a perfectly good printer because my mac has useless drivers from HP in it.

As I was stubborn enough over weeks to follow the recommendations from endless discussions with numerous hints and recommendations from amateurs as well as skilled users. I loaded and reloaded, cleaned the system, wiped old as well as new drivers, reloaded Mac OS 10.6, even used some print therapy software. My firm conclusion now is: Apple drivers definitely do not work correctly with the HP CLJ 2600 on Snow OS X 10.6, as well as probably with Lion OS X10.7. You have no chance to work with the original HP drivers which were fine up to Leopard OS X 10.5. Reloading the original driver or Gutenprint substitutes are of little help, as the printer may do for a while on a low level, still wasting toner. The next (weekly) automatic system update the replaced the HP Leo printer sofware by its own OS X 10.6 or 10.7 drivers and software. Then you are back with prints of strong background haze and no possibily to adjust the dark, oversaturated colors. As the production of that good HP printer discontinued about 2 years ago, there seems no remedy in sight.

Now I solved the problem: As a new equivalent Color Laser anyway costs about the same or less than a set of toner cartridges, I replaced my HP Color laserjet by another brand when its toner levels were low. My only recommendation is to make sure, that the new printer software is provided by the manufacturer an not by the Apple operation system!

The drivers provided in the Apple Operating System are manufacturer drivers. HP needs to get an updated driver to Apple for the 2600 printer.

When I was working with Apple on the issue they couldn't reproduce it until they updated the firmware in the printer. So its kinda a mix of firmware and driver issue. But a driver is easier to fix, they need to update the driver. If I could find the old firmware I would flash it again with it, not sure if it would work but thats what I would like to do. The 2600 proprietary driver on HP's site that works in OS X wont work in Lion so I am screwed right now. For some reason Lion can't use that driver because its not a PPD. HP is doing there own thing or something.

But its up to HP to get a working driver to Apple.

Well I am tired of waiting on HP for a fix. I still want them to fix this problem, but in the mean time here is a package I made.

Install it at your own risk, but shouldn't break anything.

Just be sure to read the comments when installing! When setting up the printer you may see two drivers, don't pick the 1.3.0.261 driver. Pick the plain "HP Color LaserJet 2600n" driver.

I wasn't sure what a good upload place was, if you have a better one let me know.

http://www.mediafire.com/?197jx2dc5chiqni

Here is another place to get it....

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18068810/HP2600n_Fix.zip