[TriLUG] Picture Printing and HPLIP

[Ken MacKenzie]

I will add one other thought to this.  Keep in mind in some cases it might
just be easier and will usually better quality to offload printing of
pictures to a snapfish or similar.  However for printing now and playing
with more options than might be available through such services this is
helpful.  But if you needed a whole ton of borderless 4x6 prints for
example, outsourcing those would be the better option.  However I consider
that a general thing not just a linux thing.

Ken

On Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Ken M <ken at mack-z.com> wrote:

> I thought I would send an update as I did sort most of this out.
>
> First of all I had little success with regards to properly setting color
> management up.  I am going to call that my failing at the moment.
>
> The solution was a couple fold.  First off I did have to slightly tweak
> some photos more in Gimp.  I started this process with Darktable but for
> final prints Gimp really did shine on getting the last touches dialed in.
>
> Next off I needed to use photoprint which uses guten print.  The guten
> print plugin to gimp works as well but photoprint by itself is slightly
> better.  YMMV on that one, but that was my experience.
>
> Next off my printer, an HP Deskjet 1512 is not directly supported by
> gutenprint but I can get guten to see its ppd.  However it also means
> borderless printing on the paper in it was not really an option.
>
> Ok so along this journey one of the big tips and why I edited in Gimp is
> for printing I needed to edit the photos to be the exact size I wanted to
> print in inches as well as set the DPI resolution directly in GIMP.  Once
> that was completed the final of that was exported to uncompressed TIF to be
> loaded into photoprint for printing.
>
> I started off trying to use 4x6 paper, but we wanted it borderless and
> that would not work so we switched to 8.5 x 11 paper then layed out three
> 4x6's on the page in an 8x10 space and then printed that.  So we had to
> then cut out the pictures from the master sheet.  The results were
> excellent.  Did have to make two present settings in photoprint to adjust
> contrast and gamma level on prints but that was it.
>
> Hopefully someone reading this can save themselves the 2 full color
> cartiridges I spent to figure this out as well as all the photo paper.
> However the end result is I have excellent photos for my purposes from my
> home printer.
>
> Side note, my printer has two higher quality settings, best and HD photo.
> At least as far as linux and pictures printed the output quality of best
> and hd photo are indiscernible.  The only difference is best prints faster
> and uses less ink.  Go figure but an accident caused that discovery.
>
> Oh and another strange caveat.  HPLIP must know the paper size in its
> settings.  Changing it through photoprint and not hplip will cause issues.
> Guten drivers just can't thwart that so if you experiment with different
> photo paper sizes be sure to set them in HPLIP the minute you load them.
>
> Ken
>
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 08:44:12PM -0500, Don Jerman wrote:
> > Also try turning off photo options - I had a similar problem setting up
> our
> > Brother laser printer (so not hplip related) where all the "photo print"
> > options came out dark and slightly off-center.  Re-installing cups and
> > printer descriptors paying close attention to the screens solved the
> > problem.
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Ken M <ken at mack-z.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Two extra solutions I have found to try, krokus and turbo print, the
> > > latter being a free trial but reasonably priced in my mind if it
> actually
> > > solves the problem. To be continued... Since I just about ran out of
> ink
> > > with previous attempts.
> > >
> > > Sent from my iPad
> > >
> > > > On Dec 15, 2014, at 5:24 PM, Randy Barlow <
> randy at electronsweatshop.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> On 12/15/2014 02:38 PM, Ken M wrote:
> > > >> Now I understand they have a much higher quality printer than I do,
> but
> > > it seems that if the issue is adjusting my image to the printer
> because of
> > > the presentation of my monitor that printing the same image on their
> > > printer would lead to the same dark results.  At least that is my
> > > uninformed opinion.
> > > >
> > > > Keep in mind that it's possible that they may have automatically
> > > > adjusted the photo for their printer.
> > > >
> > > >> I think the weird thing I got going on here is there are three
> > > different print solutions on this machine at not one of them is the
> whole
> > > package.  Incidentally I tried using lpoption and lp commands and I
> can get
> > > it to hold like that but the print out is not fitting on the page that
> way
> > > either.
> > > >
> > > > It does sound like something unusual is happening, but sadly I cannot
> > > > offer assistance.
>