Hi, I've been printing out a lot of black and white photos on photo paper on a HP Photosmart 7510e.

The printouts are very dark so I've had to boost the brightness levels in GIMP prior to printing. The problem is that this takes extra time and I also don't want to save these levels in the XCF file. I would say that (going by the Gamma Display Filter) the printouts are around 40% of the brightness they ought to be.

My question is, does anyone else have this problem and what can be done about it? I've googled for an .ICC for my printer but it hasn't really helped, unless I'm setting it wrong.

Any help/ideas apprectiated.

Cheers

David

On (18:50 23/09/12), David Woodfall put forth the proposition:

Hi, I've been printing out a lot of black and white photos on photo paper on a HP Photosmart 7510e.

The printouts are very dark so I've had to boost the brightness levels in GIMP prior to printing. The problem is that this takes extra time and I also don't want to save these levels in the XCF file. I would say that (going by the Gamma Display Filter) the printouts are around 40% of the brightness they ought to be.

My question is, does anyone else have this problem and what can be done about it? I've googled for an .ICC for my printer but it hasn't really helped, unless I'm setting it wrong.

Apologies for replying to my own post, but what seems to work is the following (with black and white photos at least):

Set levels for black and white point Set gamma display filter to 0.4
Adjust centre point on levels to 1.5 (or what brings it back to normal)
Work on image
Print

I would still like to know if there is a better way to do this. The less work that goes into a photo usually results in a better quality print.

On (23:20 23/09/12), Alexandre Prokoudine put forth the proposition:

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:50 PM, David Woodfall wrote:

Hi, I've been printing out a lot of black and white photos on photo paper on a HP Photosmart 7510e.

The printouts are very dark so I've had to boost the brightness levels in GIMP prior to printing. The problem is that this takes extra time and I also don't want to save these levels in the XCF file. I would say that (going by the Gamma Display Filter) the printouts are around 40% of the brightness they ought to be.

My question is, does anyone else have this problem and what can be done about it? I've googled for an .ICC for my printer but it hasn't really helped, unless I'm setting it wrong.

Googling for arbitrary ICC profiles isn't such a great idea. Color reproduction doesn't depend on just the printer. It's a combination of printer, inks and paper.

I wouldn't print from GIMP either. Try PhotoPrint: http://www.blackfiveimaging.co.uk/index.php?article=02Software%2F01PhotoPrint

Thanks - that looks very useful.