HP 8850 only Prints B&W with profiles

This has me absolutely stumped. My HP Photosharp Pro 8850 will only print in B&W if profiles are specified. I have a 24" IMac, Photoshop CS5, and either Snow Leopard or Lion. If I specify a profile while printing out of either Photoshop or Preview, the 8850 prints B&W. If I let the printer manage colors, it prints in color. I also have a HP Officejet 6500 and it will print in color, even with Photoshop managing colors.

HP Tech Support has absolutely no clue as to what is going on, though clearly the problem seems to exist between Colorsync and the HP driver. I have reinstalled Photoshop, all the HP drivers, and re-downloaded profiles to no effect. As a last, desperate, effort, I upgraded to Lion, which I was trying hard not to do. Again to no effect.

I've been horsing around with this stuff for way to many years, and have never had a problem that I couldn't solve by re-installing/updating etc.

At wits end,

Dan Barthel

PS the profiles are recognized as the quality of the B&W images changes depending on the profile.

Pinned it down to a Colorsync-HP Driver problem. HP is scratching their heads, but at least they are working on, rather than denying, the problem.

Further investigation reveals that problem comes and goes depending on which HP paper (not profile) is selected. More to follow.

have confirmed that paper, not profile, selection causes the problem. In particular, selecting HP Satin will always render a B&W image, while HP Advanced Photo Paper works just fine. HP is aware of situation, but not sure what they are doing about it as they are trying to blame Colorsync. This same problem should also appear on the HP 9180.

I use HP Satin all the time on my B9180 for color.. starting to have other problems but never what you are seeing.

Dan it almost sounds like someplace for that paper the use BW inks only is saved. I just did a bunch of printing on satin and fine art last night mixed color and BW with no issues like that. My pano kept hanging which killed the print but that is another issue entirely.

Lou

I can't select HP Advanced PP if I use a different profile, my images come out sepia. Since I don't use HP paper anyway, I use the other photo paper option then the profile, works ok. If I use HP Matte on RR Matte Paper & Profile, my blues become pink!

S.

wierd... I print with Qimage but it still goes thru the HP driver.

I print B&W images on my Canon iPf as colour RGB images using my colour profiles and doing the b&W conversion in PS. I prefer that as it allows adjusting the toning of the image and gives good control over the final print including soft proofing. If the there is no colour info in the image, the printer will not be able to make it up.

I do what Chris does on Epson printers as well but it is still important to use the correct ink/paper profile to insure that the monochrome print doesn't have any weird color cast.