Wrong colors on laserprinter.

[StolpM]

I have an iMac with OS X 10.6.8.
Combined with a HP Color Laserjet CM2320 I get wrong colors (red becomes orange and in general colors are too dark). Using HP toners.
How can I create a color scheme (using ColorSync?) to repair this?
Or can there be a more generic reason for this wrong-color issue?

Hope anyone can help.

 

[MisterMe]

It is not a color scheme, it is a ColorSync color profile. ColorSync has been a part of the Mac pretty much since Apple upgraded the Mac to color. Calibrating printers--nay, calibrating entire workflows--is standard practice. You may purchase a calibration kit to automate the calibration. You may do the job manually using the MacOS X ColorSync Utility that is included with every Mac.

Before getting into calibration, however, I would check two other things:

1. Make sure that you have selected the correct color profile for your printer. This is done in your File/Print... dialog box. It is a popup menu selection named either Color Matching or ColorSync.
2. Your toner may be old. Toner is powdered plastic and may color shift over time like other plastic. If your toner still melts, adheres to your paper, and solidifies without flaking-off, then I will not recommend that you replace it.

 

[StolpM]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I had checked several (all) profiles in that location, but the output (a bright red box in Microsoft Word) prints the same orange-like color in all cases.
And yes, the toner is new, actually the latest replacement didn't make a change.

Where can I find study materials on creating a profile with ColorSync? I am a novice to this.

I actually expected my printer to come up with the correct colors, but on the Mac it is quite different from my work Windows laptop: that is the basic problem.

 

[MisterMe]

...

Where can I find study materials on creating a profile with ColorSync? I am a novice to this.

...

Google "ColorSync".

 

[flrazor]

I had checked several (all) profiles in that location, but the output (a bright red box in Microsoft Word) prints the same orange-like color in all cases.

If you are using Word another thing probably causing trouble is Word works in RGB color and not CMYK. Your computer & printer have to change the color data into CMYK for your printer to be able to output it (what the ColorSync is doing). Red actually prints as high values of magenta and yellow, so it can come out as orange-ish unless you have specific profiles to adjust it. When you do make any changes to a profile or make something new, make sure to print out a test sheet with a variety of colors so you see what effect changing the profile has on everything else. If you lower the output of a certain color, it might cause changes you're not expecting in related colors (i.e. reducing yellow output to to fix your red might make your greens more bluish)

Once you get a profile defined for your computer & printer combination, you should be able to use that profile to get the same results each time - investment up front to make every future run of the same job easier.