Print Quality Shift over time

[Ken45140]

I haven't read every message in this section but from scanning the subject lines, I am guessing this question has not been asked and answered.

My problem is that the SAME photo files printed one week apart had very different and noticeable results. The first set was a series of jpg files (300dpi) printed out of the Dell Image Expert (made by Jasc), on approximately a 2x3 size, 6 to a sheet. Photo paper was used on an HP960c. The prints were excellent. A relative went home with them quite happy.

Tonight I ran the same batch, using the same paper, on the same printer, with the same settings, and the results are noticeably poorer. In general, most of the images are darker, but not "uniformly" (ie, not that there is non-uniformity within a single image but between images), although that is hard to tell (and I do not have the original good set to compare them to). Some look to have color shifts (although my eye is no expert eye on color).

No editing was done. All same hardware. All same supplies and settings. Can folks speculate what might be the cause(s) of what I have observed, and any diagnostic suggestions for me to try.

Thanks,
Ken

[jeaniesa]

Perhaps a clogged print head? Does that happen on HP printers? Or perhaps you're out of one color of ink? I'm not familiar with that particular printer, but I would look at those two possibilities.

Jeanie

[G. Couch]

Were the images saved again at any time? ...It could be (although I doubt it) that the .jpg files were saved over themselves at the highest compression setting, which would substantially degrade the quality of the image.

Have you gone through and cleaned and aligned the print heads?

[Ken45140]

Solved my own problem....I discovered that I had made one "small" change in printing my batch again. In the Printer SetUp Options screen, I all of a sudden decided to change the type of paper, selecting "Photo Paper" instead of the "Plain Paper" I have always used before.

Obviously this changes something that the printer does--for the worse in my case. I will have to research why the printer setup screen provides all of these printer paper options. Does anyone know?

There are choices for different manufacturer's paper so I assume the printer drivers are programmed for subtle changes depending on paper manufacturer. Does anyone use and depend on this particular feature?

Meanwhile, the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it" applies here.

Thanks for the previous responses...and any new comments and insights on this observation.

Ken