Color Profiles in Windows 7 vs. XP

Question

I have a Brother Color Laser Printer and an HP 8150DN. I have a local Windows 7 Pro machine that I do graphics work on. I created a letterhead that when printed from my machine looks dark and rich on either the mono HP or the color Brother laser.

I take this same letterhead, and move it onto our network for use by our users which are all on XP. Then they print the same file, it is washed out on either printer. I've confirmed that the printer settings we're using are identical. I've confirmed that its not related to the program or even specifically to the letterhead. I can duplicate this with other files too. I'm down to XP vs Windows 7 being the issue.

I'm fairly certain now that color profiles are involved. I have no clue how to fix it though. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to adjust the printer settings and disable "OPTIMIZE" print for PhotoCopy on the windows 7 printer. Also make sure to ajust halftoning to on.

Answer 2

I figured out a partial solution to this problem. I went into the printers color management page and selected the sRGB profile which is apparently the profile that Windows 7 assigns to printers be default. With this profile selected the printouts on XP are indistinguishable from those of Windows 7.

Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem for mono printers though since Windows XP doesn't show a color management tab on a b&w printer (Windows 7 does, and apparently uses the sRGB profile which explains why on a b&w printer I get a much darker (read black) printout whereas on XP I get a halftone gray).

If anyone knows of a way to force a certain color profile to be applied to a b&w printer, please share.

Thanx