Advice needed to produce top quality prints from my plotter.

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Mr Compatible Ink
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Hello all, i recently purchased a HP Designjet 500 plotter, for not a lot of money, i've had it serviced and it is working perfectly.

I have a question though which Google has failed to answer, with my Canon printers i choose the ICC profile for the paper i use and it's a really simple (ish) process.

I'm at a loss with this plotter how to do that though, i mainly print through Photoshop, and i recently acquired QImage, my results have been okayish but i feel they could be a lot better, when it comes to printing my image i don't have any option other than to let the printer handle the print etc, what am i doing wrong?


Any help or advice welcome.
Thanks
 
Just a simple observation and I may be not understanding just how good this printer is...or not as the case may be?

It is (only) a 4 colour printer with a native 600 dpi resolution. For most that is the bare minimum spec for printing photographs. As far as I can tell it's intended usage is not printing photographs!
 
That's a blast-from-the-past, I used to work in an office where we had something similar. But it's a plotter, it's meant for drawing lines, engineering drawings, that sort of thing, I doubt that you are going to get ICC profiles for it.
 
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In later years that's how all plotters are, I haven't seen a pen plotter for about 20 years.
 
I found this same question asked on a tech forum here

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1143055

One poster specifically mentions the 500 series with further thoughts that a later model has potential for better photo prints based on higher ink colours count.

Obviously a few years on it may be possible to "push" it to get improved results???
 
It actually does a decent job, prints are on a par with my 100 pro and that's letting the printer take control of printing i was just curious if i could squeeze some more out of it.
 
Tell us something about the OS & drivers you're using to run this thing ...
 
Windows 10 and drivers from HP's website, the printer works fine, it prints up to A0, and on a variety of materials, i'm shocked that you guys think it's cr@p lol, i have actually just completed my first job for a client with it.

The HP engineer who serviced it for me, told me there were a lot of people around the country who still used it, and it's a misconception that it is only able to print line drawings, it is actually a pretty decent printer, his words, in fact he said one of his clients actually makes a living, selling photo enlargements, using this very printer.

I was just curious if anyone else on the forum had one, and if i was using it to it's full potential.
 
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