Printed colors are suddenly purple

[swhitset]

I am trying to print out a photo on my HP photosmart.  I have done this many times before with great results.  It has been a few months since I actually printed a photo and now every printout has a purplish color to it that does not even remotely resemble the true colors on the screen (or even anything in real life).   As far as I know I have not changed any settings.  I have tried changing the color cartridge.... same result.  This is happening when printing from Photoshop 7, iPhoto, or Preview.

I can't remember if I have printed a photo since upgrading to Panther or not...


Any ideas?

Steve

[krissel]

You did change the cartridge which would be my first suggestion but did you run the printer test to see if it prints all the colors properly from the printer and not a program?

Have you fiddled with the color saturation controls via Colorsync by pushing the magenta lower and seeing if there is a change?

One other thing came to mind...I once almost dumped my HP after replacing what I thought was a bad cartridge with a new one only to have the same problem. Therefore I assumed the printer was screwed up. Nearly a year later, just before trashing the printer, on a whim I put in a third HP cartridge and bingo, everything worked. Seems I actually had two bad cartridges in a row.  
 

[swhitset]

Krissel,

Unfortunately, it seems as if you have nailed it.  After much playing with the printer Utility (which required reinstalling the drivers... since The printer Utility was nowhere to be found on my hard drive)... I have discovered that this brand new 38ml color cartridge will not print a single drop of yellow ink.  I am able to put an almost empty older color cartridge in and get proper printouts so... I guess I need to go drop another fifty bucks on another color cartridge.  Kind of makes me wonder if I am really saving money by buying the 38ml cartridges for $50.00 at Sam's Club as opposed to the regular 19ml cartridges you get everywhere else for around $30.00.

Thanks for the insight,

Steve

[krissel]

Kind of a good news, bad news thing, huh?  

Before you just dump the bad cartridge see if it is within the return date for Sam's club. Most places will exchange a cartridge that is bad within a certain time period.

Little trick I used with my second bad cartridge...

Since too much time had passed and  it was beyond the Office Max return period, I purchased a new cartridge then returned with the bad one a couple days later and asked for an exchange. No problem, so I ended up with two new cartridges. I did pay for both cartridges so I didn't cheat anyone but at least I didn't have to swallow the cost of the bad one due to waiting so long.  

Figured that was the least HP owed me for creating such aggravation.