Best way to print photos

[Donald J. O'Neill]

On Friday 31 March 2006 00:08, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> Let us suppose that I have a HP DeskJet 5850 that I can talk to via
> CUPS.  I can print test pages w/o any problem.
>
> What are my options to print photos and what kind of quality can I
> expect relative to Windows?
>
> Warner
> _______________________________________________

Hi Warner,

The reviews of the 5850 say it prints pretty good pictures. So, the 
printer is capable. The problem is the cups driver your using may not 
be so capable, and you need to locate one that is capable of photo 
quality printing.

A long (couple of years or so) I had an HP 2000c. The driver for windows 
would print very good color pictures. Since this was a networked 
printer and I had a FreeBSD computer connected to the LAN, I wanted to 
be able to use it through FreeBSD. The cups driver did a very good job 
with text and graphics that didn't need to be photo quality. On photos, 
it just plain sucked. I think I was able to use the HP2000c PPD from 
the Windows install - I can't say positively that's where I got it 
from. I had to have the 2000c installed in cups twice, once as HP2000, 
with the cups PPD; and once as PHOTO, with the photo capable PPD. You 
don't want to use the photo PPD for plain text. With that setup it was 
capable of print quality every bit as good as Windows.

So, you should be able to print photos with the same quality as Windows, 
if you locate a PPD that will do it.

Don