Printer dilemma.. pics look great on old XP CPU

[kami]

I was wondering, I have 3 newer computers in the house which I tried printing off from my HP 8250 series printer and they all look bland and the colors do not look great at all.

Now, I was looking through a lot of my previous printouts when I was using my old CPU for printing and they look great! So I wiff out the old CPU from the garage, hook it up to the printer and try printing some sample photos that looked crappy on the newer systems and voila!! They look exactly how I want them to be! colors are more rich, crisp and lively!

The new systems use Vista 64 bit OS. All with LR2 and CS4. The old CPU has XP OS also with LR2 and PS elements 6.

What gives? I tried copying whatever color management settings were on the old system with only a little improvement.

I'm confused! I hate this color profile problem thingy.

 

[UUilliam]

no 2 computers will look the same using the same colour profile, if that was the case, there would be a standard setting on the internet to use

The colour management is collabarated per system (or monitor to be more precise)

Thats as much as I know about this tbh.

 

[Village Idiot]

Two words.

Cali bration.

 

[kami]

Two words.

Cali bration.

Which should I calibrate? The printer prints fine on the old CPU. The pics look similar on the monitor whether I use the old CPU or the newer one.

 

[Village Idiot]

Two words.

Cali bration.

Which should I calibrate? The printer prints fine on the old CPU. The pics look similar on the monitor whether I use the old CPU or the newer one.

All of it.

What color space are your photos shot in as well? Adobe RGB or sRGB? That could also pose a problem.

 

[NateWagner]

ok, so if I am understanding this correctly, you aren't talking about the pics looking better on either computer, you are talking about when you print from one computer the same file looks much better and when printed from the other computer it looks mottled.

One thing to check is what is handling the printing space. I know I can usually set it to either computer handles print colors, printer handles colors, photoshop handles colors, or a specific color profile. I would see what your old XP is set to.