HP PSC-950 and Gimp-Print

I have a HP PSC-950 (Printer/Scanner/Copier and Fax), and I can print and scan without problems using hpijs and ghostscript for printing, and hpoj and xsane for scanning.
Printing of photos on photographic paper from Gimp has always been a problem. The PPD file for the PSC 950 (from linuxprinting.org, called “HP PSC 950 Foomatic/hpijs”) doesn’t define separate selections of paper type, colors, resolution, but rather puts them all into one group called “Printout Mode”, with choices like “300DraftColorCMYK”, “600BestColorCMYK” and “600PhotoCMYK”.
Given this PPD file Gimp-Print grays out the menues for selection of “Media type” and “Resolution”, giving the user no way to select photographic paper and a high resolution.
This was seriously hurting my WAF, since my wife likes to print out our digital photos. I wouldn’t want her to switch back the enemy’s OS, right.
Then yesterday, when she was especially annoyed that it was so hard to print a photo (and it really ought to be very easy), I got stubborn and sat down to destroy a box of photographic paper. In that process I discovered that if I click “Setup Printer” in Gimp-Print, and instead of the default “PostScript Level 2” setting I chose “HP Deskjet 900 series”, the photos print perfectly. The internal name in Gimp-Print for that driver is “pcl-900”.
The print-job is absolutely huge, since Gimp-Print generates all the necessary printer instructions directely, instead of just sending a PostScript file to the print spooler and filters.
It does annoy me a bit that I cannot get Gimp-Print to print photos simply by pointing it to a PPD file, but at least now the photos are printing and my WAF is, if not increasing, at least in a slower decline.


Comments

One response to “HP PSC-950 and Gimp-Print”

  1. Marvin Clavey avatar
    Marvin Clavey

    I have all the same problems you discribe with My HP photosmaart 7550 printer … I have tried all the things you suggest … with no success … I also have given up and gone back to the windows inverimnet to print photos

    If anyone has any suggestions I would be very happy to hear them.

    thanks Marv.

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