Prints are way too dark on Win10, works fine on Win7 (Samsung ML-1670)

I bought a Samsung ML-1670 monotone laser printer back in 2012. The printer was working fine until I upgraded to Windows 10.

Now when I print a gradient that goes from white to black the black point in the print is in the middle of the page even though it should be at the edge. Text prints out fine because it's usually all black but all images look horrible.

Here's the problem illustrated


This problem has been haunting me for months and I've been unable to fix it. I've tried resetting the printer, reinstalling drivers. Installing Samsung optional software and then uninstalling it once it didn't help. I've even changed the toner cartridge. I've tried out every single option in the printer settings, but none of them change the outcome at all. At one point I even reinstalled Windows, and IIRC the problem went away for some time but came back later.

The only thing that helps a little, is printing in Photoshop and using the setting "Photoshop manages colors", then setting the color profile to eRGB. But even then the outcome is washed out and nothing like the source image.

The printer used to work fine when I was still using Windows 7.

Looking at your printer spec, the print driver is not available for win 10. I don't use a laser printer only inkjet so I'm not familiar with your set up. With dark prints compared to on screen it would indicate that the monitor is over bright and a monitor calibration was required. Sorry, not much help - I know. Win 10 has a native driver for the ML 1610, have you tried that?

• OS Compatibility
  
  Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 / 2003 Server / 2008 Server, Mac OS X 10.3 ~ 10.6, Various Linux OS

no1yak said:

Looking at your printer spec, the print driver is not available for win 10. I don't use a laser printer only inkjet so I'm not familiar with your set up.

I'm not sure that's correct.

ML-1670 16PPM Mono Laser Printer (ML-1670/XEU) | Support | SAMSUNG UK

The Windows driver isn't specifically listed for 10, but some of the files in the installer appear to be newer than the release date of Win 10.

If the proper drivers are in place, I don't know why the printer calibration would be off. Nothing like that happened with my two Brother lasers.

-Don't know about laser, 'cause I only print ink, but for ink I would work first on monitor calibration, as this must be right before you can do any compensation or adjustment on the output end. Is your monitor well calibrated?

no1yak said:

With dark prints compared to on screen it would indicate that the monitor is over bright and a monitor calibration was required.

DaveGrant01 said:

Is your monitor well calibrated?

Yes. It's a Dell Ultrasharp U3415W IPS-monitor and it's been factory calibrated and re-calibrated with Spyder 3 Pro. The black point of a linear gradient going from white to black is way off in the prints and no monitor calibration can explain that.

no1yak said:

Looking at your printer spec, the print driver is not available for win 10.

That's wrong. On the printer's official support page there is a download link for the Universal Print Driver 3 which indicates support for Windows 10. I have the latest driver installed.

I was wondering if there was a way in Windows to override the default printing color profile.

Does printer driver show some options for controlling halftones?

Jiia said:

Yes. It's a Dell Ultrasharp U3415W IPS-monitor and it's been factory calibrated and re-calibrated with Spyder 3 Pro. The black point of a linear gradient going from white to black is way off in the prints and no monitor calibration can explain that.



That's wrong. On the printer's official support page there is a download link for the Universal Print Driver 3 which indicates support for Windows 10. I have the latest driver installed.

I was wondering if there was a way in Windows to override the default printing color profile.

Hi there

what program are you using for printing -- for example PHOTOSHOP can set up various profiles and use those instead of the default printer driver profiles. If you have Photoshop (Or similar) try experimenting with some of the printing settings. Look for something like ICC profiles.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi, I have the same problem, so have registered in case someone comes up with other suggestions.

Same printer and same OS as you. I needed to print a PDF that contained text and an image and the image comes up almost totally black. I have decreased the brightness and contrast of the monitors (I use 2) and had the same result. Then I opened the PDF with Photoshop and when printing from Photoshop I chose that Photoshop manages the colours. The image came out a bit lighter, but still far too dark.
I have then found a YouTube video about resetting the printer, however have not done that, as it appears to be the solution to a different problem i.e. that the printer gets blocked.
Cheers
fili