Evil Printers, aka Black Intensity Level

[WinterlessIceness]

Alrighty, I have a trouble here . A couple of days ago I bought HP Photosmart 8250 reduced twise from the exposition, I had to wait a couple of days for the store to send me the lacking power cable (that's why it was reduced) but I eventually was able to connect and test it and I was truly amazed. I've printed a couple of A4 size pictures and the quality/color level have both been outstanding. However, when I decided to print something again a couple of hours later all of the sudden the black level screwed up. I didn't change any settings in printer, I didn't even close the Photoshop from the previous session so all printing options have remainted untouched either. Is it possible that the supplied black cartridge run 'out-of-date' and sort of died after a couple of prints? Coz when I print black square it turns out to be grey now.

I've seen what the printer is capable of, and I'm abit confused now coz I don't know what happened or what I could do about it. Any suggestions?

[kowski]

The cartridge may be clogged or, like you said, out-of-date and kind of dried up. I don't know about the ink capacity of the cartridges for that printer, but you also might have already used a lot of the black ink if you did two A4s with a lot of black in them. I have an old Canon printer that could drain an ink cartridge after two or three large photos. You could try calling HP about it or check their website to see if it is a common problem.

[WinterlessIceness]

Did, and received a reply in 30 minutes

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

I understand from your email that after a couple or prints the intensity
of the black level will go down and after printing it turns out to be
grey.

I appreciate your technical aptitude. I further appreciate you for
writing your query in a clear and simple language. It helped me
understand the issue better.

This issue could be due to the black ink cartridge.

Let me share this information with you that if the ink in the black ink
cartridge is low the printer will use the ink from the other cartridges
and try to print in black and after printing it turns out to be grey. So
to resolve the issue, I request you to please replace the black trade
ink cartridge and try to print.

This should resolve the issue. If we can be of any further assistance to
you then please revert to us. We look forward to assist you.

Holly hell if I'd have to replace black cartridge that often! Thanks for the tip kowski, looks like I'll probably be just bying a bottle of black ink and spending some time in a company with syringe (as usual with my printers )