Hello! I've been lurking for some time now and have built up a nice little collection. Any how, with my first print, the quality came out very dark, I can hardly make out the detail. I am working with an HP Deskjet 4360 and am curious on what people have been using for their advanced settings when printing. Also does any body have a reliable CIS for an HP printer and where did you get it. I'm in the market and don't wholly trust most online retailers. Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you in advance!!

First: Welcome to the boards!

Second: Double, triple check that it prints square. HP is notorious for printing out of square with the 4xxx line. I had a 4180 iirc and it was 1/16" out of whack in one direction.

Third: I only ever had problems with grassy textures for some reason. I lightened them up in GIMP and they worked out just fine. Also, try out Matte Photo Paper. I find that it is well worth the extra coin.

Welcome to the forums!

I regularly print on cheapo 110lb cardstock on my Canon printer. The prints were quite dark and muddy using the "standard" printing. For my Canon printer, I can specify manual color adjustments, and I tweaked the brightness there to use the "light" setting, and it does a good job letting the details come through. I would imagine it'd be even better if I started using matte photo paper... I just haven't taken the leap yet, as I fear I'll be compelled to redo all that I've built so far!

Definitely measure your printouts and check that you're printing square. I have tiles from three sets that are off by that 1/16" Talae mentioned, and while it doesn't render them useless, they don't quite fit as well as they should together. When I bought my new printer, I talked to the store manager (who was actually surprised to hear about this issue) and since we couldn't seem to get reasonable test prints in-store (one issue after another trying to print via USB stick) he was fine letting me take the printer home to try it, and return it if it didn't print square.

For CIS, I went with InkProducts.com after hearing about them on this forum. It's a mom-and-pop shop out of Florida, I think. I was nervous about it too, having installed it into a 3-day-old printer... I can only speak for the system I got for my Canon printer, but installation was a breeze. The only issue I had was that I can be a complete idiot sometimes. I have a long posting about my experiences somewhere here on the forums. It was something like $80 to get the system, and I think I've spent $100 in extra ink. At the rate I'm going (and I print a LOT) I'm not going to need ink for a long time. I suspect the system will fail before I run out... I've had a number of technical issues with the system. The fella that supports it is nice enough, and has helped me through a number of issues, so I'm pretty self-sufficient with it. I find the system, once installed, to be almost totally mess-free when refilling, and it's easy to keep the tanks full. It's not a perfect, fool-proof system, but so far I am glad I made the investment.

Thanks much for the advice! I will check my measuements again but for the Necro Block they were pretty spot on. And if you recommend them, mproteau, I've read enough of your posts to consider your word to be close to gospel, so I'll give 'em a shot! Thanks again!!

I'm assuming the 'em' you're gonna give a shot at is a continuous ink system. As long as you have read this post where some of the ordeal with my CIS played out, and have fully accepted the spirit of caveat emptor then sure, go for it! Best of luck - if there are any issues that arise, I'll try to give my unprofessional 2¢ when I can.