Issue with printing paper

[DarbyD53]

The other day I got my Jimmy Smitt's auto back in the mail. He had added a little piece of posterboard like to the envelope to keep it from being bent. Very nice of him to do. The ink on my pitcture though sort of rubbed off onto the posterboard.

Well this past weekend I took a picture I've had printed for 2-3 weeks and I bought a posterboard. As a lot of you know they have a dull and slick side to them. I took the dull side and rubbed on my picture and nothing. I took the slick side and rubbed on my picture and like by the 2nd swipe the ink was coming off of the picture and onto the poster.

Other than buying pics from Wal-Mart, Walgreens and ect, are there any better photo paper than what I'm using, that you know of? I've had 40 success replies this year and only this one I've had to worry, but to prevent future issues I bring this up.

I'm using a HP Photosmart printer, and I used the 5 Star Advance Photo Paper from HP. It's the high gloss in case that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Sassenach]

I can't speak for everyone, but I tend to avoid the high gloss things because mine always smear. Now I either print on cardstock (it adds a bit of extra rigidity and it doesn't look bad either) or matter photo paper. Other than that, I'm not sure what you can do ^^

[DarbyD53]

Thank you for your comment. I had been thinking about going to a less gloss. It wasn't for that reason, but that is another good reason to switch. I've noticed that the gloss isn't really even that good with the high gloss, and I got a pack of 4x6 that were semi and they seemed to look cleaner.

Once again thanks for taking the time and replying

[Sassenach]

You're welcome! I wish someone had told me back when I started collecting =P I hope the less-glossy pages work out for you! I love shiny stuff, but not if it's going to smudge my prized autographs, ya know?

[DarbyD53]

Welllllllllllllllllllllllllll yesterday I got back 3 replies. Two signed and one RTS. I opened them up and all 3 were messed up with the ink coming off. So I just laid out a couple of my 4x6's that are perfect, that will not smear, and the ones that have. Then I noticed that the ones that don't smear have borders. So I went to my printer and printed off the 2 different styles I do.

One is a 4x6 w/ borders fit into page, the other is 4x6 borderless fit into page. And guess what? When I do borderless it takes the picture like 10 seconds to print, when i do it WITH borders it took it 30 seconds atleast to print. So both print and I let them dry for 3 hours. Then I pick both up and I put my finger on the one that is borderless and the ink comes right off, put my hand on the one with borders, that too much longer to print and it wont come off for nothing.

So I guess when it's set to do borderless, faster so it doesn't stick to my gloss paper at all.

So happy to have figued this out, and it looks like my requests for OC and Pushing Daisies will look like crap if I get them back , but all my others are safe which was the majority of them.

[Sassenach]

Well that's interesting, thanks for sharing! I wonder why there's such a big difference between borderless and bordered...it seems to me like borderless would work fine AND take longer to print. I'm definitely gonna keep this in mind next time I send out!

[DarbyD53]

I'm going to fool around with my printer this weekend and see if I can see if the settings are different or what causes. I got an email into HP asking them.

[Sassenach]

Well please let me know what you find out! I'd be interested to know what HP has to say about it ^^

[scarybun]

It sounds like you need to adjust the settings on your printer. There are options for quality in addition to borders. I use an HP C4250 with the heaviest Premium glossy paper on the 'best' setting for all options and have never had a problem with smearing or ink coming off.

[DarbyD53]

Well like I've looked at that basic options. And when I print the boreless, and the ones with borders. Everything on the surface matches up, but I'm going to dig deeper today and see if I can set it up different. There's got to be a way. I'm happy with how the ones with borders look like, but when there's a problem like this it drives me nuts till I figure it out.