Printing to HP Deskjet printers with CUPS

At least with the HP Deskjet's I own(ed), 850C and 815C, I've made the best experience using the Foomatic printing system together with HPJIS drivers specially for printing in high quality color, but also for B/W text printouts.

Make sure you have installed the Foomatic archives or use packages of your distro, but note that their names may vary a bit depending on your distribution:

This allows you to generate the needed PPD files for your exact printer model. Please read the USAGE files in the main directories of the packages to know how to install and use Foomatic.

More you can find on the OpenPrinting.org site.


Or you can use only foomatic-filters together with PPD files:
  1. Get HPJIS Postscript Printer Description (PPD) generated from linuxprinting.org
  2. Add a new printer, first choose an arbitrary driver
  3. Copy the *.ppd file to the CUPS PPD directory (e.g. /etc/cups/ppd) and name it according your printer's name (e.g. HPDJ815C). 
    cp ~/Download/HP-DeskJet_815C-hpijs.ppd HPDJ815C.ppd