Printing the wrong colours

You mentioned heat transfer paper, well, for that you'll need an ICC profile for that specific paper and your printer - and maybe special inks too. 

Also, you write that you are testing on plain paper, you'll never get full range accurate colour on plain paper.

To print accurately on heat transfer paper is quite difficult - you need instructions from the paper manufacturer and you may even need special inks. 

Printing over wifi may contribute to the missing manufacturer specific media names in "printer settings" IF you have selected "use:" Airprint when "adding" the printer in System Preferences - maybe you haven't? 

here is an example of what media types I'd expect to see with an HP printer.

here are media settings for another HP printer, those are still apparently HP specific names

If you can print over wi-fi without selecting the AirPrint driver you don't need to get a cable.

LET'S GET THAT RIGHT FIRST - 

Can you open system preferences and remove then re-add the printer and make sure that the actual printer name is selected there under "use:" rather than Airprint?

here's a screenshot below of me doing that, the printer name wasn’t there so I selected "auto" there under "use" and that found the right HP driver as you can see. 

'Airprint' may not even be available but let's rule out that issue.

The printer works better with its own software (not the Mac airprint driver). 

That step is not connected with Photoshop Manages Colour or Printer Manages Color - you need to get this step right first.

NOW

I have never seen that behaviour where the Adobe Color Printer Utility is asked for in Photoshop, the ACPU utility was designed a while back for printing colour profiling patches without colour management. That IS NOT what we want here.

I have High Sierra on a Mac and I do not see that request when I select "Photoshop manages Color" in Photoshop v 20.0.9

I suspect a bug there, what version of Photoshop are you using?

Can you not even make a print using "Photoshop Manages Color" ? is printing from Photoshop disabled?

Having selected "Photoshop Manages Color" you'll need to select the printer profile. I see you have sRGB - that's not going to make for accurate prints.

The right ICC profile will name your printer and a manufacturer's paper.

HEAT TRANSFER PAPER:

For now, in your position, I would want to learn how to get the printer working accurately on normal photo paper

So I'd make my tests for colour by printing on an HP Photo paper using an HP ICC paper profile [and Photoshop Manages Color"] to do that.

Once we've confirmed that you can see actual HP paper names in media type in printer settings that should work well

Of course, a decent screen to print match will require a good monitor display profile too.

You've quite a way to go to get all this right. 

Once you have a decent colour accurate print on HP Photo paper its time to think about the heat transfer printing. 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
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If you mean that the printed colors are not the ones you see on screen, you have to be sure that the screen display CMYK colors.

Check these items (sorry for french UI)

You will be then able to work with colors accurately.

Also an other tip : most printers do not make difference for less than 5%… so avoid colors like Y : 48.2% M : 32.5% that will be printed randomly as Y 50% or 45% and M 30% or 35 %…

For brand identity the colors must be chosen for every support… so the simplest possible…

😉

Hi,

let's not worry about warnings in the colorsync utility, for now, much of the time those seem to be spurious.

Ideally, you should be: 

1: working with an image which has an embedded ICC profile

2: working on a calibrated and profiled display screen, that [and only that] allows true on-screen simulation of the image colours

3: in Photoshop's print dialogue select "photoshop manages color" and select an ICC profile that names your printer and the loaded media. 

4: in printer settings under media select the loaded media by name.

now you're ready to print

That should help, but please be aware that even with the above settings adopted there are limitations to the capability of ink and paper as compared to screen colour saturation. Photoshops View/ proof setup/custom and select the actual printer icc profile can help simulate output. If you also activate gamut warning in the view menu this will use the printer profile to show you out of gamut (beyond printer capability) areas. 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]