Aperture Printing Fun and Games (aka trial and error)

Question

Hi,
After getting over the anxiety attack caused by the bad 2.2 raw update, I finally got around to playing with Aperture trial. Nice interface, liked the keywording and so on, so decided to see how the printing went - and that's when the fun started.
Printer: HP Photosmart 8230 with up-to-date drivers
Camera: Nikon D40, shooting RAW (NEF files)
Test Print 1 - iPhoto as a control example - lovely - came out very close to on-screen (correct paper and color managed as colorsync/RGB chosen in printer dialog),
Test Print 2 - ViewNX as a control example - produced stunningly sharp photo very close to on-screen using the same printer settings as iPhoto
Test Print 3 - Aperture print options set up as per Apple Article 302821, printed on same paper as previous tests, comes out slightly dark, with faint yellowish cast.
Test Print 4 - changed colorsync profile from the specific HP paper to "System Managed" and set color at printer to Colorsmart/RGB. Totally sucked - very dark.
Test Print 5 - retained colorsync profile as system managed, changed printer color to "Application Managed colors" Totally sucked exactly the same as Test 4.
Test Print 6 - Lightroom 2 print using "managed by printer" profile - very nice print and close to on-screen
Test Print 7 - Lightroom 2 print using specific paper profile - identical to Test 6
To summarise - printing from Aperture does not produce as close a match to on-screen as iPhoto or ViewNX or Lightroom 2, even though the reverse should be true. If I want Aperture to print something like what I'm seeing, I have to up the gamma, increase saturation and contrast, and also increase print sharpening, which kinda defeats the point of having a big screen and lots of adjustment options.
Any suggestions on what to do next would be most appreciated.
Regards,
Calx

Answer 1

I admit it is very frustrating at first but woorth pursuing. There are many threads on here about this and many including myself have solved the problem. One thing I notice is that you are using System Managed. This is not the way to do it. Another thing is that you continually have to check Colorsync.
The set up dialgue could be more intuitive but if you follow it carefulyl it does work. I woudl expect that this will be improved at some stage. Remember too in doing this you are being given flexibility; flexibility to make superb prints and the converse - flexibility to fail. On teh way to gettin my 'ooh - ahh' prints I have my share of disasters. This is not a click and go instant gratification game.
good luck.