Cannot turn off color management on HP Officejet 6500 E709n

Question

The subject says it all.  I want to create an ICC profile for my HP Officejet 6500 E709n.  In order to do that I need to turn off color management, then print a test pattern.  I cannot find any documentation on the Internet that this is possible for this particular printer.  HP describes a driver that does support this feature, but does not say whether the feature is available for all HP inkjet printers, just fior Photosmart printers, etc.
I am running OS X 10.7.5 and have driver version 4.0.1 installed.  Can anybody verify that, on Lion with this version of the driver, the option to turn off color management is available for some printers (I suspect Photosmart) but not for others (e.g., Officejet)?  I have no option to install another driver, as Apple's Software Update determines the drivers required and installs them automatically.
Thanks,
Richard

Answer 1

It may be that you can't turn it off. In my quest for a color laser printer that didn't cost a small fortune, I first tried two somewhat cheaper models. In both cases, I had checked the documentation before purchasing the printers for the same reason as yourself. There were settings on both the printer and in the driver software to disable color management and any type of auto color control.
In neither case did those features actually work. After profiling, color wasn't even close to the monitor, so the printers were still doing some sort of color modification of their own despite being set to none. These were color laser printers in about the $275 range. As you get into anything cheaper (including of course the deluge of dirt cheap inkjet printers), they are essentially impossible to profile. These door stops are targeted at users who just expect the printer to kick out a page with an image on it.
For a color laser printer, I originally went with a Xerox 6280DN, which is a toner model (I was purposely avoiding the models that use solid inks). That one profiled perfectly. The 6600 is probably the closest current available model to that.
However, you're looking at inkjet printers. I know some users try to avoid Epson, but I've always had good luck with them, and the output is outstanding for the higher end models. Their cheapest professional model is the 17" 3880 at about $1200. Add $200 more for the Designer Edition, which is the same printer bundled with the EFI eXpress RIP Software.
One of the nice features of this model is it uses their newer head. We have a Stylus Pro 4900, which replaced a 4000. The difference is night and day in ink loss. The 4000 regularly churned through a good third of the ink spent on that thing just trying to keep the nozzles clear. A very large waste of expensive ink! The 4900 still does clog at times (all inkjets do), but nowhere near as often, and it clears with less waste.
As an example, the 110ml cartridges for the 4000 averaged $60 per color. We'd go through at least a couple thousand dollars of ink a year, much of it lost to keeping the thing unclogged. With the 4900, which we've had for a year and a half now, we still have two of the original 80ml starter cartridges in it. The replacements you buy for it are 200ml and should last a good two years or more. In other words, the cost of ink per year dropped by about 80%.