Photosmart B8550 photo black prints blue/cyan

My Photosmart B8550 has recently begun to have problems printing dark/black on photos.It has printed wonderfully up to now, but I began to notice that Photo Black doesn't seem to be printing black when I print on glossy photo paper. Where black would be in photos becomes bluish...or cyan. I've even bought a brand new HP Photo Black cartridge, but still the same thing.
Oddly, a diagnostic printout on regular printer paper shows no photo black in the large color squares. At first I thought I was out of ink, but it's a new cartridge now. and still on occasion only shows some black smudges. Now I'm thinking perhaps something is clogged though I'm not sure what to try to clean, or how. However, when I print to glossy paper it's as if it's substituting cyan for what should be photo black. Strange...
A test print of a strip of blocks of grey scale...white changing to solid black... will begin white and slowly change to grey. But at about the 50% point it begins to show more of the cyan. By the time it gets to what should be solid black, it's solid cyan.
Anyone have any experience with this or know what I can do to fix it before I have to junk the thing already?
Thanks,
C

A quick follow-up: I downloaded the HP Diagnostic Utility and ran it on the B8550. The printout that resulted from running the utility looked perfect, though it printed on regular printer paper--not glossy photo paper, which seems to be the issue in my case (fwiw, I've been testing on 4x6 glossy).
The diagnostic prints out a sheet with text and a square for each color..and black. That black looks nice and black, though if it's diagnosing this printer it doesn't tell you whether the black square is specifically 'Photo Black' or just a black that might have been the big text-black cartridge. Still, everything looked fine and the small still-life picture on the sheet also looked fine as far as I could tell.
So I'm still stumped why, when I print a test photo on 4x6 glossy (true HP paper that came with a cartridge), solid blacks will look bright cyan blue. There may be shades of grey along the way, black hair may show some blackish-greys...but a black shirt will print almost totally bright cyan blue.
--@#$% :/

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If your problem is solved please click the "Accept as Solution" button ------------V
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I am not an employee of HP, I am a volunteer posting here on my own time.
If your problem is solved please click the "Accept as Solution" button ------------V
If my answer was helpful please click the "Thumbs Up" to say "Thank You"--V

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