LOW QUALITY LASER PRINTING

CP
Posted By
Chan_Peter
Jan 15, 2004
Views
422
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I’m using Photoshop 7.0, selected printer is HP Laserjet 4L (300dpi).

Test printing text using editors such as Microsoft Word shows that printer is okay. All printed text of different font sizes are of excellent quality.

However, printing text in Photoshop shows quality of text is no good; text color seems polka-dot black and white instead of pure black. My document size is A4, 300dpi, font used = Arial.
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laser low print

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BLUDVLZ
Jan 15, 2004
Are you printing a flattened image or one with text layers intact?

Is your text a pure black, or a color build (by default Photoshop black is a build)?

Is the printer a PostScript printer or PCL?
CP
Chan_Peter
Jan 16, 2004
Same output for both flattened image and that with text layers intact.

I used default Photoshop black.

I found no PostScript settings in printer, so I believe my HP Laserjet 4L must be PCL.
TK
Tomaz_Klinc
Jan 16, 2004
HP LJ 4L is a 300 dpi PCL-only printer; it has at most 2MB of memory and does not accept the Adobe PostScript SIMM memory module.
JJ
Jerry_Jensen
Jan 16, 2004
This is a long shot. I have a 4P. The 4L is similar. Buried way down in the printer "options", are settings for DPI. It might be worthwhile to be sure that the printer is set to 300 DPI and not something much less, (like 75 or 150).

I used to use that trick of setting low DPI when Xeroxing mostly solid black images, in the old days, this acted like a printing screen. Your problem sounds like what I intentionally did.
TK
Tomaz_Klinc
Jan 16, 2004
Jerry, the similarity between 4L and 4P ends with digit 4; the 4P is a 600 dpi printer, has room for 32 MB of RAM and that PostScript SIMM which converts it to a HP LJ 4MP
RW
Rene_Walling
Jan 16, 2004
This is a bit of a long shot, but I suspect the vector data in Photoshop is in PostScript. Since your printer doesn’t accept PostScript, that could be why text from Photoshop doesn’t print correctly.
DM
Don_McCahill
Jan 16, 2004
I wonder if Peter might be using an outdated or wrong driver. HP lists all drivers on its website, and a visit there could check them out. They have a self-support engine that is worth a try as well.

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