Printing to laser printer looks terrible

DN
Posted By
David_Nicol
Feb 14, 2009
Views
401
Replies
5
Status
Closed
Ever since PS CS3 I’ve noticed that when I print a 300 dpi grayscale image to my laser printer directly from Photoshop, it comes out as if a 72dpi benday screen had been applied. Never happened in earlier versions. I used to get excellent black-and-white print quality through Photoshop, just using the default settings.

I have 300 or 600 dpi grayscale images, usually with a lot of clean black lines. But whether I set to "printer manages colors" or "Photoshop manages colors", and no matter what profile I select, I get the same halftone (awful) result on my HP Deskjet 3330. The printer’s settings are fine. If I print the same image from any other application, such as Quark or MS Word, the print quality is fine.

PS has always been a bit confusing to me regarding printing settings. Can someone tell me a way to get my 300-600 dpi images to print properly, without halftones applied?
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CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 15, 2009
Somehow your laser printer driver thinks it should be using a very coarse halftone screen.

Check the halftone settings in Photoshop, but mostly you need to check the settings in your driver.

And you will _always_ have halftones applied – because your printer can’t print all possible gray values.
DN
David_Nicol
Feb 16, 2009
Of course the first thing I did was check my printer settings. This is what baffles me. The settings are do different for Photoshop or any other program. In CS2 and earlier versions, anything printed from Photoshop came out exactly like prints from any other app: 600dpi fine quality. But now (since CS3) ONLY Photoshop printouts come out in this 72 dpi halftone. Using the same default printer driver settings when printing from Flash, Word, Corel, Quark, IE, Firefox, I get fine quality printouts.

This is why I am asking for advice! Obviously there is a setting within Photoshop that I am doing wrong. Probably something obvious.

Please treat me like I’m stupid. How do you ‘check halftone settings in Photoshop’? is that dot gain? I have print settings for ‘grey dot gain 20%’, which is what I’ve seen it set at since I started using Photoshop 3.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 16, 2009
No, I’m talking about the PostScript halftoning options.

If you are not using the PostScript interface – then all the halftoning options are under the control of your printer driver, and not Photoshop.
DN
David_Nicol
Feb 16, 2009
I’m not using PostScript, AFAIK. I see nothing anywhere in the HP printer settings about halftoning. Only lpi and some presets. I always use "highest quality" preset.

Again, on this very same computer, without ever having changed any settings, when I had Photoshop CS2 installed, the print quality was high. Since CS3 it isn’t. No other program has this issue. Only Photoshop CS3 and CS4. You’re saying there is nothing at all within Photoshop’s print options which can override or change this?

Chris, is this another one of those things where a problem that only ever occurs with Photoshop is blamed on 3rd party drivers by PS engineers? Just like the OGL issues? It’s getting to be like a broken record.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 16, 2009
LPI determines the halftone frequency — halftone Lines Per Inch.

Photoshop doesn’t control the halftone settings for printers unless they are PostScript printers (and even then the control is iffy). So, the only things left are your settings in the printer driver, or a bug in the driver.

I don’t know what broken record you have been listening to. When I point a finger at something there’s a good, logical, (usually) documented reason for it. If the problem is with Photoshop, I say so. If I don’t know the source of the problem, either I don’t say anything, or ask questions so we can research the problem.

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