Laser Printer - dpi question

[GraphicFuzz]

Anyone here use a Xerox Phaser? Pricier than HP, but I'm curious if it's less buggy when outputting from Mac.

[Palatine]

Eben:

What would you suggest are the best print quality settings for the P2015?

I have the print density set to 5, but there's also a resolution enhancement option (on/off), including an econo mode option with, somewhat oddly, a "highest quality" setting.

I'm assuming ProRes 1200 is the best, but what about those other two options?

[hrant]

If it's like the 1022, if you set it to "true 1200" you shouldn't have the resolution enhancement option on (that's for making 600 look more like 1200, which it does, but visibly not enough). You definitely don't want "econo mode" on, since that makes everything gray. On my setup all I did was switch it up to "ProRes 1200" and I get the best it can do. But I also have the density set to 3 (the default), and 5 is too much for me (plus it probably distorts the outlines, not to mention takes you further away from what an imagesetter would do).

Beyond that the main thing you'll need to worry about is changing the paper type setting as needed. Thicker paper needs more toner fusing time, otherwise the stuff can actually fall off after printing!

hhp

[clauses]

There are only three settings for image quality on OS X. The setting for highest quality is pretty self explanatory:
Printer Resolution: ProRes 1200
Resolution Enhancement: On
EconoMode: Highest Quality

As far as I can see the 'Resolution Enhancement' does nothing when 'Printer Resolution' is set to 'ProRes 1200'.

[ebensorkin]

So far I have used it to test what an office printer is likely to do - not to try to make it into an imagesetter... ;-) You questions are good ones. I will try to test them out in about a week and a half. If I haven't posted a result in 2 weeks bug me a little & I will. In the meantime I would fallow Hrant's advice but also look to see what you think.

What I like about mine is that it prints very quickly, the cost per sheet is low, & it seem to be built well enough that I might get to keep it for more that 2 years unlike an inkjet which is the posterchild for planned obsolecence. It also doesn't seem to have an obvious problem with vertical or horizontal distortion which most laser printers ( other than a xante) do seem to. This doesn't mean that it is immune from the bug metioned earlier.

[jasonla]

I'm a big fan of hp printers i've had 3 over the last 8 or so years. My last one which broke I called HP to see if they could help their service guy eventually said just to give him my address and they'd mail me a new one and to return the broken one which was really cool of them since i purchased it at staples and it may have even been out of warranty not 100% on that but he tried to diagnose the problem the paper didn't feed at all he just had a new one sent out to me. I'd really suggest if you ever have a problem with your printer to call them and see if they can send you a new one. They ask for your credit card in case you never send the broken one they charge you. It's worth calling you speak to someone over seas and i guess if your printer is really busted they offer you a new one.

[kolber]

We've had a xerox phaser at work for the past few years. Not very impressed with the print quality.
Never had any bugs running it on our mac network. Gradients don't always look so good, but apart from that, overall, not too bad.

[ebensorkin]

The more I look at this kind of question the more it seems like checking in the medium you will want your font seen in is the only really good solution. And if you want it to work in a variety of settings you had better check your font in those settings. Obviously there is a limit to these things - but my point is that there doesn't seem to really be a rule of thumb or easy solution. If I discover otherwise I'll let you know.

[1985]

I am trying to restart a similar thread to find out what
the current situation looks like for laser printers.

https://typography.guru/forums/topic/25453-forwarding#comment-393675

[quadibloc]

Someone has already explained that a 2400 x 600 printer is basically a 600 x 600 printer where the electronics allow fractional dot positioning. I am sorry to hear that the OP had a bad experience with buying a laser printer that had inadequate support for his computer; but in the case of the Macintosh (and, for that matter, with Linux as well) one must very carefully check on driver support for peripherals.

This reminds me of something else, though. Some laser printers have a 360 by 360 resolution. This way, they can, without rounding, support type with a 1/72" point, and, like a 300 by 300 printer, also support the 1/60" unit common to Pica and Elite typewriter fonts.

Some European typewriters, instead of having a character width of 1/10" or 1/12", defined character widths in millimeters. And, of course, for printing, they use Didot points, based on the pre-revolutionary French Pied du Roi, which are about 15/14 of the English-speaking world's points. Have laser printers been designed with a resolution to specifically accommodate this?

[hrant]

> Some laser printers have a 360 by 360 resolution. This way,
> they can, without rounding, support type with a 1/72" point

However this is moot, since no laser printer is really dot-
accurate anyway, and many of them don't even come close!

In addition, 360 is not nearly enough for nice rendering.

hhp

[1985]

Hrant, are you still using the same printer as you were at the start of this thread?

[hrant]

Yes. It's working just fine, although I don't print a
lot (I installed a second cartridge a few months ago).

hhp

[quadibloc]

A Didot point is about 0.0376 millimeters, so one could imagine it being approximated by 0.375 millimeters. I would assume that 10 pitch typing would be approximated by letters that are 2.5 mm wide; 12 pitch is 2.12 mm, so 2 mm is possible, but I vaguely remember instead seeing 2.25 mm given as a width of characters on a European typewriter.

0.375 is three times 0.125, or 1/8, so 8 dots per millimeter, or 203.2 dots per inch, would serve both the Didot point and the common European typewriter pitches well. Of course, that is too low for laser printer quality, but any multiple - 16, 24, and so on, dots per millimeter should work well.

[Arno Enslin]

@ 1985

There is a good German website specialized on printers. I have a Samsung ML-3051 and the printing quality is very high in my opinion. (I am not sure yet, if the 1200 dpi × 1200 dpi are emulated.)

However, they take photos with a microscope:
Samsung ML-4551/letter a (Palatino)/quality mode.

Samsung ML-3051/letter a (Palatino)/quality mode.

As you can see, the ML-3051 prints cleaner, (probably!) less glossy (an advantage), but thinner (a bit too thin). I have compared the outline of the Palatino a in Photoshop.

The buy is not a question of precision only, but also a question of taste. For most digitized typefaces, the ML-4551 is maybe better, because in my opinion most of them are too thin! But in case of Mario Feliciano’s Merlo for example the ML-3051 works perfectly fine.

I only have to warn you with regard to the resistance of the Samsung toner against mechanical influences. If you fold and unfold paper, the paper looses the toner in the edge. So, if I have to fold paper, I am using an electric iron and hold it shortly to the edge.

And forget the duplex print of the ML-3051. I tuned mine with a kind of carton rail. Now I am able to print duplex very precise, but I need 20 seconds per page. No, not 20 seconds, I need more time. It takes more time than letterpressing now, lol! But nevertheless I am contented.

And Samsung has a very bad firmware support. In Germany they send service men to you only for updating firmware, although this could be done by yourself in a few minutes only.

I have heard, that Lexmark’s toner resistance is very good.

Hope this was a help!

[ebensorkin]

I posted some advice related to this here

https://typography.guru/forums/topic/25453-forwarding

In which I say that it isn't the laser printer you need to worry about ( within limits) but rather the way you test.

I don't mean to make light of being interested in these things - especially as proofing devices for graphic design.

But it is a different matter for designers of type.

[simjps-spammer]

There are papers specifically optimized for laser printing and some for ink jet. Others are just generic copy machine paper. If you are interested in producing a quality product yourself, you will need to use quality materials. Both HP an HammerMill make papers which specify their intent to be used on laser printers. I prefer 24lb as a minimum. If you examine the surface of laser papers versus others, you can see something about the sheen and lack of visible texture in them. This must enhance their apparent sharpness compared to inkjets which rely somewhat on absorbsion characteristics. Laser toners are fused with heat on top of the paper rather than be absorbed into the paper fibers as are inks. It makes sense when you think about it. Watch for the sale prices and promos and stock up when you can. cartucho toner.

[Té Rowan]

Wow! A spam-like post that may be considered informative! This calls for a party!

[quadibloc]

Since this thread has risen from the ashes, I might mention that in my web searches on this topic, I found that some early Autologic laser printers had a 723 dpi resolution. This shrunk the output just enough so that if the software assumed a 720 dpi resolution, and used the conventional 1/72" point, the point size would actually be shrunk to 0.01383126... inches, which approximates a real official printer's point of 0.013837 inches.

Further pursuant to this topic, I've modified this page on my web site by adding a table comparing several possible laser printer resolutions in the neighborhood of 1080 dpi, showing how closely these resolutions could approximate both the Didot point and either the standard English printer's point of 0.013837 inches or its nominal 1/72 inch replacement in the computer world.