Another Laser printer question…

Branko Vukelic wrote:

Where can I find out the LPI of my printer? It’s a 600dpi LaserJet 1010. I want to obtain sharpest possible printouts on both plain paper and transparency. Any tips?

The LPI of your printer depends on the size of the halftone dots. Selecting small dots will increase detail, but there are less levels of gray that it can reproduce. Large dots will do the opposite.

For monochrome black text, it won’t matter what you do. For photographs, I normally use quite small dots.

I am not sure whether you can select that in the printer driver or not.

Waldo

If it’s not a Postscript printer, you wont be able to adjust the LPI from software. Some machines like this default to 90 LPI.

JD

"Branko Vukelic" wrote in message

Where can I find out the LPI of my printer? It’s a 600dpi LaserJet 1010. I want to obtain sharpest possible printouts on both plain paper and transparency. Any tips?

Yeah, I know. It’s not a PostScript printer and it does default to SOMETHING lpi. I only wanted to know what’s the default line fequency for my printer… It seems to be at around 90 lpi, but I wanted to know for sure. Any ideas where I can find the specs?

"Jeff H." wrote in message

If it’s not a Postscript printer, you wont be able to adjust the LPI from software. Some machines like this default to 90 LPI.

JD

"Branko Vukelic" wrote in message

Where can I find out the LPI of my printer? It’s a 600dpi LaserJet 1010. I
want to obtain sharpest possible printouts on both plain paper and transparency. Any tips?

"Branko Vukelic" wrote in message

Yeah, I know. It’s not a PostScript printer and it does default to

SOMETHING

lpi. I only wanted to know what’s the default line fequency for my printer… It seems to be at around 90 lpi, but I wanted to know for sure. Any ideas where I can find the specs?

Branko,
Try your post in: comp.periphs.printers
~Doc

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 21:46:03 +0200, "Branko Vukelic" wrote:

Where can I find out the LPI of my printer? It’s a 600dpi LaserJet 1010. I want to obtain sharpest possible printouts on both plain paper and transparency. Any tips?

You will not be able to if you only read the manufacturer’s spec sheets on the device.

Laser printer manufacturers are very "oblique" when it comes to citing the maximum halftone dot frequency that their machines are capable of.

If you really want to determine the maximum dot then purchase a "Half-tone Screen Finder." This is an inexpensive plastic ruler with a calibrated section for holding against a halftone and rotating until a 4-point star appears (a moire). The moire usually appears at 45 degrees, depending on the angle that the dots are layed down on. The halftone screen value is then read off the sides. You can get one of these from: The C-Thru Ruler Co, 6 Britton Dr, Bloomfield, CT 06002. They do have a web site, but I’ve not been on it in a while.

BTW, even with PostScript laser printers, just because the printer driver says that you’ve set your halftones at 150 lines per inch does NOT mean that you will be able to print 150 out of the laser printer. As an example, with an HP Laserjet 4+ the maximum line screen you can get is approximately 127 lines per inch… but no where in the machine’s spec sheet will you be able to find this information. Talking with technical people at HP (not tech support) revealed that the reason for this is "processor power" — in other words printing a finer line screen would take more time to process and therefore reduce the "pages per minute" specs that the company wanted to shot for in its promotional materials.

And as one last tip, with laser printers there is a lot of toner splatter between the actual halftone dots and this does have unwanted the effect of "greying down" the image. So balance your need for a crisp image against the degradation that this toner splatter will cause.

No can do. My news server doesn’t support it.

(Besides, I was hoping for prepress tips rather than pure specs…)

However, I’ve done some testing and images seem to come up sharp(er) when I set lpi to 100. That is, the image resolution is around 200ppi (dpi, or whatever designation you prefer). Thanks you all for input!

Branko

"~Doc" wrote in message

[sic]

Branko,
Try your post in: comp.periphs.printers
~Doc

Thanks. But the printer has NO adjustable settings, execp toner-save and paper orientation. What I can do with it is just PRINT. The lpi is fixed at somewhere between 100 and 130. So far assuming that it’s a 100 lpi printer gives the best results.

As for "Half-tone Screen Finder", thanks for the tip, but we don’t have it here in Serbia. Not that one or anything similar. We still do (screen finding, that is) it using loupe and trying to figure out from exprerience. And I’m kinda short of experience right now.

"-xiray-" wrote in message

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 21:46:03 +0200, "Branko Vukelic" wrote:

Where can I find out the LPI of my printer? It’s a 600dpi LaserJet 1010. I want to obtain sharpest possible printouts on both plain paper and transparency. Any tips?

You will not be able to if you only read the manufacturer’s spec sheets on the device.

Laser printer manufacturers are very "oblique" when it comes to citing the maximum halftone dot frequency that their machines are capable of.
If you really want to determine the maximum dot then purchase a "Half-tone Screen Finder." This is an inexpensive plastic ruler with a calibrated section for holding against a halftone and rotating until a 4-point star appears (a moire). The moire usually appears at 45 degrees, depending on the angle that the dots are layed down on. The halftone screen value is then read off the sides. You can get one of these from: The C-Thru Ruler Co, 6 Britton Dr, Bloomfield, CT 06002. They do have a web site, but I’ve not been on it in a while.
BTW, even with PostScript laser printers, just because the printer driver says that you’ve set your halftones at 150 lines per inch does NOT mean that you will be able to print 150 out of the laser printer. As an example, with an HP Laserjet 4+ the maximum line screen you can get is approximately 127 lines per inch… but no where in the machine’s spec sheet will you be able to find this information. Talking with technical people at HP (not tech support) revealed that the reason for this is "processor power" — in other words printing a finer line screen would take more time to process and therefore reduce the "pages per minute" specs that the company wanted to shot for in its promotional materials.

And as one last tip, with laser printers there is a lot of toner splatter between the actual halftone dots and this does have unwanted the effect of "greying down" the image. So balance your need for a crisp image against the degradation that this toner splatter will cause.

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:17:08 +0200, "Branko Vukelic" wrote:

As for "Half-tone Screen Finder", thanks for the tip, but we don’t have it here in Serbia.

Well, in my experience every printer and publisher’s production department has one of those laying around someplace. I have no doubt that someone in Europe makes one.

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 12:34:17 +0200, "Branko Vukelic" wrote:

No can do. My news server doesn’t support it.

I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but – Google groups.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

Yuck! Please don’t make me use that! 🙂

Sigh, eventually, I’ll have to visit Google Groups… But at the moment, I’d rather ask here. Besides, I seem to get more useful tips here than in other groups I’ve been to.

"Hecate" wrote in message

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 12:34:17 +0200, "Branko Vukelic" wrote:

No can do. My news server doesn’t support it.

I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but – Google groups.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui