Printing Calamus/OSX/Xerox ColourLaser print quality

Hi,

I just purchased a Xerox 6100dn colour laser printer, just to find out that it does not print perfect results on Calamus text and pre-made raster.

For some reason the Xerox driver always makes some sort of stupid antialias filtering on bitmap images and bitmap is what macprint produces I guess.
Since the driver makes antialias/unsharpness a black block or line is no longer black on the edges and the printer starts rastering and printed text looks rough. The only way to get decent looking text is to print in 1200dpi, then it still looks sligtly worse than 600dpi!!!

Calamus-produced raster is even worse. Each dot first gets unshapened and the printer makes a raster on top of the raster and it looks like ****. So I can not use calamus raster with the Xerox 6100dn. The PC version seems to have a better driver, but I running Calamus on a OSX Mac.

I used to have the same problem with the OKI 14ex laser, but after OKI added a contrast setting, I turned it up to full and the raster got printed exactly right.

Unfortunately the Xerox 6100dn does not have a contrast setting and its rasterisation can not be turned off!

========
-So. What are my options here?
-Buing one more printer?
-Can Calamus output the text in some vector format that I can print (module?) with this non postscript printer?

Test from normal Mac OSX texteditors prints fine, but that is probably since the text is vector all the way to the printer driver.

If you cannot switch off the post-rasterization rastering of this Xerox printer under MacOS X, ask your Xerox dealer what to do.

A printer which is not able to print solid black parts as solid black parts should not be sold as a printer, but as an adventure game at least.

If the print results are as expected unter Windows, blame it to the Xerox Mac printer driver developers.



Grüße / Greetings / Groetjes / Salutations,
Ulf Dunkel

This evening I got it confiremd from Xerox support that the rasterisation can not be turned off:

"all the information needs to be digested (rasterized) by the driver before being sent to the printer. The 6100 would not be able to print otherwise."

? They dont know what they are talking about, do they...

I explained shortly why rasterisation is not needed and suggested adding atleast contrast and "do not rasterise" settings for future updates. If I stay with this printer until an update is a reality, I do not know.

Anyone tried the Samsung 550n, which is the same printer as Xerox 6100dn, but with more memory (128Mb instead of 64Mb) and Postscript 3.

Hi again,

I just performed a workaround test.

I printed a rasterised document with Calamus in 600dpi and printed to PDF.
Then I opened it in Photoshop and enlagened it 200% and then I set the resolution to 1200dpi to get the same physical size.
I set the Xerox 6100dn to 600dpi and printed. -Perfect!!!

I then tried printing with my other laser printer (OKI 14ex), same result, no more extra rasterisation. Perfect as is should be.

This leads me to belive that it is the Apple printing system that does the antialias filtering if input resolution is the same or less than the printer. Why should two independent manufacturers make the same mistake?...

Those who are making better drivers, probably knows how to work around the problem or turn the anti alias filtering off.

If Macprint could double the resolution (as last step after rasterisation etc) this problem would be bypassed.Printing would be slower but working. Adding a "fix for stupid printers"-button could maybe be an idea...

Does this printer use the PCL4 language? many Xerox printers seem to do that. If so, Gimp Print supports generic PCL printers as well as some Xerox printers.

Their drivers usually have more options.

Certainly it allowed me to overcome the limitations of my Epson 3000.

Dave

No it seem to rely on Xerox drivers, only.

I performed a new test.

Using photoshop and GraphicConverter I printer the same rasterized file under both OS9.22 and OSX.

Under OS9.22 it prins as it should. Unfortunately MacPrint (OS9) did not like this printer so I couldn't test directly from Calamus. I had to use the "print to pdf" file I had made. Here is a photo of the prints:



See the difference? (!!!)

I had a friend test it with the Samsung 550n and he claims that it looks exact when printed in greyscale. In colour it doesn't look that nice, he claims. I havn't seen the prints yet.Roger Jönsson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I just purchased a Xerox 6100dn colour laser printer, just to
> find out that it does not print perfect results on Calamus text
> and pre-made raster.
>
> For some reason the Xerox driver always makes some sort of
> stupid antialias filtering on bitmap images and bitmap is what
> macprint produces I guess.
> Since the driver makes antialias/unsharpness a black block or
> line is no longer black on the edges and the printer starts
> rastering and printed text looks rough. The only way to get
> decent looking text is to print in 1200dpi, then it still looks
> sligtly worse than 600dpi!!!
>
> Calamus-produced raster is even worse. Each dot first gets
> unshapened and the printer makes a raster on top of the raster
> and it looks like ****. So I can not use calamus raster with
> the Xerox 6100dn. The PC version seems to have a better driver,
> but I running Calamus on a OSX Mac.
>
> I used to have the same problem with the OKI 14ex laser, but
> after OKI added a contrast setting, I turned it up to full and
> the raster got printed exactly right.
>
> Unfortunately the Xerox 6100dn does not have a contrast setting
> and its rasterisation can not be turned off!
>
> ========
> -So. What are my options here?
> -Buing one more printer?
> -Can Calamus output the text in some vector format that I can
> print (module?) with this non postscript printer?
>
> Test from normal Mac OSX texteditors prints fine, but that is
> probably since the text is vector all the way to the printer
> driver.
>

Roger Jönsson wrote:

> Here is a photo of the prints:
>

The right part is inacceptable bad and is caused by re-rasterization.



Grüße / Greetings / Groetjes / Salutations,
Ulf Dunkel