Image Quality Tips. A note about black-and-white printing.

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1 Image Quality Tips This section contains general tips for working with images and applications. Refer to the Application-Specific Tips document for additional information. A note about black-and-white printing. The Color LaserWriter is an excellent black-and-white printer. The advantages offered by Color PhotoGrade technology are as beneficial to black-and-white documents as they are to color documents. (And the average cost per page with the Color LaserWriter is only about a penny more than with monochrome laser printers.) You should notice the following in black-and-white documents printed on the Color LaserWriter: Near-photographic quality in photographic images The virtual disappearance of detectable halftone cell patterns Note that all performance and image quality tips included on this CD can apply to both black-and-white and color documents.

2 Begin with quality scans. Starting with a great quality scan is important when working with any application and any color printer. Images properly obtained with a quality scanner should not require a lot of enhancement or modification in order to look good. While it s not necessary to scan at a very high resolution (150 dpi is optimal for printing on the Color LaserWriter), it is important to use the highest quality scanner possible. If you don t have access to a high quality scanner, consider using a service bureau. Note: If an image looks bad after modification, it s likely that further attempts to modify and enhance will not produce the desired results. In such cases, it s often best simply to start over with a fresh scan. Select Apple Color LaserWriter in the Print dialog. Some applications usually graphic and page layout applications require that you specify printer type in order to print properly. (This is usually accomplished by way of a pulldown menu in the Print dialog.) When working with such applications, be sure to specify Apple Color LaserWriter as the destination printer before printing. For instructions on selecting the printer type for individual applications, refer to the Application-Specific Tips document in the Great Results Tips folder on this CD. Create a printed palette of color samples. People often discover that an application s color palette appears differently on the screen than it does when printed. To remedy this, create a document with sample colors from the application s palette. Then print the document on the Color LaserWriter using either paper or transparency film (depending on your intended output medium). Refer to the printed sample documents when selecting colors for print. Image Quality Tips page 2

3 Optimize image resolution for the output device. Research has shown that in output from today s desktop color laser printers, the human eye cannot easily perceive variations in image data at resolutions higher than 150 dots per inch (dpi). Therefore, you can optimize both image quality and printer performance by saving all images at 150 dpi before placing them in documents or printing them. Of course, images saved at resolutions higher than 150 dpi will print on the Color LaserWriter. However, keep in mind that the higher the image resolution the larger the file size and the longer the image will take to print. For instance a 3-by-5-inch image is about 20.6 megabytes in size at 600 dpi. The same image at 150 dpi is about 1.29 megabytes in size. Note: If the Color LaserWriter is your final output device, saving images at 150 dpi can save you considerable time and effort. However, many people use the Color LaserWriter to print proofs of a document that will eventually be printed on a high-resolution press. In such cases, it s best to save and print images at the closest possible resolution to that of the final output device. Image Quality Tips page 3

4 Select colors well-suited to the output medium. Some color combinations are less than optimal when printing on a color laser printer. For example, sometimes a white gap, or halo, appears around certain text or graphic elements. This type of printing artifact usually occurs around dark-colored graphic elements contained within dark-colored fields. As such, the problem is sometimes unavoidable due to the very nature of the color laser printing process. The easiest workaround is to use an alternate color that provides more contrast. Image Quality Tips page 4

5 Set image size and resolution before placing in layout. When preparing images for page layout, be sure to set the image resolution and image size from within the imaging application before placing the image into page layout. Doing so will help optimize the image quality and printer performance. Avoid using resizing tools on graphic images. Software applications like PageMaker that allow you to incorporate graphics into documents usually feature a Resize tool for modifying the size of graphic images. For optimal image quality and printer performance, try to avoid using the Resize tool with images you intend to print on the Color LaserWriter. Resizing an image after placing it in a document can cause a loss in resolution and image quality. When using the Resize tool to shrink an image, the file size actually remains the same, which causes print time to be unnecessarily long. It s best to determine the desired size for the final image using the rulers within the application then return to an imaging application (like PhotoShop) to crop and size the image accordingly. This will optimize both image quality and printer performance. Let the LaserWriter software convert colors. If a document you wish to print on the Color LaserWriter is in RGB format, you don t need to convert it manually from RGB to CMYK. Apple recommends that you let the LaserWriter software do this conversion. This can produce better results than converting to RGB within an application. Image Quality Tips page 5

6 Print proofs from the destination application. People often use an imaging software application (such as PhotoShop) to prepare images that will eventually be printed in another application (such as QuarkXPress or PageMaker). Because printed images can appear differently from one application to another, it s a good idea to use the final destination application to proof the work. Note: When printing proofs, it s also important to print on the same type of paper as will be used for the final document. The color variations that occur from one type of paper to another can be quite dramatic. Print on bright white paper. The Color LaserWriter will print on all standard office photocopier paper. However, some such paper tends to mute colors due to the fact that it is often gray in hue. You ll get the best results on the Color LaserWriter by printing on bright white paper. Image Quality Tips page 6

7 Retain the default setting on the Density Control panel. The Density Control panel is on the back of the Color LaserWriter. The panel is useful to expert users who wish to tune multiple Color LaserWriter printers to a particular specification in order to maintain color consistency among them. However, if print densities end up set to their maximums, it can produce negative effects in image quality. Apple recommends retaining the default settings on the Density Control panel for optimum image quality. Refer to the Color LaserWriter manual for more information on the Density Control panel. Image Quality Tips page 7