Adjusting Print Quality

This section briefly explains some of the settings that you can specify.

For details, see the printer driver Help.

• Printing in Black and White

  You can print using only black.

  Since black and white printing is faster than color printing, it is efficient for printing color documents that do not need to be printed in color. Also, the black produced by black and white printing is a more distinct black than that produced by color printing. Be sure to select black and white printing if you specified black and white printing in an application.

• Saving Color Ink When Printing

  You can save color ink by printing graphics and images with less than the usual amount of ink. Text is printed as usual so that it can remain clear and easy to read.

• Changing Image Printing Method

  When printing images, the higher the resolution of images, the longer the time required for printing. You can print with priority on print quality or print speed.

• Correcting the Hue of Digital Photos

  Correct the hue of digital photos. This is effective especially for overexposed or underexposed images.

  Exposure is affected by the levels of light in which the photo was taken. If there are extreme light and shade light).

• Printing Low Resolution Images Smoothly

  You can print outlines of low-resolution images, which often appear on Web pages, smoothly.

• Changing the Dither Pattern

  A dither pattern is a pattern of dots used to simulate a color or shade of an image. If the pattern is changed, the characteristics of the image will also change. You can select a pattern suitable for the image to be printed.

  Dithering is a technique where tiny dots are printed in patterns in order to create the illusion of tones and colors that cannot be physically reproduced.

• Using Error Diffusion

  Error Diffusion is a type of dithering that produces halftones by printing dots densely for dark colors and diffusely for light colors. Select the appropriate pattern for the image you want depending on the operating system or application, error diffusion may not be printed correctly.

• Changing the Color Profiling Pattern

  You can select a color-profiling pattern to adjust the tone of colors for prints according to the colors displayed on the computer screen.

  Colors on the computer screen are expressed using the three RGB colors, but colors used for printing are composed of the four CMYK colors. When printing, RGB colors are converted to CMYK colors.

• Printing Grayscale Images Using Black or CMYK

  You can print black or gray parts of an image using black or CMYK.

• Printing Text in Black

  You can print text other than black in black. This is useful when text other than black looks lighter when printed.

• Using ICM

  You can correct colors using the Windows ICM (Image Color Matching) function.

  ICM is a color management system that adjusts colors between I/O devices. Use this function to produce print results with colors as close as possible to those displayed on the computer screen. To use this function, the color profile must be added to the printer.

  You can find the color profile in the ICM folder stored on the CD-ROM provided. For information about adding a color profile, search for the words “color profile” in Windows Help, and then see the appropriate topic.

  This function is unavailable under Windows NT 4.0.

• Adjusting Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation

  You can adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation for printing.

• Adjusting Color Balance

  You can adjust color balance by changing the mixture of red (R), green (G), and blue (B).

• Printing a Whole Page as an Image

  This section explains how to convert a print job to image data using a Windows application, and then print the image using the printer driver. You can print a whole page as an image. This will allow you to get print results that resemble the display image more closely. Since more data has to be processed, printing will take much longer. Use this function if the printed image differs from the display image.

  Black or gray parts will be printed with the four CMYK colors regardless of the settings made in the [Gray reproduction (Text/Line Art):] list on the [Image Adjustments] tab in the [Change User Settings] dialog box.

  This setting overrides the watermark setting.

• Changing the Image Data Process

  Depending on the application, there may be cases where printing takes a long time or colors are not printed correctly. You can change the image data process to solve the problem.

  Since changing the image data processing method may cause printing not to be performed correctly with some applications, you should normally leave this option unselected.

• Printing with Particular CMYK Colors

  Normally full color (CMYK) is used for color printing. You can print using particular CMYK colors.

  These settings are unavailable when black and white printing is specified.

• Emphasizing Bold Type According to the Font Size

  You can emphasize bold type according to the font size.

  This function is not available under Windows 98/Me.

• Changing the Method of Extracting TrueType Fonts

  This is useful for correcting garbled or incorrectly printed characters.

  If you perform [Reduce/Enlarge] together with this function, printed text may be of reduced quality.

• Printing Images Vividly

  By changing the printer properties settings or using special paper, vivid images can be printed.