I am trying to get an 85-line halftone out of my HP 932c deskjet (a very cheap printer, but fairly handy). I DO get a halftone screen, but it’s much coarser than I want.
My platform is Windows Me (came with the computer) and I’m using MS Publisher. But I have also tried Adobe PhotoShop, where I go in and tell the printer, very specifically, to use an 85-line screen–and when I print I get the same result. It’s as if there’s a default halftone screen here that I can’t work around.
When I print the photos from MS Word, using gray-scale printing optimized for fax (advanced feature on printer menu) I get a screen that’s very coarse and completely unusable. After photoshopping (that is to say, if I photoshop the pictures first then pull them into the document) it’s the same. It’s a little better in Publisher but not much.
I’m wondering if the printer just will not do this, or if the limitation is in the software somewhere, or if the limitation is in the user (i.e., me). Would appreciate any help.
I can’t give a full-assed reply, so here is my half-assed try. Or maybe 1/3-assed at best. I hope something in here will help you!
Publisher and all the Microsoft products are not friends with the print industry (The smelly print industry with the printing presses) because they are quite limited when it comes to outputting. For example I’ve heard Publisher only outputs at a piddly 72 dpi.
In Photoshop you can change the screens of a picture but they have to be saved as EPS files afterwards.
I’m not sure why it’s printing poorly from Photoshop.
It is printing just the same from Photoshop. That’s why I’m wondering if there’s some built-in limitation in the HP 932c.
OTOH, the whole thing is running under (or on top of?) a Microsoft product.
I tried putting the page into PageMaker and got the same extra-grainy screen as MS Word, when I “optimized for photocopy or fax” and no screen at all when I merely specific gray scale with no optimization.
Would an EPS file be for an Epson printer? I have the option in Photoshop of “printing to disk” and then they come out with a .PRN extension.
First, if your printed copy isn’t the same size in pixels as the screen copy, resize it first, and smooth it a little if necessary. Most printer drivers don’t scale things as well as graphics programs. Make sure Photoshop is working in the same resolution (DPI) as the printer.
Then go to Start/Settings/Printers, right-click on the printer and choose Properties. Browse around there and see if you’ve got a setting for grey-scale. If it’s set for pure black-and-white or for colour, it may lose resolution as it tries to ‘dither’ a fake grey scale. Check the DPI setting as well.