I have a Lexmark Z51 ink jet printer and a fairly new computer, Windows XP home and Microsoft office 2003.
I have a logo that I use for my band that’s mostly black. When I print the logo from Microsoft Word though it looks black on the screen it comes out looking navy blue or really dark purple. I thought it was a printer issue so I got a new black cartridge and a new color cartridge. Same result.
Then I created a CD cover using Fellows Media Face II Software and the logo was black like it is supposed to be.
I regularly print promotional stuff that I’ve created in Microsoft Word that includes color pictures of the band members. The pictures always look purplish.
I tried printing the same pictures from Adobe Photoshop and they still looked purplish.
So now I’m not sure if my color issues are the printer, the software or both.
The pictures I’m talking about are all in .tif format while the logo is a .jpg Everything looks like it should on the screen.
Any ideas, dopers, on how to fix my color printing issues without purchasing a new printer?
Just speculation here, would have to see the logo file to come to any further conclusions. Do you have someplace you can post it?
Here’s the key thing that we need to know here that I am ignorant on: How does the printer decide when to squirt from its black cartridge vs. some combination of the other three? If the color you see as black is not truly #000000 then the printer is probably trying to print it with the colors, and you may get something that doesn’t look as black as you want.
I think TIF is either uncompressed or lossless compression, while JPG is lossy compression. That leaves the possibility that a JPG conversion might turn your black into something that’s not quite black ditigally, even if it looks black on your screen.
There could also be calibration issues with your monitor, the printer, or both. I don’t know how to take you further down that path, although you should check your printer’s manual/help screens/configuration utilities.
You need to convert your logo to CMYK mode. If you made it using Photoshop or most other raster graphics programs, it’ll be in RGB color mode, which is slightly different in color when printed out. If you are just messing around and it isn’t vitally important, just switching to CMYK mode and then adjusting the colors to what you want should be fine, but if you are planning to professionally produce things in print, you should also develop a Pantone color palette.
I should probably explain this further, but I was excited at getting a crack at this. laughs Your printer has four inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (k), which makes CMYK. RGB is red, green, blue. If you print in RGB, the printer has to compensate and try to approximate those colors. However, if the picture is already in CMYK, then it can exactly print that amount of color because the image and printer are using the same colors.
Adobe Illustrator is one program that automatically creates things in CMYK, which is why it is great for print.
The reason why your second attempt worked out so well was probably because it was created in CMYK off the bat.
My Lexmark Z43 (and assume the same for most printers), requires an alignment test after installing any new cartridge. You get a printout of several different parameters, and after checking for the optimum of each, you set that in the on-screen dialog box. This adjusts for both b&w and color.
Open your Lexmark Control Program, go to Cartridges, and Align, and follow directions.
This may not be the solution to the problem, but it might, so go ahead and try it if you have not done that before.
Thanks for your answers. One thing that I forgot to mention is that when I change the photos to greyscale (in photoshop) and then insert them in the document and print they come out purple or lavender, not grey.
I always align my cartridges when I put in a new one and I frequently run the cleaning program when my pics start coming out poor quality.
I don’t know how the logo was designed but I do have it in several formats including BMP. Maybe I’ll try that and see what happens. I can always contact the designer and ask her about it.
The CMYK vs RGB thing sounds like it might be the answer.