Ryder75

Hello,
This is my first post after lurking for a month or two.

I have a question. I recently got brought on a small screen printing company after a 3 year hiatus from another one. The previous employer would print halftone color separations. I was a part-time artist who never did any of the outputting.

The company I am involved with now, wants to get into printing spot halftones. We have a LaserJet 2015d with the postscript drivers. However, when I try to print, it appears to overwrite my commands and just print it out at the maximum DPI. I have tried changing the settings of everything...LPI, angles, adobe postscript, HP postscript emulator, etc, etc....and NO LUCK.

I feel terrible, because this guy really wants to up his artwork and become a bigger dog in town and I want to give it to him. I have sitting here for three hours printing out the same gradiated (sp) circle!

Any ideas? They would greatly be appreciated! Thank-you!

 

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out da box

Sometimes the printer driver's settings will override the graphics program's print dialogue. You don't have a conflict do you?
Also on my oki-data laser there are 2 different drivers- one is postscript, one is not. Make sure you have the postscript driver for the hp installed and you are using that one.

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Ridgely, Operations Mngr. Out Da Box
Custom Screenprinting Service Greensboro

 

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Ryder75

Quote: Originally Posted by out da box Sometimes the printer driver's settings will override the graphics program's print dialogue. You don't have a conflict do you? Also on my oki-data laser there are 2 different drivers- one is postscript, one is not. Make sure you have the postscript driver for the hp installed and you are using that one.

I do have the option of selecting the postscript driver and have selected that one, however, I do not know if I have a conflict. If I did, how would I know and how could I fix it?

Thanks.

 

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out da box

I'm not familiar with the hp printer dialogue... you're not gonna like this- trial and error. Or look for some support on the hp website.

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Ridgely, Operations Mngr. Out Da Box
Custom Screenprinting Service Greensboro

 

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Ryder75

Quote: Originally Posted by ImageIt To start out with, you need to determine you are using the correct driver. The easiest way i know to do it is to select "print to file" in the print dialog, when asked what file to write, enter "c:\trash.txt" (without the quotes). Once the file is written, right click and select "open with", then under that, "notepad". If you are using a postscript driver, you should see something similar to what is below. In postscript "%%" is a comment line. If the file is HP/PCL, it will look nothing like this. %!PS-Adobe-3.0 %%Title: T-Shirt Forums - Reply to T... %%Creator: PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2 %%CreationDate: 10/9/2008 17:54:11 Once you are sure you are printing in postscript, go though the driver and look for something that says print b&w. Often without the B&W option selected, printers prefer to print a pseudo grayscale. While it looks nice, it is not a halftone. Check the printer and drivers setting that toner saving is OFF and edge smoothing is OFF. fred

Ok. I did what you suggested and came up with this:

"%%CreationDate: 10/14/2008 15:44:36
%%For: Dan
%%BoundingBox: (atend)
%%Pages: (atend)
%%PageOrder: (atend)
%%DocumentNeededResources: (atend)
%%DocumentSuppliedResources: (atend)
%%DocumentData: Clean7Bit
%%TargetDevice: (HP LaserJet P2015 Series) (3011.001) 1
%%LanguageLevel: 3
%%HiResBoundingBox: -27.6135 105.0074 980.3865 717.0074
%%CropBox: -27.6135 105.0074 980.3865 717.0074
%ADO_BeginApplicationHeaderComments
%%Creator: Adobe Illustrator(R) 13.0
%%For: Dan
%%LanguageLevel: 3
%ADO_EndApplicationHeaderComments
%%DocumentProcessColors: (atend)
%%DocumentCustomColors: (atend)
%ADOBeginClientInjection: DocumentHeader "AI11"
%ADO_BuildNumber: Adobe Illustrator(R) 13.0.2 x434 R agm 4.4379 ct 5.1039
%ADOEndClientInjection: DocumentHeader "AI11"
%%EndComments
%%BeginDefaults
%ADO_BeginApplicationDefaultsComments
%%ViewingOrientation: 0 1 -1 0
%ADO_EndApplicationDefaultsComments
%%ViewingOrientation: 0 1 -1 0
%%EndDefaults"

So, it appears I am using the correct driver, the toner saver is OFF, but I cannot find a B&W option or an edge smoothing option. Still no luck.

Is it really this hard to set a printer up to print halftones? I was pretty naive. Thought you just bought the printer, installed the driver and messed around with the dots until you found a medium that made the screenprinter happy!

Thanks for all the help. I hope I can get this resolved. I feel like an idiot, not being able to produce the separations for the owner...

 

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