PMView 2000/Lexmark Z51/OS2 prints bluish - Printing from PMView 2000 in OS2 Options

[Guest_Russell Kneebone_*]

Pictures taken on a Canon A70 (3.2 MP - 2048 x 1536) sent to Lexmark Z51 with resolution 600dpi and customer size set to 4608 x 6144 print fine on Letter paper, but same pictures printed with resolution set to 1200dpi print very blue. Not sure whether this is Lexmark driver issue, OS/2 bitmap size issue, PMView 200 issue or mixture.

Same pictures printed "Fit resolution" (i.e. crossways on Letter paper - 4096 x 3072?) print fine in either 600dpi and 1200dpi; actually there is no discernible difference in the output!

Has anyone else come across this issue?

Regards,
Russell

[Peter]

This could be either a printer driver or an OS2.INI driver setting issue.

The first and easiest thing to try is to erase the PMView-specific settings for the printer. For PMView 2000 and older versions you'll need IniMaint or UniMaint to delete the "PMView 2.0" application "Printer/" settings from OS2.INI. PMView Pro makes this easier with an undocumented feature; just right click on the "Print" button and select "Reset".

If this does not help, then uninstall and reinstall the printer driver. Also make sure to check the IBM Device Driver repository for a newer version of the printer driver.

Thanks,



Edited By Peter on 1056929993

[rkneebon]

Actually it seems to be a Lexmark driver issue.

For some reason the color output in 600dpi stays the same no matter the choice of paper, but at 1200dpi there is a pronounced shift to blue if you choose Glossy/Photo. I hadn't been using the glossy paper for the "fit resolution" tests until after I posted and found that the Glossy/1200 combination affected the smaller prints as well. Will try other paper types/settings and report back.

By the way, the output at 600dpi is excellent! Slightly soft, being from a dithered 200dpi print I guess, but there is still more detail visible from this 8x10 size print than from the smaller 5x7. People at work asked me if I had a special printer!

Regards,
Russell

[rkneebon]

Appears that the coated paper choice along with 1200dpi also turns blue. So far only plain paper and 1200dpi combination gives faithful colors. This combination works well on Matte Kodak photo paper, but with a lower-resolution image like the 3MP pictures I used, the 1200dpi output cannot be distinguished from the 600dpi output.

Will swap to drivers from ftp site and try again at some stage, and if I can get the right colors will try a scanned 1200dpi image as a test.

This is of course nothing to do with PMView, all Lexmark driver issues.

As an aside, when PMViews print an image set to custom size based on pixel width (in the examples above width 4608 - three times the original) what does the dithering/interpolation PMView or the printer driver? And why does setting the printer to 1200dpi not halve the size of the output? Does the printer driver further interpolate from 600dpi to 1200dpi? If I set the printer to 1200dpi and then choose a custom size of 9216, will it think I need 4 pages instead of 9216/1200 approx. 7.7" x 10.2" size.

Regards,
Russell

[Peter]

The printer driver does all the dithering and interpolation.

Normally, if you specify the image size in pixels, doubling the resolution should make the image print at half the width&height. However, this only applies if the presentation space coordinates are mapped to the printer hardware. (This is the case with most printer drivers).

Your printer driver obviously uses a virtual presentation space where the coordinates are not mapped to the hardware. Because of this, changing the printer resolution does not affect the coordinates and the printed size. (From what I've seen, Postscript drivers often do virtual mapping like this).

Does your printer give you the option of using either a PCL or a PostScript driver? In this case, try the PCL driver - it will most likely give you native mapping to the printer.

Thanks,



Edited By Peter on 1057156874

[rkneebon]

Thanks Peter,

I'm not actually worried by the "resolution independence" of the size of the print, it is actually quite convenient to use a 600dpi "canvas" to size the image on. I just was curious how PMView knew to do that, since the representation of the size of the image on the paper doesn't change when I change the output dpi via the setup button. Or does it always calculate based on the default settings for the printer (which I have left at Normal 600)? Maybe I will change the default setting and see how the paper preview reacts.

In any case the size of the actual output matches its representation in the preview which is the best behavior available, as long as I am in fact getting 1200dpi dithering from the printer.

I will need a new photo cartridge soon if I test any more variables.

Thanks,
Russell

[rkneebon]

Changing the default job properties of the driver to "High 1200dpi" resets the co-ordinates in the print preview pane to be based on a 1200 dpi canvas as expected.

The very blue output has been solved by changing the driver to the one on the ftp site (despite older dates). However the output is still blue-tinged. Is there are way to mess with the RGB settings on output only, either in the OS/2 printer driver or within PMView?

I see settings for Natural Color vs. Vivid Color on the color tab in the Lexmark driver, and also brightness and contrast settings but not an RGB-type set of sliders.

Cheers,
Russell