Setting Resolution and Dithering Options

Setting Paper Size

Setting Printing Default Properties

Setting the Dither Pattern

To set the dither pattern for Color - Dither From 256 Colors:

To set the dither pattern for Fast Windows Dithering:

Setting the Intensity

Setting Inverse Printing

Capturing and Saving a Log File

Setting Resolution and Dithering Options

To set default resolution for an ImagePRINT driver (and dithering options for converting color images to grey shades with the TIFF driver), use the Windows Control Panel. These options are then available to all applications that you use to print image files. To create exact copies of printed documents, ImagePRINT can emulate your printer. See Creating Exact Copies of Printed Documents

To set resolution and dithering options:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click an ImagePRINT Print Driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
   

   Note: You can also set the resolution and dithering options when printing an image file from an application. In the Print dialog, click the Properties button, then click the Advanced button.

3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Set options for the driver you selected as follows.

   For the TIFF driver, under Resolution, select an option as follows

   True 200 x 200 DPI (Office 97): if you are printing documents from Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, WordPerfect, or Adobe Acrobat, select this option for the best rendering of tables, foreign characters, and other document properties. Note that the image prints at 2% narrower and longer than normal. 21

   Low Fax (204 x 98 DPI): poorer quality, but higher transmission time than High Fax. Note that many applications, such as WordPerfect and Adobe Acrobat require square pixels and the output will not be readable with this option.

   Fine Fax (204 x 198 DPI): Best resolution for conventional fax machines, but causes problems for applications that require square pixels such as WordPerfect and Adobe Acrobat.

   For the TIFF driver, under Image Rendering Options, set Color Mode options as follows

   Color - Error Diffusion Dithering (24-bit):

   • Provides optimal quality for colored images you are converting to black and white.
   • Looks good if printed or converted to a different resolution
   • Provides optimal output for PDF and Powerpoint.

   Monochrome (faster, less memory): Creates a file with no greyscales.

   Color - All Colors to Black: Creates a line art file by replacing colors with black.

   Color - All Colors to White: Creates a line art file by replacing colors with white.

   Color - Dither From 256 Colors: Reduces the image to only five shades. You should use this option when printing AutoCAD drawings. If you select this option, you can set the dither pattern and the intensity.

   Fast Windows Dithering:

   • Creates files quickly
   • Requires minimal memory for conversion. If you select this option, you can set the dither pattern

   For the Color driver, under Resolution, select an option as follows

   600 x 600: Use 600 x 600 dpi when you need fairly high resolution JPEG output from non-fax applications where picture quality is important but you want to save a smaller file.

   1200 x 1200: When you need extremely high resolution output for important documents containing graphics or images and file size is not an issue.

   Low Fax (204 x 98 DPI): poorer quality, but higher transmission time than High Fax. Note that many applications, such as WordPerfect and Adobe Acrobat require square pixels and the output will not be readable with this option.

   Fine Fax (204 x 198 DPI): Best resolution for conventional fax machines, but causes problems for applications that require square pixels such as WordPerfect and Adobe Acrobat.

   For the Color driver, under Image Rendering Options, set JPEG Output Quality as follows

   JPEG Output Quality: The higher the setting, the more detailed the image and the larger the file; the lower the setting, the smaller the file and the less detailed the image. The default is 95; you can set from 1 (least detail, smallest file) to 255 (most detail, largest file).

5. Click OK.

Setting Paper Size

You can change the size of the image that ImagePRINT produces. You can select any page size that is supported by your copy of Windows. Page sizes include:

• Letter: 8.5x11 inches
• Legal: 8.5x14 inches
• A4: 210x297 mm
• A3: 297x420 mm
• B4: 257x364 mm
• Tabloid: 11x17 inches
• Custom defined page sizes up to 40x40 inches

To set the paper size:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
3. Under Paper/Output, click the arrow in the Page Size drop-down list and select a paper size.
   
4. Click OK.
   Note: If you select Low Fax, Fine Fax, or 200x200 dpi for the resolution, page sizes that are close to the sizes supported by standard fax machines are slightly distorted to make them work with these fax machines. Page sizes narrower than 8˝ inches are rounded up to 8˝ inches; page sizes within 10mm of A3 and B4 are rounded to A3 and B4 respectively. Other page sizes may not be in a format that your software can use. Setting

Setting Printing Default Properties

Use the Control Panel to set printing default properties for all applications.

To set default printing properties:

1. From the Start menu, select Settings>Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver, and select Properties.
3. Click the Advanced tab.

   Note: You can tell some applications to reload the printer defaults after they start. Other applications save the defaults when they save a file, and re-use the original settings when you re-open that file; you may have to change the document settings manually inside the application even if you set defaults. This is true of most word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect.

4. Click the Printing Defaults button.
5. Select either Portrait or Landscape orientation.
   

   Note that the ImagePRINT driver changes the page dimensions if you select Landscape (it does not rotate the image).

6. Click the Advanced button to select paper size, resolution and dithering options, intensity, and image printing options.

Setting the Dither Pattern

With the ImagePRINT TIFF driver, you can set the dither pattern if you select one of the following color modes:

• Color - Dither from 256 Colors
• Fast Windows Dithering

When you select a dither pattern, each color pixel in your printout is assigned a gray value. The resulting gray picture is in turn dithered — a pattern of black and white dots is used to approximate the gray shade that is required for that spot. Dithering is always a tradeoff: you need to choose between a closer representation of color, and a more precise image. For images that are going to be sent via FAX, you also need to select a pattern that will transmit quickly. Group 3 compression techniques expand images that consist of alternating turned-on and turned-off pixels; any dither pattern that has alternating black and white pixels transmits more slowly than an uncompressed image.

Note: On the Printing Preferences pages, under Color Mode, you can also select Printer Default; this will use the dither pattern that was set on the Printer Properties page or on the Default Document Properties page in an application.

To set the dither pattern for Color - Dither From 256 Colors:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
3. Under Image Rendering Options, Color Mode, select Color - Dither From 256 Colors.
4. Under Image Rendering Options, click Dither Pattern.
   
5. Select one of the following options

   8x8 (65 shades): The dither pattern is 8 pixels wide by 8 pixels high, and has 65 intensity levels. This is the most accurate representation of the gray scale,

   Setting Printing Preferences but the dither pattern is 1/32 inch across and some colored text may be obscured by the pattern.

   Big 8x8 (65 shades): The dither pattern is 16 pixels wide by 16 high, and has 65 intensity levels. Color representation is good, and because the driver turns blocks of 2x2 pixels on and off as a unit, group 3 compression is good; but the pattern is 1/16 inch across and some detail is obscured.

   Circular 4x4 (17 shades): The dither pattern is 4 pixels high by 4 wide, and has 17 intensity levels. This dither pattern is designed to compress easily using Group 3 techniques, but gives a somewhat “pebbled” appearance.

   4x4 (17 shades): The dither pattern is 4 pixels high by 4 wide, and has 17 intensity levels.

   3x3 (10 shades): The dither pattern is 3 pixels high by 3 wide and has 10 intensity levels.

   Big 2x2 (5 shades): The dither pattern is 4 pixels wide by 4 high and has 5 intensity levels. Because pixels are turned on or off in 2 by 2 blocks, group 3 and group 4 compression are good; this makes for faster transmit times. The dither pattern is 1/50 inch by 1/50 inch. Color accuracy is not the best, since there are only 5 intensity levels.

   2x2 (5 shades): The dither pattern is 2 pixels wide by 2 pixels high, and has 5 intensity levels. We don’t recommend using this dither pattern for faxing; group 3 compression expands instead of compresses an image of this sort. Some fax modems fail to send an image with long strings of alternating light and dark pixels, which this pattern occasionally generates. However, the dither pattern is only 1/100 inch on a side, so positional accuracy is very good.

6. Click OK.

To set the dither pattern for Fast Windows Dithering:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
3. Under Image Rendering Options, Color Mode, select Fast Windows Dithering.
4. Click Windows Dither Pattern and select a pattern.
   

   There are sixteen dither patterns, ranging from a 2x2 pattern (which is reasonably precise but allows for only 5 levels of gray) to a 16x16 pattern (which allows for 257 gray levels but is quite imprecise as to positions). All dither patterns are an even number of pixels on a side; each pattern comes in a Normal and a Modified version. The Modified version is less visually pleasing but seems to transmit faster using a FAX modem or protocol.

5. Click OK.

Setting the Intensity

If you select the Color Mode Color - Dither from 256 Colors, each color pixel in your printout is assigned a gray value. The resulting gray picture is in turn dithered — a pattern of black and white dots is used to approximate the gray shade that is required for that spot. You can select the dither pattern that is used to create the black and white image.

To set the intensity:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
3. Under Image Rendering Options, select Color Mode Color-Dither From 256 Colors or Color - Error Diffusion Dithering.
4. Click Intensity.
   
5. Use the slider to set any value between 0 (darkest) and 100 (lightest).

   In the Darker direction, paler colors are darkened. For example, you can make white text on a yellow background more visible. In the Lighter direction, darker colors are lightened. For example, you can make red text on a black background more visible. For technical reasons, white always appears white, and black always appears black.

6. Click OK.

Setting Inverse Printing

For some applications, it is useful to print the image in inverse mode, so that text that appears white on the screen prints as black.

To print in inverse mode:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings>Control Panel, then select Printers.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT driver and select Printing Preferences (on an NT system, select Document Defaults).
3. Under Image Rendering options, click Image Printing.
   
4. Select one of the following from the drop-down list:

   Black on White: prints text normally; black text on a white background.

   White on Black: prints text reversed; white text on a black background. If the background color in your application is a dark color and the text is white, this option may be necessary to make the text appear properly colored in the receivers’ fax machine.

5. Click OK.

Capturing and Saving a Log File

If you experience problems with the ImagePRINT driver, you can capture and save the contents of the log to a file that you can send to our technical support department.

To capture and save a log file:

1. From the Start menu, select Settings>Printer.
2. Right-click the ImagePRINT TIFF Printer Driver and select Properties. (On Windows NT systems, select Document Defaults).
3. Click the Device Settings tab.
4. Click the button beside Debugging Options to expand the list.
5. Click the Capture Log Info to File option and select Enable from the drop-down list. The log file is saved in c:\temp\faxdll.log - however, you can edit the file name if desired.
   

   Email this file to ImagePRINT technical support at: support@imgPRINT.com

For more information
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