BW prints on monochrome laser printer

[antoine_morin]

I realize that a laser printer can't yield prints that approach what

can be obtained with a inkjet printer.

 

But how can I maximize the quality I can get out of, say a LaserJet

IV, on plain paper?

 

All my attempts with Photoshop have been rather disappointing, and I

thought that my printer could simply not deliver anything reasonably

good. Sharpness was ok, but banding was bad. It seemed that I never

hit a combination of settings that would yield nice tone gradations.

And contrast typically sucked.

 

Then, I printed almost by mistake through FotoAlbum using its default

settings (FotoAlbum is the software that one can use to manage and

uopload photos to the fototime.com service). The quality of the

monochrome laser prints I got was MUCH better than what I was ever

able to get through PhotoShop. Obviously, the default settings of

that software (or the special drivers it uses, I do not know) work

quite well with my monochrome laser printer. It is not as good as an

inkjet print, but for a couple of cents per letter size print, it is

useful to me. So, after all, my printer can yield better BW photos

than I thought.

 

Now, I'd like to get that level of quality (or better?) through

Photoshop. Say I start with a color Jpg from a D70 in PhotoShop. What

do you think are the best settings to use to get a bw print from a

laser printer? Is there a way to softproof the output of a monochrome

laser printer? (I do that using ICC profiles for my color inkjet).

[jack paradise]

Laser printer have been used sucessfully in the media industry for proofing b&w prints. Emphazise on "proofing".

 

You'll be better of with an HP 8750 or an Epson 2200 with QTR by Roy Harrington.

[antoine_morin]

After a suggestion I got on the dpreview forum, I played with the screening options in Photoshop, and now can replicate and improve on the results I was getting out of Fototime.

 

My 600dpi laser seems to do well at 150 lpi, 105degree, diamond shape, and lightening the transfer using a single correction point (50 down to 30, or 50 down to 40).

 

 

The result is suprisingly good. When I compare the output of my Laserjet on plain paper to a print on Enhanced matte out of my calibrated R800, I see a bit more blocking in the deep shadows out of the laserjet proof, and of course the plain paper is not quite as bright, but otherwise, from a normal viewing distance, I can hardly tell them apart. This ought to be the cheapest bw proof.