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From: Mr John FO Evans on 1 Aug 2010 14:47
I would like to highlight a problem which we have found with laser printer
(Postscript) and similar drivers and ask if anyone has found a solution.

The following comments only apply where there is a different cost/page for
B/W and colour printing.

We print large numbers of magazines etc. on large laser printers. They are
authored in Word, Publisher or Adobe In-Design. We use a printer with a
finisher (collate,staple and fold) to minimise hand-work.

Often the cover page is in colour and the remaining magazine is in B/W. For
economy we wish to print only the cover in colour.

We find that in the majority of documents there is residual colour in the
B/W pages. This arises because the document uses process black (all colours)
or because there are accidental colour inclusions. Finding and removing
these small areas of colour is difficult and time-consuming.

This means that many B/W pages are charged at colour cost/page which is
several times greater than the B/W rate.

Most if not all drivers can be set to print everything in B/W but with
automatic finishing this means that the cover will also be B/W.

What is needed is a driver which can be set to colour on selected pages
only. The only way in which we can currently achieve this is to create
colour jpegs for the cover and B/W jpegs for the remaining pages. These are
then printed from a DTP program which does not introduce further colour.

We find this messy, driver writers please note!!


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From: Mr John FO Evans on 1 Aug 2010 21:39
In article <elmop-6402E0.09022501082010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>,
"Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop(a)nastydesigns.com> wrote:
> What color laser printer are you printing to? There are solutions to
> this, but the printer manufacturer has to offer those solutions.

Currently a Xerox 7400 but we are considering a Sharp replacement. I would
like to go to a single drum printer such as the new HP's or solid ink
printer where there is less premium for small amounts of colour but either
finishing is not available or the whole system is too big for us.

>
> There are also other solutions available outside the printing system
> itself, but that introduces other complications.

Which is where we are at the moment. We do our final print out using Jpegs
loaded into Ovation Pro for windows which has several advantages in this
application as it allows us to largely automate the process.

John

NB The Postscript drivers for the 7400 do allow single color black even when
printing on the colour setting.


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From: Mr John FO Evans on 2 Aug 2010 14:08
In article <elmop-790C4C.17294001082010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>,
"Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop(a)nastydesigns.com> wrote:
>
> The solid ink is not graphic arts quality. You need to stick with
> either the 7400 or one of its big brothers to get GA quality.

Luckily we are not currently looking for best GA quality - this has to be
a low cost system for wide local distribution.

> The 7400 effectively does what you're looking for, right? Sure, it's
> four drums; but they bring the single image together on one blanket, and
> then it's a single transfer from that blanket to the paper. A single
> drum is actually going backwards in technology.

The trouble is that four drums means that a single pixel of color invokes
the cost of running an extra drum, whereas the in the case of the solid ink
and similar systems it only invokes the extra ink! Running even a single
extra drum increases the page cost by a factor of 7 on our current contract.

NB There must be thousands of medium distribution (say 300-1000 copies)
magazines for clubs and churches who would like to add a bit of colour to
their documents at low cost. This seems to me to be a neglected market. For
1000+ copies a commercial printing company would probably be best. Also
commercial printing leads to earlier deadlines and greater cost - a major
problem in our environment, added to which small organisations need a
significant amount of other printing.
>
> > > There are also other solutions available outside the printing system
> > > itself, but that introduces other complications.
> >
> > Which is where we are at the moment. We do our final print out using
> > Jpegs loaded into Ovation Pro for windows which has several advantages >
> > in this application as it allows us to largely automate the process.
>
> yes, well, you don't want that. Truly. You want as much vector and
> type as you can make happen. You don't want to convert vector and type
> to a bitmap of any kind.

This I understand but we currently have no alternative!!! I was surprised
how little the quality suffered. Remember we are printing from voluntary
sources using domestic cameras etc.

>................
>
> Ideally, you'd find a profile of some kind that converts the 100C 100M
> 100Y to 100K. Some of Xerox's higher end printers have that available,
> and you might find some other ICC profiles that you can load into
> Windows to make that happen before the job hits the printer.
>
> Such a profile wouldn't affect other colors.

Yes the Xerox 7400 has this facility but in our environment we still get
the odd colour pixel which our voluntary editors miss and which I have found
from bitter experience can be very difficult and time-consuming to find.

>
>

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From: Wilfried on 2 Aug 2010 11:55
Mr John FO Evans <mijas(a)orpheusmail.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <elmop-790C4C.17294001082010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>,
> "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop(a)nastydesigns.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > There are also other solutions available outside the printing system
> > > > itself, but that introduces other complications.
> > >
> > > Which is where we are at the moment. We do our final print out using
> > > Jpegs loaded into Ovation Pro for windows which has several advantages >
> > > in this application as it allows us to largely automate the process.
> >
> > yes, well, you don't want that. Truly. You want as much vector and
> > type as you can make happen. You don't want to convert vector and type
> > to a bitmap of any kind.
>
> This I understand but we currently have no alternative!!! I was surprised
> how little the quality suffered. Remember we are printing from voluntary
> sources using domestic cameras etc.
>

Hi!
There may be an alternative:
First, print to a pdf file, with different settings for the color pages
and b/w pages, then print the pdf to the physical printer.

For a first trial, I'd recommend the free PDFill writer
(www.pdfill.com). In the advanced print dialogue, you can choose between
"device rgb", "device cmyk" and "device gray".
You can first print the cover in cmyk and then append the other pages in
gray. Then you can print the pdf file to the physical printer.
However I can not test whether this really makes the physical printer
print the grayscale pages in b/w mode.

To automate the process, you could first print into postscript file(s),
then call ghostscript to convert to pdf - with the appropriate color
model setting -, merge the pdfs, and print the merged pdf to the
physical printer. Again, I'm not sure whether the printer would
acknowledge the different color modes, but I think it's worth while
testing and can be better automated than by using the dtp program.


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Wilfried Hennings
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From: Yianni on 2 Aug 2010 22:35
> NB There must be thousands of medium distribution (say 300-1000 copies)
> magazines for clubs and churches who would like to add a bit of colour to
> their documents at low cost. This seems to me to be a neglected market.
> For
> 1000+ copies a commercial printing company would probably be best. Also
> commercial printing leads to earlier deadlines and greater cost - a major
> problem in our environment, added to which small organisations need a
> significant amount of other printing.

Xerox 7400 is a printer with a print life of about 250,000 pages (I have
heard that printing only b/w the same printer would last for about 1,000,000
pages or more).
On the other hand, it isn't cost efective to print b/w pages with a color
printer. Even though the specific printer is more suitable for b/w, it's not
recommended. A b/w printer would reduce the cost at half.

A solid ink printer is very cost effective if you print all day long. If you
use the printer for say half an hour a day, it's also consuming because of
wasted cleaning cycles. But if you use the solid ink printer for 5-6 hours a
day or with no idle interval periods it's good for your needs too.


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