Map Printing Q

[sleddriver]

Printer: Brother HL-1240
Max Resolution: 600 x 600
Driver: PCL5e
OS: WXP

Problem: Maps from both Goo & Bing look horrible! Very poor graphics quality. I've played a bit with settings, but no joy. Called Brother "tech" support...they were no help..couldn't even explain their drivers Advanced Options! Said "Call Microsoft". Unable to find any FAQ's or help on adjusting print quality on either site. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Here's my options:

Brother PCL5e Driver Advanced Doc Settings
...Graphic
......Print Q: 300 or 600
......True Type Font: Dwnld as Softfont or Sub with device font

...Doc Options
......Advanced Printing Features: Enable or Disabled
......Halftoning: Auto, dither 6x6 or 8x8, super cell
......Print Optimizations: Enable or Disable

...Printer Features
......Toner Save Mode: OFF or ON
......HRC: Default, light, med, dark, off
......Density Adjustment: Default, -6 to +6

Those are my options. Is 600 x 600dpi far too low to print a readable map? Printed text looks great, but graphics are quite poor. I also noticed this problem when attempting to print any PDF's...something weird goes on and they usually come out low-res. So I suspect these two problems are linked.

Not sure what settings above would help. Suggestions?

 

[uc50ic4more]

The maps found on a web page will likely be in the neighbourhood of 75 - 96dpi; as they are simply images. You can print that at whatever resolution you want; sadly, it will not improve upon the source.

You can print absolutely readable and useable maps and readable text at 300dpi; and I have seen 150dpi printing that has surprised me pleasantly.

I *wonder* if first having Google export a pdf for you might get you vector data instead of (low res) raster images: https://support.google.com/mymaps/answer/6091689?hl=en

 

[sleddriver]

Hmmm...surprised the res. is that low. I did note an increase in printed res. when switching from 300 to 600dpi, but it was still poor, very light & barely readable. I get the impression that the driver is sub'g some font that's not continuous or solid to 'draw' or render the lines, words, etc.

Note I've had the same issue with pdf's. Also note the 1240 is quite old. Definitely NOT postscript compatible.

I'll take a few photos of the results and post them here vs. a newer printer at a local library. It's quite amazing...and frustrating.

Thanks for the reply UC!

 

[Quattro Pete]

How exactly are you printing the maps? Straight from a web browser? What is your monitor screen resolution? How large is your output (paper size)?

 

[sleddriver]

Straight from FF, using MAP ONLY.
Screen res: 1680 x 1050
Paper size: Both ltr & lgl.

Thanks for chiming in QP! This one has bugged me for quite sometime.

 

[Rick in PA]

For a quick print of a map, I usually do a Print Screen, open Irfanview (graphics program), paste the web page / map, crop away all the garbage and print just the map to a reasonable size. I don't know if that's what your looking for, but it saves me the aggravation of trying to get a map printed out of Mapquest the way I want.

 

[sleddriver]

Yep..same here. Except I used MS Paint as it gave me a bigger map.

BTW, I printed out a similar area map, at similar mag. at my local library. They use an HP mono-laser that's networked. The output looked excellent! That's what I'm aiming for.

I'll take photos of both and post them here.

 

[sleddriver]

UPDATE:

Finally got around to this....

These two images were clipped from Bing Maps, then printed on a HP laser at my local library. Then I took photos of each outdoors. If my old Brother laser made prints like this, I'd be happy.

In comparison, here's what the Brother looks like. Same (general) area. Ignore the gray shadow. I fussed with my old Canon camera long enough, the Earth turned and now I had a large vague shadow:

Note how washed out it is. Very low contrast, lack of detail. When examined close, it's very, very pixelated. Like the driver didn't correctly choose the right font to use to print with, or the image itself just royally confused it, so it spit out only parts of it.

What's going on here?

 

[Garak]

I thought you were on Linux, weren't you? I have come across a similar problem in Linux and devised a workaround, for HP printers at least.

 

[sleddriver]

This machine is running Wxp.

 

[uc50ic4more]

My best guess(es) are:

1) The latter printer could have a setting for toner saving that was set to ON or to a degree that washed the image out like this.

2) The latter printer could have also a different driver or user setting that handles half-toning differently than the library printer.

Half-toning is basically the process of quantifying any given shade of grey into either BLACK or WHITE; which a black-only laser printer is solely capable of. Half-toning will reconcile greys into either BLACK or nothing OR it may mimic a grey with denser or sparser dots. How this is set by a user and/ or how a given printer model and its driver handles varying grey levels can impact a printed image dramatically.

3) Toner levels.

4) You mentioned this is a "clipped" image from Bing maps, which implies to me that you did NOT print this directly from the browser. It's a long shot; but I wonder if it is an image that you somehow extracted from a Bing web page that you might be using different image viewing applications that might interpret different colours (and shades of grey) differently?

 

[sleddriver]

Thanks for a great, detailed response UC! I appreciate your time. This is one of those things that has bugged me for years with this printer, both for printing maps and pdf docs. They just look lousy, further Brother's 'customer service' and 'instructions' are of little help, with detailed settings such as those posted above and how they affect graphics.

I'll do some experimenting and report back the results.

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
My best guess(es) are:

1) The latter printer could have a setting for toner saving that was set to ON or to a degree that washed the image out like this.

No, toner saving was disabled.
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more

2) The latter printer could have also a different driver or user setting that handles half-toning differently than the library printer.

Half-toning is basically the process of quantifying any given shade of grey into either BLACK or WHITE; which a black-only laser printer is solely capable of. Half-toning will reconcile greys into either BLACK or nothing OR it may mimic a grey with denser or sparser dots. How this is set by a user and/ or how a given printer model and its driver handles varying grey levels can impact a printed image dramatically.
Indeed. However, I'm not sure why the Brother looks so lousy compared to the HP library printer. I think I bought it during the mid-90's?

I did some experiments, adjusting the options listed above and found no joy. It's almost as if they have no function or effect, at all. For example I set density to +6, no change. I set HRC? to dark, nothing. Changed half-tones, nothing. Brother does say that the "PCL" driver is the correct one for this device. The last time it was updated was 2001 though!

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
3) Toner levels.
The cartridge feels full and prints text deep black.
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
4) You mentioned this is a "clipped" image from Bing maps, which implies to me that you did NOT print this directly from the browser. It's a long shot; but I wonder if it is an image that you somehow extracted from a Bing web page that you might be using different image viewing applications that might interpret different colours (and shades of grey) differently?
For the latest tests, I didn't "clip" the image, just selected "print" from the Bing Map page. Same lousy, too-light print as above.

I sent Brother an email and attached the maps shown above. Curious what they'll say.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
[For the latest tests, I didn't "clip" the image, just selected "print" from the Bing Map page. Same lousy, too-light print as above.


OK, here comes a "Hail Mary":

In the dialogue box that appears after you select "Print" on the Bing web page are there any options for the print job?

I have sometimes found that one may set particular defaults for a printer that differ from (presumably saved by the browser) job options for a printer when printing from the browser, as though the browser saved some defaults for itself. I have personally seen pages printed oddly from web pages that had different margins and were scaled (affecting the rasterized text quality negatively) and found the defaults set in the browser's "Print" dialogue to be different from the system-wide defaults I had set.

It might be worth a minute or two of your time to get back to the map, click "Print" and take a moment to poke around the resultant dialogue box. (This advice comes from someone who has not touched an XP system in several years.) I forget if you mentioned which browser you were using; but if it is Chrome it will often use its own print dialogue with an option to use the system's instead.

 

[sleddriver]

1. No options for the print job.

2. Chosing "print" immediately opens the printer dialog window.

3. I did hear back from Brother CS.
Quote:
Thank you for your email. I understand that you are having issue printing with the PCL5e from your HL1240 and I will be happy to assist you regarding this matter.

After careful review of the specifications for the Brother machine, this printer supports the following popular printer emulation mode:

The HL1240 supports HP LaserJet IIP (PCL4) emulation driver.

Thank you again for emailing us. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. We are happy to help.


However, they didn't provide a link to it. Further, when do a model # search, it returns "PCL" as a driver, with no further ID. I installed this driver, which is the same as noted above: PCL5e.

So Brother CS is telling me to install a driver in conflict with their own model search AND is unavailable!!

Ain't CS great these days???? Go figure.....

 

[sleddriver]

Update:

Called Brother support. He said the PCL4 driver wasn't avail. because I was running XP. So I fetched the Alien LT (running WVista sp2). According to Brothers site, Vista already has the correct driver "for basic operation".

Selected the same map area, chose print, the driver was labeled "HL-1240" this time instead of PCL5e. Result? Looked as bad as the other confuser using WXP!!

The tech runs off to do ask someone else....and their phone system hangs up because "the office is now closed...."

Nice....Royal PITA.....

 

[sleddriver]

Update:

Since I've been working on the Optiplex 790 video (see post), I thought I'd see if there was any difference using this W7 confuser with the printer, instead of the other one with Wxp.

I let W7 find the correct driver. Went back to the above section of Bing maps, clicked the printer icon, and the pre-print page looked different this time. Clicked on "Print" and unfortunately, the print quality did not: Same washed out junk.

So now I get the same results with three different confusers, using Wxp, WV and W7. So it's got to be the 20+yr old printer, right? The driver W7 found ID's it as "Brother HL-1240", not PCL5e as before.

Since this is a different confuser, I went back to Brother's site, entered the model number, selected W7-32b, and it told me the W7 included driver was the correct one. So where is the PCL4 driver their tech mentioned earlier??

More confusion.....

I noticed that there is a "color management" tab avail on the printers properties window. Since the maps are in color, I wonder if this setting has something to do with it? It appears the printer driver/SW is attempting to assign a gray scale to each of the maps colors and saturation level, and doing a very poor job of it.

I noticed a similar poor resolution when printing pdf's. Originally I was using Foxit, but the print quality was awful. So I switched to Adobe instead and it looked MUCH better, though still not crisp.

I finally gave up and took some schematic pdf's to a print center and had them do it. Looked great. Deep black, fine details easily readable, etc. Like they should be.

I think it's time for a new printer!