HP Designjet 510 Series Printers - Image appearance options

These topics explain how you can control the overall appearance of your prints:

• Front panel image options explains how to change the HP-GL/2 color palettes.
• Printing images in grayscale describes how to print color images in grayscale.
• Print speeds and print quality lists typical printing times by output quality.
• Print quality describes the different print modes that are available with your printer.
• Advanced options describes the various optimization and quality enhancement methods available.

These topics deal with the ways you can control the overall appearance of your prints from the front panel in terms of:

• Pen widths and colors in the internal palettes
• Changing the treatment of overlapping lines (merge)

Some front-panel selections affect the next file you send from your computer, not pages already in the printer’s queue. If this is the case, it is stated in the relevant topic. Some of the controls are available using the front-panel menus (for example) pen width, pen color, overlapping lines). Print mode options are controlled from the front-panel.

Why use the front panel?

By default, the printer looks to your software to provide information on all the above attributes. However, your driver or application may not provide these controls or you may want to experiment with various effects, or try a temporary change, without the need to change your images or your driver settings. Some of these settings do not affect the output generated when printing from most of the applications under Windows when using a HP-GL/2 driver.

Pen widths and colors in the internal palettes

The "pens" discussed throughout these topics are the conceptual pens in a software palette, rather than the printer’s physical printheads. The printer has three pen palettes:

• Factory
• Palette A
• Palette B

The factory palette cannot be changed. You can, however, change the line width and color settings for each pen in the remaining two palettes (palette A and palette B). Initially, all three palettes are identical. Each palette has 16 pens which can include pens of different widths and any combination of the printer’s predefined 256 colors.

To select a palette

To select a palette through the front-panel menu, go to the Define Palette selection under HP-GL/2 Settings and choose the palette you want. The following table describes the palette choices.

Change the palette settings

You cannot change the Factory palette, but you can define Palettes A and B to be whatever you choose. The defaults are Palette, width:

How to define Palette A

The following steps explain how to define Palette A.

Repeat this procedure to define each of the other pens.

note:

The palette you have just defined will take effect only when you select it to be the current palette, as explained in To select a palette.

Changing the treatment of overlapping lines (merge)

The Merge setting controls the overlapping lines in an image. There are two settings, Off and On. The following illustration shows the effect of each setting.

You can set the merge setting from your software in some applications. Settings in your software override the front-panel settings.

There are times when you may want to print a color image in grayscale because it is faster. Examples of this are:

• You want a draft where color is not important, for example to check that the image is not going to be clipped.
• You want a version for photocopying in black and white.

When you choose the Ink menu Color settings > Grayscale option, the printer renders colors as gray scales. If you want to use only black ink to print in grayscale, you should select the Ink menu Color settings > True black option.

Print speeds and print quality

The following table lists some typical printing times (line drawings @ 20-25ºC and 30-60% relative humidity).

Print quality

You can set the overall print quality from the front panel (Set-Up > Print Quality). In general choose:

• Fast for maximum productivity. Ideal for checking prints, when print quality is not very important. You can increase print speed further with the Fast quality settings.
• Normal to get a good combination of print quality and productivity. Ideal for line drawings with good print quality and speed.
• Best to get high print quality.

You can increase the resolution of the Best setting with the Best quality settings. You can print images in different settings to see which gives the best combination of throughput and quality for your application.

Advanced options

Your printer provides several advanced optimization and quality enhancement features to allow you to obtain the printed results you require.

Improving line quality and graphics details

The Set-up menu Optimize for option allows you to select the correct mode for the type of job you are printing. Two modes are provided: Line drawings/text and Images.

Selecting the Line drawings/text option smooths the fine graduations along the angles and curves of the printed image to refine overall print quality. This enhancement produces:

• Crisper lines
• Finer detail
• Line drawings with a 'sharp' appearance

The Line drawings/text option affects only prints that have color content.

Selecting Line drawings/text (the default setting) ensures you will always get the best quality color prints, except when printing the following files:

• Mixed lines and scanned color images
• Mixed lines and color photographs

For these files it is recommended that you select Optimize for > Images.

Best quality settings

If you have selected the Best option as the Print quality setting for your print session but require an even higher resolution for your print job, you will need to change the Best quality setting. The Best print quality option provides 600×600 dpi resolution in normal mode and 2400×1200 dpi in maximum detail mode.

note:

Using the maximum detail mode will improve resolution but will reduce printing speed and increase memory requirements.

Use the following procedure to select maximum detail mode:

Fast quality settings

If you have selected the Fast option as the Print quality setting for your print session, you can increase the printing speed further by selecting the increased speed mode. This can be done from the front panel only, because it is not available as an option in the printer driver.

Use the following procedure to select increased speed mode: