Pink Chalk Studio » Blog Archive » Can You Read Me Now

Can You Read Me Now

Apr 29th, 2008 by Kathy

I recently conquered my laser jet printer woes and I’m so darn excited about it I wanted to share what I did.

I self-print my pattern instruction booklets on an HP Color LaserJet 2550. My booklets are all black and white. When I first started doing this I tried switching the setting to ‘Print in Grayscale’. The print quality was awful (the blacks were sort of light splotchy black, not crisp and saturated). I left it on the default color setting to get the quality.

In one year’s time I’ve gone through more toner cartridges than I care to reflect on (tax time forced the issue!) The problem is I’m having to replace the 3 color cartridges along with the black. Since I’m not printing much color at all I went on a fact finding mission to figure out why I’m using so much toner.

Let’s just put the ink cartridge “scam-a-ram-a conspiracy by all large printing companies” to the side for a moment. Believe me, I know it’s happening, there’s no way in H-E-double-toothpick that I’ve printed that many pages and used that much toner contrary to what the machine sensors claim.

I called HP to discuss my issue. “I like the print quality A LOT, I just don’t like the cost of the toner cartridges, what can you recommend?” The sales person was extremely helpful. Hint: I called the sales line to ask my questions in the context of selecting a new printer, not the technical support line.

She told me that even though my document was black and white, since I had it on the color setting I was getting some CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) spit out along with the K (black) to produce such a lovely, crisp document. She suggested that I switch to ‘Print in Grayscale’ but modify some of the other settings under Document Options and Printer Features. Oh yeah, the ones with names that I have no idea what they do.

I implemented the advice and guess what? I was able to produce the same quality in ‘Print in Grayscale’. Yippeee! Yes, I live a very simple life and this made me extremely happy! I haven’t been printing this way long enough to have conclusive results about my color toner cartridges but those little lights have been on for over a month so they don’t appear to be part of the usage equation.

These are the settings I changed for my printer (while not universal, most laserjet printers have some form of these options):

- Printer Properties / Advanced / Document Options: Color Printing Mode set to ‘Monochrome’

- Printer Properties / Advanced / Printer Features: Print All Text as Black set to ‘Enabled’.

- Printer Properties / Advanced / Printer Features: Raster Compression set to ‘Best Quality’.

- Printer Properties / Color / Color Options set to ‘Print in Grayscale’.

The Print All Text as Black resulted in a nice saturation of all my text, especially the bold headings. The Raster Compression, really a quality setting, produced clear line detail for the illustrations.

We operate a second, lower end black and white printer, an HP LaserJet P2015. I was able to improve it’s print quality by changing the following:

- Printer Properties / Advanced / Document Options / Printer Features: Print All Text as Black set to ‘Enabled’.

- Printer Properties / Paper/Quality / Print Quality: Set to ‘ProRes 1200 (180 lpi), the highest quality print setting.

Happy Printing!

Posted in Craftiness | 18 Comments

18 Responses to “Can You Read Me Now”

on 29 Apr 2008 at 7:55 am1adrienne

Ok, if you want me to read your entries, post the picture LAST! I’m at my mom’s house and even she is saying how beautiful it is!!! LOL
on 29 Apr 2008 at 8:08 am2Administrator

This one’s a boring entry Adrienne, you’re not missing anything!
on 29 Apr 2008 at 9:29 am3Pam

I found the information quite helpful. If you aren’t printing lots of items I could see how it might be less exciting than some posts. The picture really is beautiful!
on 29 Apr 2008 at 10:28 am4Amber

Thank you SO much Kathy!! I’ve found myself really irritated by all the ink we go through. And to top it off, now Costco just stopped stocking the ones we use (my printer isn’t that old!!). I’ll try and see if I can program mine like this too. Thanks so much for posting this!
on 29 Apr 2008 at 12:45 pm5Sassenach

Thanks, Kathy. We’re all a little smarter now.
on 29 Apr 2008 at 2:46 pm6Jen Eskridge

Great tip. Printer inks are my husband’s pet peeve. This is a great tip, thanks. Sorry it took a year… Just think how good it will be next tax time when you are so happy to reflect how many you did NOT have to purchase. ~jen~
on 29 Apr 2008 at 4:59 pm7Lisa

When I called the HP technical support line the man barely spoke English, kept putting me on hold and kept asking me to find parts of my printer/scanner/faxer that did not exist. I finally asked where he was located. India. What a futile waste of time. I finally told him so, as politely as I could manage. Will have to remember that about calling the sales line instead!
on 29 Apr 2008 at 5:25 pm8sally

So informative!! Thanks!
on 30 Apr 2008 at 12:35 pm9Kim

My only advice I have for this issue is buy a laser jet printer that uses toner and on the few times you really, really, really need to print in color, go to Kinkos.
I have, however, saved your instructions for the people in my life who need them!
Beautiful pictures!
on 30 Apr 2008 at 12:54 pm10Tiffany

Thank you Kathy! What a helpful post, I’m glad I got a chance to look at your blog today!
Tiffany
on 30 Apr 2008 at 2:30 pm11Kelly

I have the same printer. I use it for non-crafty work but do print a lot of b&w reports, etc. I’ll have to remember this-I’m sure it will save me…Thanks!
on 01 May 2008 at 1:42 am12Alicia88

I had just the same problemos.
After reading your post - it’s solved.
Thank you
on 01 May 2008 at 3:33 am13kelly

i try to always remember to use the grayscale settings, it really does help. now ifmy kids would just play along. thanks for the other hints too. i am going to print those out and put them on my
printer. great info. my hp just died. the fuser went out and of course, it is way cheaper to buy a new laserjet than to buy a fuser.
it amazes me that toner cost as much as just buying the darn printer.

i am withyou….i live a simple life.

peace.
on 01 May 2008 at 6:54 am14Administrator

I’m glad this info helped. Printers have definitely become all about the ink replacement and not about the cost of the printer itself. I remember paying $1,000 for our first HP laser jet printer almost 20 years ago. That printer ran for years and years and the toner only seemed to run out every 18 months!

As for the kids, both our printers are network accessible from any computer in the house. I changed the default settings for every computer in the ‘Printers and Faxes’ window so the printer comes up in the B&W mode, if you want to print color you need to override and set the color options in the Printer Properties for each document before printing.
on 01 May 2008 at 12:25 pm15Jean C.

Kathy, my SIL works for a firm as a computer tech… one other thing you might want to know; that when you get the msg. that says that your ink cart. is low… take it out and shake it really hard/both color/blk&wh and put them back. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve managed to make them last sooo much longer. My SIL mentioned that 9 outta 10 times when people go to replace/refill cart. they are still at least a third or more full, so if your refilling your paying to refill all the way and not getting your money’s worth. Also if you throw out the old w/out shaking your lossing out on a lot of ink!
on 02 May 2008 at 5:35 am16Minka

Thank you! My solutions was to buy a black and white laser printer but, I’m saving your directions because I still have the color printer! The price of ink is clearly where they decided to make their money — my color printer only add $10 to the cost of my computer!
on 02 May 2008 at 6:50 am17Administrator

OK, I’m definitely going to be shaking my toner cartridges before recycling. Thank you Jean!

Minka, that’s how I ended up buying the 2015! it didn’t print very well on the default settings and I almost returned it. After talking with the sales line I started tweaking everything on both machines and came up with the magical settings.
on 04 May 2008 at 11:20 am18susan

i know what you mean about the cartridge scam…when three cartrideges cost more than a new printer you know something is amiss. i notice thou, some are coming down in price. i have a cannon ink jet and they use three color and i black…so i change when each one is in need plus at wal mart, they are like $14 a piece…now that i think of that, when you add it up…oh well…nice blog by the way. if you stop by mine and leave a comment you are sign up for a drawing to win some of my handdyed fabric.