Printing from XDP X9 - resolution issues

[gdavidson]

Hi!

It's been a long time since I have had to ask for help

I've got an old problem coming back to haunt me - uncertainties regards printing resolution.

I'm using XDP X9 to print some large and very high resolution prints (70Mpix upwards) with text titles/copyright beneath and on the image itself. Ideally, I'm aiming for the native resolution of the printer which is 720ppi - yes... I'm intentionally going for magnifying glass territory!

Unfortunately, the printed photos coming from Xara looked soft and under a magnifying glass, it was clearly evident that the raster sent to the printer was well below native resolution and looked like 200ppi. Text was pin sharp as would be expected.

From distant past experience, I suspect Xara often treats the photo as being under the influence of a transparency and subject to the transparency setting in Print options>output. Xara was automatically choosing 200dpi and the printed bitmap looked that way too.

Aha! Lets take manual control of the transparency resolution and set it to 720. Okay... 600 is as high as it goes, so I went with that.

However, when printing I noticed a thin black line (with little interruptions here and there) on the left and bottom edge of the bitmap photo. There are actually two identical images on the same page and the interruptions on the black lines were identical on both images on the same printed page.

It also shows up in the printer driver's print preview (Epson 3800 with latest drivers)

The only way I can work around the issue is to select to print as bitmap within Xara's Print options panel. However, that can bring other problems with printers that apply a clear coat on unprinted areas within a photo... (I had a thread running on that subject on 2006!)

To rule out a driver issue, I get the same interrupted line on only one edge if I print to the Microsoft XPS document writer.

I appreciate my use of Xara is perhaps a little unusual but has anyone else noticed spurious black lines around the edge of bitmaps when forcing the "print options" transparency setting to 600dpi?

Also, I'm curious as to why bitmaps become subject to transparency resolution limitations when text is introduced to an image layout.

Cheers!

[mwenz]

Have you tried outputting to PDF, changing the downsampling to off, then printing the PDF?

[gdavidson]

Have you tried outputting to PDF, changing the downsampling to off, then printing the PDF?

Interestingly I had been trying that earlier but was getting PDF files that were blank when loaded in Acrobat. Suspecting I was getting into other issues, I abandoned that route!

However, having tried it again I am able to export PDFs that are working and at high resolution without the artefact lines. Strange.

Thanks for the suggestion. If you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have tried PDF again for a while!

It would be handy to print straight from Xara though

[mwenz]

I almost never print direct from any application. One exception is usually just for quick proofing. For one, I can check for artifacts like you experienced. For another, it is more predictable from Acrobat to printing "on the fly" from an application. If it looks good in the PDF, chances are the printer (if it is capable of the detail) will produce a good quality print.

[gdavidson]

I almost never print direct from any application. One exception is usually just for quick proofing. For one, I can check for artifacts like you experienced. For another, it is more predictable from Acrobat to printing "on the fly" from an application. If it looks good in the PDF, chances are the printer (if it is capable of the detail) will produce a good quality print.

Indeed - with so many different printer interfaces in applications and options within printer drivers themselves, the combination of things that can go wrong are considerable.

[Shakirov]

gdavidson,
try to experiment with these settings: