BUL Computer Tips for Printing

Question index:

• How can I print to the Tektronix Phasor 440 printer
  • from a Mac
  • from Unix
• How can I print to the HP DesignJet 755 CM plotter?
• How do I calibrate colors when printing from a Media Union Mac

The Tektronix Phasor 440 printer is located in the image conversion lab, located next door to the CAEN hotline. Before using the printer, you must first purchase paper. The paper for this printer must be purchased at the CAEN administration office, located on the second floor of the Media Union. The paper costs $5/page. If you want to purchase paper on account, you must have a letter from an authorized signer of the account. This letter may be a standing letter, meaning that you obtain this letter once and leave it at the CAEN office for future purchases. If you do so, make sure that it is explicit in the letter that it is a standing letter.

To print from a Mac:

1. You will need to prepare your printouts on some Mac application, such as Adobe Photoshop. Here are some tips when preparing the output in Photoshop. (can do this from the lab)
   1. The size of the printed page is only 8"x10.4". Make sure that the image size is this size or smaller.
   2. When you select "New" under "File", make sure that your file is in "Grayscale" mode (for grayscale images, obviously) and "Transparent" contents.
   3. If you load up a grayscale TIFF, PICT, or whatever image, make sure you select "Mode" to "Grayscale". This is important, because the default is in color mode, and if there is any resizing done during printing, interpolation will be done incorrectly, resulting in a "pixelated" image.
2. Go to image conversion lab, select the Phasor 440 driver, and in the region "umich-MediaU-Labs" select the MCF Phasor 440 printer.
3. Insert the paper, shiny side up. After putting the paper in the printer, check to see if anything is in the queue. Since the printer normally has no paper in it, if anyone prints accidentally to the queue, it will stay there until paper is inserted. If the green light in the front starts blinking, there is something in the queue. Contact CAEN (conveniently located right next door) to clear the queue, or (no guarantees) switch DIP-switch #1 (located on the back of the printer) for about 5 seconds and then release it. At this point the red status light on the back of the printer should blink at a regular rate and any existing jobs should be de-queued. If something happens and someone prints on your paper, you can take the paper back to CAEN administration (where you bought the paper), and they will replace it with another sheet.
4. When printing (from Photoshop or whatever), from the Print menu, select "Tekcolor" and choose "no color simulation". The default is "simulate screen" or something like that, and will result in a greenish tint to your images. It will take a minute, or even longer sometimes, to print. It's recommended that you insert and print one page at a time.
5. Remember that when printing from a Mac, the machine will automatically gamma correct, so you want to save your images (if you create the images from somewhere else) with a gamma of 1.0. That way, the image will look correct on the screen, and should print correctly also.

Q: How can I print to the HP DesignJet 755 CM plotter?
A: This printer is a 36 inch wide color plotter which produces output which is ideal for poster presentations. To create a poster on this printer using Powerpoint under Windows 95, following these steps:

• Get and install the Windows printer driver for this printer. This file is available in "\\oe800\archives\drivers\Hewlett Packard\pl122en.exe". Set this printer up as a local printer which prints to a file.
• Select the printer's properties, and make the following settings:
  • Paper: set one of the custom page size properties for this printer to portrait mode, 36 inches wide, 58 inches long, and name the page size "PowerPoint Poster". Under "More Options", turn off the "Print page border" option.

    The reasoning behind these numbers is that the printer is 36 inches wide, and PowerPoint can only create 56 inches long slides. A length of 58 inches is used because the printer does not print anything in the first or last inch of the page, so we leave one inch for each border and 56 inches for the actual poster image.

  • PostScript, Advanced: output Level 2 PostScript, no bitmap compression, ASCII data, and no Ctrl-D's before or after the job.
  • Device Options: 3000 KB Available Printer memory, "Normal" print quality and "Automatic" ColorSmart.
• In PowerPoint, set the page size to Landscape mode, 56" wide by 36", long and create your poster within this region. Note that the colors on the printer do not match the colors on the monitor. I found that pure blue comes out a little purple. Using a hue of 160 (where 170 is pure blue, 0 is red, and 255 is the maximum hue) yields a better blue color than pure blue (170).
• When the poster is ready, print it using the printer driver previously installed, which will send the poster to a PostScript file. Be sure to select the custom 36" by 58" page size that you defined when setting up the printer.
• Run the command "lppsif < output.prn > output.ps" from a Unix prompt. This command corrects for and strips out garbage that the Windows PostScript printer driver puts in the file.
• Fetch the resulting file (output.ps) over to one of the Macs in the Media Conversion Lab.
• Use the "DropPS" application on the Mac to send it to the printer. This application is in the Multimedia Utilities group, and the 755CM printer is in the "umich-MediaU-Labs" zone.
• Pay for your output (currently $3.55 per linear foot) at the CAEN office.

After selecting print, choose Options: Print and select ColorSync Color Matching, and also change the Printer Calibration to be for the correct printer.