laser jet vs inkjet prints

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I would like to know if a black and white laser jet will give suitable black and white prints especially in comparison to color inject printers. Both cost about the same now but no one seems to be suggesting laser jets for black and white prints.

-- ron vallario (rdvallario@aol.com), January 12, 1999

Answers

Most lasejet printers (desktop) are either 300 or 600 DPI and come with software that creates greytones with a fairly coarse screen (about 80 lines per inch) This is similar to reproduction quality of a b/w photo in a newspaper. Higher end (and very expensive) laser printers now can print 1200 dpi and have software that lets you control the screen size and get very good results...similar to offset printing at 150 lines per inch screen.

-- Stephen Cifka (scifka@hotmail.com), January 13, 1999.

Most lasejet printers (desktop) are either 300 or 600 DPI and come with software that creates greytones with a fairly coarse screen (about 80 lines per inch) This is similar to reproduction quality of a b/w photo in a newspaper. Higher end (and very expensive) laser printers now can print 1200 dpi and have software that lets you control the screen size and get very good results...similar to offset printing at 150 lines per inch screen. Inkjet printers are about 1200-1400 dpi and use error diffusion to create grey tones.

-- Stephen Cifka (scifka@hotmail.com), January 13, 1999.

There is more to this than print resolution, line screen, and dpi. Under the best of conditions one pass can only give you 256 shades of gray. Frequently, as the line screen increases, the number of shades of gray decrease. To solve this problem printers use two passes with black and another dark color - duotone. This gives 256 x 256 shades of gray under optimum conditions. Again as line screen increases, the number of shades decreases. Then their are tritones and quadtones. Same principal. However, using quad tones each ink is given a density range. One being black, the others being shades of gray. This gives a whole BUNCH of shades of gray but requires four passes. Some color printers can be modified with software to make these four passes with these four shades of black. This produces most excellent b&w fine art prints. There is some discussion of this in the Photoshop manuals.

To answer your question, neither will work satisfactory as a b&w printer. . .unless you are an amateur and very easily pleased. If you must choose one, then by all means choose a color laser jet such as the Epson Photo Ex. At least it won't look like a newspaper print!!!!! Might I suggest you try the missupply.com site. They mention a few printers that can use quad tones. They supply the ink.

Steve

-- Steve Bingham (sbingham@netzone.com), January 17, 1999.


Hi, Actually, the Epson Photo Ex is a superb Inkjet printer! It's not a laser printer. It can give excellent results, up to 1400 dpi with either B&W or color. It has been replaced by the Epson 900 and 1200 so you could get a good buy on it! Howard

-- Howard (hposner1@swarthmore.edu), April 20, 1999.

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