Hi everyone,
So, I have an xp pro box, intel core duo chip w 2 gigs of ram, paired up with an HP Laser Jet 5si PS printer and using Corel x6. My problem is this: I created a simple gradient composed of 2 pantone colors. When I send it to be printed I enable print seperations and proceed to the advanced button to adjust frequency and angle. Now, no matter what I set these parameters to I always get the same small dot halftone. Regardless of whatever extreme I set the parameters to i.e. frequency 2 angle 2 to say frequency 100 to angle 100, and everything in between I always get the same small halftone pattern print result. The printer I am using is a PS printer according to the configuration print out . FYI, I am using this printers PS specific print driver to print.
HP PRINTER Configuration Page info:
Installed Personalities and Optons:
PCL (199612220)POSCRIPT (19960724)
I have also attempted using CMYK, RGB etc in black and white and multi colors with the same result.
Perhaps there is a setting I have to enable on the physical printer?
Is it possible I may have inadvertently enabled some sort of fixed halftone setting somewhere?
Maybe I just pissed the halftone gods off?
My goal is to achieve larger halftone dots for screen printing purposes. I am also trying to avoid converting the image to a bit map, transforming and tweaking to taste for the purpose of productivity.
I will attempt to print to file and print from ghostscript to see if this helps some how.
Thank you everyone in advance for the help.
It is fairly normal for printers to ignore halftone settings by default, because generally the printer has an optimum halftone generation algorithm which is usually better than can be achieved by a simple frequency / halftone combination.
If there is an override setting, it may be somewhere in the preferences button which is accessible from Corel's general tab alongside the printer selection dropdown.
These screens are printer specific so you will need to hunt around. If you get a screen which has layout and paper/quality tabs, look for the Advanced button and see if there is anything about screens in there. Looking at an adobe PS driver I see a possible setting under Document Options > Printer Features and a possible setting of User Defined which may enable the feature.
I'll have another look in that area and play around a bit. Ty.