Apple and misleading printer advertisement?
Frederick Y Mah
Okay, so I'm looking at this new Apple Color LaserWriter ad. In it
shows a printout from the Apple and a printout from the HP Color
Laserjet. Guess what, the Apple one looks fine while the HP one looks
worse than an inkjet. Then at the bottom of the page it says the HP
is printing set to "scattered dither" mode. I don't know, but it sounds
like "scattered dither" mode is supposed to make the picture grainy which
it definitely is. Pretty damn misleading to me!
I can't believe these marketing/advertising people do such dumb things.
--
Fred Mah --- fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu
http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
Albert Yan
that's used to create the illusion of more levels of tone than the print engine
is capable of. Dithering is the term applied to this, not to be confused with
halftoning, in which dots of varying sizes are created from the smalles dot the
printer can create. The dots size corresponds to the tone being reproduced.
Fo an example of halftoning, look at any newspaper or magazin and examine the
pictures closely. The term "scatter" is added to the description to indicate
that an additional algorithm called "error diffusion" or "error scattering" is
aplied to spread the difference between the tone level being desired and the
tonelevel actually being reproduced to other pixels in the image to create a
smoother transition between tones.
What I'd be real interested in is a comparison between the printers printing
the same image from the same host and the same application with the same color
management scheme in "Best" mode.
From what I've seen of both the Apple and the HP offerings, the ad seems to
come pretty close to the truth.
Albert
John Marcy
(Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
> Okay, so I'm looking at this new Apple Color LaserWriter ad. ...
Then at the bottom of the page it says the HP
> is printing set to "scattered dither" mode. I don't know, but it sounds
> like "scattered dither" mode is supposed to make the picture grainy which
> it definitely is. Pretty damn misleading to me!
>
> I can't believe these marketing/advertising people do such dumb things.
ALL color printers dither cyan, megenta, yellow, and sometimes black to
produce an image that resembles true color. If the dither pattern is
regular, then the image will often show banding, moire patterns, or other
artifacts on a photographic image. Scattered or diffusion dither patterns
are the best choice for a photograph.
Apple waited out the first round of the color laser printer battle
until the technology was in place, and the results show. The print engine
in the Apple printer is a newer generation mech from Cannon. Give HP
another 6 months- they'll probably have a printer based on the same
engine.
Bruce Norikane
>>(Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
>>> Okay, so I'm looking at this new Apple Color LaserWriter ad. ...
>>Then at the bottom of the page it says the HP
>>> is printing set to "scattered dither" mode. I don't know, but it sounds
>>> like "scattered dither" mode is supposed to make the picture grainy which
>>> it definitely is. Pretty damn misleading to me!
>>>
>>> I can't believe these marketing/advertising people do such dumb things.
and >jma...@wolfe.net (John Marcy) replies:
>>ALL color printers dither cyan, megenta, yellow, and sometimes black to
>>produce an image that resembles true color. If the dither pattern is
>>regular, then the image will often show banding, moire patterns, or other
>>artifacts on a photographic image. Scattered or diffusion dither patterns
>>are the best choice for a photograph.
>> Apple waited out the first round of the color laser printer battle
>>until the technology was in place, and the results show. The print engine
>>in the Apple printer is a newer generation mech from Cannon. Give HP
>>another 6 months- they'll probably have a printer based on the same
>>engine.
Not all color printers dither. Several technologies allow true continuous
tone output or halftoning. Dye sublimation printers have true continuous
tone, each printer dot can have different densities of the primaries. The
Iris inkjet comes very close to continuous tone by varying the size of each
dot. Some color lasers are continuous tone. The Xerox Majestix and
Canon Color Laser Copier can vary dot size. Most of the desktop color
lasers, Xerox 4900, HP, QMS, dither. I'm not sure about the Tektronix
and the Apple.
HP may not release a printer that matches the Apple for image quality.
HP aims their color printers at business users and has optimized
reliability, speed, operating costs, text quality, paper compatibility, image
stability and other parameters over photographic image quality. In color
lasers there's a definite trade-off between image quality and frequency of
maintenance, ask any Canon CLC owner. Tuning a 600 dpi, contone,
4 pass, laser engine might require much more installation and
maintenance than HP's high standards would allow.
Frederick Y Mah
>In article <3ukbo9$q...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>, fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu
>(Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
>> Okay, so I'm looking at this new Apple Color LaserWriter ad. ...
>Then at the bottom of the page it says the HP
>> is printing set to "scattered dither" mode. I don't know, but it sounds
>> like "scattered dither" mode is supposed to make the picture grainy which
>> it definitely is. Pretty damn misleading to me!
>>
>> I can't believe these marketing/advertising people do such dumb things.
>ALL color printers dither cyan, megenta, yellow, and sometimes black to
>produce an image that resembles true color. If the dither pattern is
>regular, then the image will often show banding, moire patterns, or other
>artifacts on a photographic image. Scattered or diffusion dither patterns
>are the best choice for a photograph.
> Apple waited out the first round of the color laser printer battle
>until the technology was in place, and the results show. The print engine
>in the Apple printer is a newer generation mech from Cannon. Give HP
>another 6 months- they'll probably have a printer based on the same
>engine.
Well I am quite surprised if HP released that printer if it could
only print as well as an Impressionist painting. It is only 300dpi, but
samples from different articles about printers show better output from
the HP. The Apple is 600dpi.
F. Notman
dot and so even at 300 DPI gives VERY good results and smooth shading.
> Apple waited out the first round of the color laser printer battle
>until the technology was in place, and the results show. The print engine
>in the Apple printer is a newer generation mech from Cannon.
this is actually an upgrade of existing printers or an upgraded printer.
One obvious way to improve quality without higher real resolution would be to
vary the dot size (Dye Sub doesn't do this, it varies the ink density within
a dot) as a Laser Printer dot is on or off, desity of print can only be
controlled by changing dot size or varying dot population desity. This is what
is done with HP RET and simillar technologies to give percieved resolution
above real resolution.