Problem printing barcodes
Bruce Barnett
as part of a store coupon.
Trouble is, the Mac is blurring the bars, and the barcode reader
is having problems reading the printout.
I'm using barcodemill.com to generate barcodes. An example is
<img src='http://www.barcodemill.com/cgi-bin/barcodemill/bcmill.pl?symbol=9&content=000011_061B__000010&bcflag=1'>
When I print out the barcode on a laser printer (HP2015DN), I get
jagged/fuzzy lines. You may need a magnifying glass to see them, but
they are there. I can also zoom in using Preview, and see a gray
line between the black and white. The gray is not part of the GIF file.
I've tried three different printer driver print image quality options
(600DPI, FastRes, ProRes1200), and they all have the problem.
I've tried Camino, Firefox, and Safari, and all have the same problem.
On a Linux or Windows machine, to the same printer, I do not have this
problem. The barcodes are extremely smooth. I've also used a ink-jet
printer on the Mac, and this also works fine.
I also tried saving the output of the barcodemill web site as a GIF
image, and printing that alone.
iPhoto blurs the lines when I print the GIF.
Photoshop does not.
Is there any way I can prevent this from happening? In particular, I
want someone with a Macintosh web browser to print a non-blurry
barcode. And if they can't do it with the browser, I want to give
them instructions on how to print out a barcode that will work 100% of
the time.
Is this problem related just to my HP laser printer?
Anyone else see this?
--
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Wayne C. Morris
Bruce Barnett <spamhater133+...@grymoire.com> wrote:
> I'm working on an application where a web browser will print barcodes
> as part of a store coupon.
[...]
> When I print out the barcode on a laser printer (HP2015DN), I get
> jagged/fuzzy lines. You may need a magnifying glass to see them, but
> they are there. I can also zoom in using Preview, and see a gray
> line between the black and white. The gray is not part of the GIF file.
>
> I've tried three different printer driver print image quality options
> (600DPI, FastRes, ProRes1200), and they all have the problem.
>
> I've tried Camino, Firefox, and Safari, and all have the same problem.
It prints in crisp black & white on my HP 5MP from Safari, Firefox, and
GraphicConverter.
Here are some ideas that may or may not help:
- Try converting the image from greyscale to bitmap (B&W).
- Check the ColorSync options in the Print dialog. (Mine is set for
Color Conversion: Standard and Quartz Filter: None.)
- Before printing, go into Page Setup and change the Scale to 96%. That
will shrink the barcode a bit, changing it from 72 to 75 DPI; laser
printers have resolutions that are multiples of 75.
- Test your "fuzzy" barcodes with various barcode scanners. Maybe
you'll find that the grey edges don't affect the accuracy.
Bruce Barnett
[snip]
Thanks, Wayne! I'll try your suggestions out and report back which works.
Bruce Barnett
>> I've tried Camino, Firefox, and Safari, and all have the same problem.
>
> It prints in crisp black & white on my HP 5MP from Safari, Firefox, and
> GraphicConverter.
To double check - Have you examined the output under a magnifying lens?
I can see the difference with the naked eye, but I didn't notice this
at first.
Here is a photograph of the results I get printing a barcode below
using my HP 2015DN printer. I used a lab quality microsccope at a low power.
Results:
http://www.grymoire.com/BadBarcode.JPG - using MacOS
http://www.grymoire.com/GoodBarcode.JPG - Same printer & browser, different OS
The bluish tinge is caused by the scope and lighting
> Here are some ideas that may or may not help:
>
> - Try converting the image from greyscale to bitmap (B&W).
I used Photoshop to convert it into greyscale, and then a TIFF
file. Would that work? It's still fuzzy when printed.
I haven't tried GraphicConverter.
> - Check the ColorSync options in the Print dialog. (Mine is set for
> Color Conversion: Standard and Quartz Filter: None.)
I tried this as well - no luck.
> - Before printing, go into Page Setup and change the Scale to 96%. That
> will shrink the barcode a bit, changing it from 72 to 75 DPI; laser
> printers have resolutions that are multiples of 75.
This also didn't help. But I think some other value might.
I have been measuring the width of the barcode, and I get different results.
Mac/Safari = 2.33 inches
Windows = 2.20 inches
Mac/Photoshop = 2.94 inches
So I might be able to find the right value that fixes this.
> - Test your "fuzzy" barcodes with various barcode scanners. Maybe
> you'll find that the grey edges don't affect the accuracy.
I can get the barcode scanner to work, but it takes a bit of
practice. I have to move the scanner about two inches away from the
printout.
I'd assume there some sort of bug in the HP2015 MacOS driver.
There are two things that bother me about this:
1) When I zoom in on the *.gif file using Preview, I can see a
gray bar between the black and white. I don't understand
how the printer driver can affect the image quality on the
screen.
2) This isn't the first Laser printer HP made. If it's a bug,
do other printers have the same problem? You reported the
HP 5M does not have the problem.
Has anyone tried any different laser printers?
Bruce Barnett
>> http://www.grymoire.com/BadBarcode.JPG - using MacOS
>> http://www.grymoire.com/GoodBarcode.JPG - Same printer & browser, different OS
>
> Those links are broken.
Oops. Sorry.
http://www.grymoire.com/images/BadBarcode.JPG
http://www.grymoire.com/images/GoodBarcode.JPG
>> 1) When I zoom in on the *.gif file using Preview, I can see a
>> gray bar between the black and white. I don't understand how the
>> printer driver can affect the image quality on the screen.
>
> There must be something wrong with the way you downloaded the barcode,
> or with what you did to it after downloading it.
I used Photoshop to examine the image pixel by pixel. It was sharp and
straight. I used iPhoto to examine the same *.gif file and saw the
gray bars. I also used both Tiger and Leopard, to see if this
would be a problem.
I found this problem by having a HTML file and images on a USB drive.
I plugged it into different operating systems, and used the browser to
open up the *.html file. One of the barcode images was live from the
barcodemill web site. A second was a copy on the USB drive.
The problem was the same.
That should eliminate download/conversion errors.
Very strange error.