Printed Images are Blurry, but text is clear.

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I am getting blurry printouts of images from my printer. Allow me to explain:

Please see attached test.jpg file.
This file is a scan of some text printed out from a word document (located on the top),
and then the same text applied to an image and then printed out (located on the bottom)
You will notice that the text on top is clear and the text on bottom it blurry and looks like it has a shadow.
The top text looked the same before and after printing, but the bottom text that was in an image became
blurry after printing.

Any help on why this is happening and how to solve it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

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I am getting blurry printouts of images from my printer. Allow me to explain:

This file is a scan of some text printed out from a word document (located on the top),
and then the same text applied to an image and then printed out (located on the bottom)

Printers often have different modes available for printing text and pictures. Have you checked your printer properties to see if you are printing the Picture in draft mode? If you are try changing to a higher quality mode.

Also, what quality did you scan the picture with? Printing can’t add anything to a low quality picture.

Joe

--Joe

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You mean the second line is text converted or grabbed to an image? How did you convert it, and what format was it converted into?

If you used too great a compression in a compressed image conversion (eg .jpg) – or if you make a small image and then zoom it up to make it larger – or if you use a poor image type for converting text to – then you can get pretty poor results.

So can you explain exactly what you did to get the results you got please.

In the attachment (which is a jpg screen grab from a Word document)

Line 1 is text as written
Line 2 is the same line screen grabbed as a jpg and pasted back in
Line 3 is text in a Photo program (MS Photo Draw) saved as a mix (non-compressed) file and pasted in
Line 4 is the same pic from Line3, but saved as a gif and pasted in
Line 5 is the same again but saved as a smaller gif pasted in then zoomed up

Just to show you what variable results you can get. So it can all depend what you want to acheive, what tools you use to do it, and what parameters you use in those tools.

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Sorry for not responding sooner, but I have been busy today (or yesterday rather since it is almost 1am here).

Okay, I don’t think either of you understand, and I don’t blame you.
Lets forget about the attachment from my first post “test.jpg”.

I have attached two files this time which can be seen below:
“before.jpg” (on top) is a picture I drew in good old Paint Brush. (Please no comments on my artistic abilities )
“after.jpg” (on the bottom) is a scan of “before.jpg” after I had printed it out. I scanned it so that you could see what I see on the paper.
For your information:
The photo was printed with the quality setting set to best.
I understand that the photo lost some of its quality through the scanning process.
I can tell from looking at the printout and comparing it to “after.jpg”, that the color or contrast is now lighter.
My concern is the following:
Looking at “before.jpg” you can see that the lines are sharp and thin.
Then look at “after.jpg” and now you can see sort of a doubled or cross eyed
looking blur, causing the lines to look out of “alignment”.
Which I have also followed my printers procedure to align the cartridges many times.

I do not remember changing any print settings in the past other then the print quality,
which I do remember the only difference between “Best”, “Normal”, and “Fast Draft” was
the speed at which it printed and the boldness.

before.jpg:

after.jpg:

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Have you recently changed your OS or printer? If yes to either, perhaps updated drivers for the printer would help solve your issue.

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I have not changed my printer or operating system. I did just get finished reinstalling my printer driver software.
I went to the manufacturers web site hp.com, and made sure I downloaded the latest version.
After following all the installation steps and restarting my computer I had then reprinted before.jpg I also made sure that it printed in the “best” mode.

Unfortunately, my result was exactly the same.

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How does a test page printout look? (From the printer properties.) That may tell you if there is a software or a hardware problem.

Colour printer? What does a printout in (e.g.) red look like?

From looking at your scanned printout, I’m inclined to suspect a clogged or past-its-best printer cartridge.

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I printed a test page which looks nice and sharp.
I then printed a new drawing that I made of a red square frame with a black square frame inside.
The result was that the red lines were nice and sharp and the black lines were fuzzy like in the after.jpg file.
This made me believe that the problem is with my black ink cartridge.
The only thing I don’t understand is that black text prints out perfect as it did in the test page.

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…
The only thing I don’t understand is that black text prints out perfect as it did in the test page.

Some printers will use the black ink cartridge for black that is on a plain white background, but a mixture of the other colours to create a black that is next to other colours. How does black text appear when it is on a red square rather than on a blank page?

You haven’t told us what make and model of printer you are using.

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Some printers will use the black ink cartridge for black that is on a plain white background, but a mixture of the other colours to create a black that is next to other colours. How does black text appear when it is on a red square rather than on a blank page?

You haven’t told us what make and model of printer you are using.

I made a new drawing to print which has a solid red square with the following drawings on it:
Text, a small solid black square, vertical and horizontal thin black lines.
My results where:
The text was black with a light blue shadow effect, and both the black vertical & horizontal lines had the same effect except that it was more visible on the horizontal ones.

Would that be caused by the color cartridge then?

Now I only wish I had some extra ink for this printer to try another cartridge.

The printers details (Sorry for not mentioning them before):
HP Officejet J4550 All-in-One

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Are you using genuine HP ink cartridges? One common cause of this kind of quality issue is refilled or third party cartridges.

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Have you gone into the Maintenance section of your printer software and done any maintenance ?? Try cleaning the printheads and see if that helps.

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I am using genuine HP cartridges.

The printer is now cleaning the cartridges this. (Clickety Clack Clack….and out comes a page of black text repeated down the page and getting very small in size, also the bottom of the page has 6 boxes of varying colors. All of which looks great.)

I have printed the test image again with no success.

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If your printer prints fine on test and “normal” text prints, then IMO the issue must be to do with the images themselves.

What you are giving us though is an observed effect. What is it you are actually needing to do in work terms – there may be a way to achieve this which does not lead to this effect.

You said “I then printed a new drawing that I made of a red square frame with a black square frame inside” – can you tell us exactly how you made the drawing, and how you saved it, in what format, and how you printed it – with program names please. EDIT – I’m sorry – I see you did say you are using PaintBrush.

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If your printer prints fine on test and “normal” text prints, then IMO the issue must be to do with the images themselves.

What you are giving us though is an observed effect. What is it you are actually needing to do in work terms – there may be a way to achieve this which does not lead to this effect.

You said “I then printed a new drawing that I made of a red square frame with a black square frame inside” – can you tell us exactly how you made the drawing, and how you saved it, in what format, and how you printed it – with program names please. EDIT – I’m sorry – I see you did say you are using PaintBrush.

No need to apologize, I did use PaintBrush for all my drawings in this thread.
I know about different image file types and how they compress and change the quality of the image.
However, even though my attachments are in the JPEG format I still saved the original Bitmap or .bmp files.
I printed both the .jpg and the .bmp versions which made no effect to the end result or print on paper.

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Try the same exercise with bitmaps .bmp files and gif, and tif – and see if any of them produce better results.

In my hello examples, you see how much better a mix file image is – that’s because it’s uncompressed, essentially.

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If you want to email the image, I’ll try it on my HP J4580.

I’ve emailed you my address

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Thank you for offering to try it out for me.
I had to make a new drawing because I deleted the original .bmp file for the first one since both the .jpg and .bmp files yielded the same results.

I printed the new drawing I made which still yields those results, you can download it by clicking on the link below:
newtest.bmp

FYI: I printed it by opening it in PaintBrush and clicking on File and then Print. I just thought I’d let you know because I know that windows can crop or change the aspect ratio and I wanted to avoid that.

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Could you please try printing this Word document and let us know what the printout looks like.

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Thanks for sending the test page.
I printed it out, described it below, and in an attempt to
help describe it I also scanned it for you to see my results.
I know the printout lost some quality in the scanning process.
The print has bright vibrant colors despite what it looks like after scanning.
So I have pointed out with arrows the actual problem areas.
Which are all near black lines including text.
Everything black has a “shadow” near it, except the word “Black”
which was printed on a black background, and the word “Dark”
which was printed on a dark grey background.

Please see the scan by clicking here.

Thanks again for your continued help.

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Looking at your scanned image, it appears that the black text that was underneath each box has printed fine, but the black text on a coloured background has these shadows.

I think you should try the most extreme cartridge cleaning option and then the alignment (assuming you have these in a toolbox or other similar software). If these don’t fix it then replace the colour cartridge.

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It almost looks like the black print mechanism is out of vertical alignment with the colour – there is a stripe of non-colour immediately below where the black should be/should have been printed.

If you were printing purely black text, you wouldn’t see the error because the entire letter would be moved.

Can you print the same colour test but in black and white/greyscale mode? – i.e. without using the colour cartridge. It would be interesting to see if you still get a pale shadow.

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Leif,

If you are correct about the cause, and I think you may well be, then the fact that we get the same problem with the black text on a grey background suggests that the grey is being printed using the colour cartridge.

If this is an alignment problem then the printer should have an option to calibrate this.

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That is correct. The print of text on white is fine.
When you say to use the clean cartridge and align cartridge options.
I have done this through the printer itself. I don’t see these options in the software.

Let me understand something though:
If black text was typed in a word document on a white background the print results are fine.
If black text was typed in PaintBrush also on a white background the print results have shadows.
What is causing my printer to use the color cartridge when printing a .bmp file from PaintBrush?

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…
What is causing my printer to use the color cartridge when printing a .bmp file from PaintBrush?

When a word document sends text to a printer it sends it as instructions to print the text, and the printer converts this to dots on the page.
When paint creates text it does this as dots in the image and sends the printer an array of dots of many different colours.
How these two are interpreted is entirely up to the printer (and of course the print driver), but they are very different things.

Edited by StuartR to add
If the printer itself has Align and Clean options then this should do the job, if it is still failing after repeatedly running these then I think you need to change the colour print cartridge. If that does not fix it then I guess you will have to log a call with HP.

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Wow, this thread is starting to sound like a discussion from the Puzzle threads.
After reading Leif and StuartR’s last posts I am getting confused.

Ok, I think I may have finally discovered the problem.
I first removed the color cartridge from the printer.
I kept my in hopes that I would still be able to print, because
I know not all printers will let you print with just a black cartridge installed.
I was able to print the test page that StuartR attached.
The results when printing with only the black cartridge were all 100% perfect.

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Hi – I printed the test print on my J4580 – and it printed fine with no “shadows – so clearly despite what I said earlier, it looks like it’s down to your printer.

I assume we have the same driver with such closely related models. Did you know that if you go into the properties in the driver, you can choose to print using only the black cartridge. Otherwise the printer may also use the colour cartridge even on black printing, possibly for anti-aliasing (don’t know that for sure tho’).

When I first had my printer, I had some issues with black cartridge giving poor quality, particularly on the first page after not printing for some time. Now they seem fine. In fact I’m very pleased with the printer in general.

Make sure the printer is on a firm flat surface, and can’t “bounce around” too much when printing. Other than that I can’t think of anything else to try. If you try a new cartridge and it doesn’t help, then I suggest you think about warranty, assuming it’s still covered.

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First off, Thank you all for your information, and for being so generous taking your time to help me as always.

I realize now, that after all this troubleshooting that I could have figured out my problem a lot sooner had I tried to print with just the black. Even if we didn’t come to a solution, I still learned quite a bit.

After all the times in the past that I would run and re-run the cleaning and aligning cartridge options, and then re-printing documents hoping they would finally print correctly I would have thought that by now I would run out of that darn troublesome color cartridge.

Also I did the following just out of curiosity.
To remind everyone my printer is an All-in-One.
I decided to draw a pencil line on a yellow piece of paper (Post-It Note), and used the All-in-One to copy the drawing.
In other words without the use of the computer (or “Middle Man”). I copied the pencil drawing in both Black and Color.
Both prints were perfect in quality, so I guess that means that the firmware is able to do its job to give you what you see is what you get results, without the color cartridge affecting it? I hope this makes sense and doesn’t continue a whole new world of variables to consider.

@DieSse@ I agree that our printer are very similar and wouldn’t be surprised if they used the same exact drivers.
Thanks again for doing the test on yours. I too am happy with my printer and put the blame on the color cartridge. I did pay for the extra warranty coverage. I also did not pay very much for the printer. The printer cost me about as much as replacing the ink.

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“I also did not pay very much for the printer.”

Paid nothing for mine – part of HP final “prior to release” program – you do the tests, you get the printer & a pile of cartridges.

PS – name changed – I was David Shear – I don’t understand why the forum seems to take a lonng time and be a bit random about settings and profile setups and changes.

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“I also did not pay very much for the printer.”

Paid nothing for mine – part of HP final “prior to release” program – you do the tests, you get the printer & a pile of cartridges.

PS – name changed – I was David Shear – I don’t understand why the forum seems to take a lonng time and be a bit random about settings and profile setups and changes.

How can I get in on the “Prior to Release Program”
I enjoy troubleshooting problems, and especially if I could get something out of it.

PS: When did you actually change your name. I mean how long did it take the forum to update it?
I edited my last post because I almost thought I was referring to a different person.
Your name updated as I was typing my post.

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