#DeskjetC Review
6 messages in this thread
Jim,
I haven't looked at it seriously, since (a) I don't have the Deskjet
500C yet, and (b) there doesn't seem to be any Amiga driver for it. (I have
great hopes that the DJHelper people will work on that) Since I fathom the
500C accepts 24-bit data and does the dithering by itself, I think I could
use Black Belt's Image Master (a.k.a. Image Professional, Image Master F/C)
to create the four separation files (with Grey Color Replacement and
Under-Color Removal), combine the Cyan, Yellow and Magenta files into one
(print pass #1) and keep the Black as a second file (print pass #2). As I
said, I haven't worked it out just yet, but I have the feeling it could be
done, and automated easily once success has been achieved. There's almost
nothing Image Master won't do.
Blaq! – via Whap!
I saw a DJC driver on GEnie just yesterday. Someone who tried it says it
works fine.
>>DonovaN
Donavan, see my message to Charles. There is an 'unofficial' driver
released by Commodore on CIS right now, uploaded in last week or so. Works
pretty good, etc…. it's available in the printer drivers section of
AmigaUser, I think. TTFN
–jp–seattle–
Charles, there are two DJ500-color drivers now available. One is by Robert
Shimbo and is available here on CIS. Still in the beta stages, but very
usable. He did a fine thing for the HP500-C users in the world by getting
that out there fast!
But, Commodore released an 'unofficial' HP500-C driver, which was uploaded
here a few days ago. I downloaded it, and it looks very good. It takes
advantages of the 500C's ability to use 'shingle' and 'depletion', both of
which can substantially improve color print quality. In effect they can
make your color's 'truer', and remove the excessive ink that is often
applied. Both of these factors are variable, and the Commodore driver
allows you to set them individually (via the Threshold and Density settings
of the printer driver). I doubt if we'll see a 'better' driver any time
soon. The images are coming out pretty good to my eyes!
I find PJ paper to give the 'best' look, closely followed by high quality
SMOOTH heavy bond.
Re 24bit printing. The 500C doesn't support it in particular. It is
capable of printing a few colors, and the program/driver must send the
correct dither data to get the right colors. I've used the new ADPro 2.0
PrefPrinter Saver with it, printing the same image both in its 24bit
version and in an Amiga res image, and there's no doubt that the 24bit
original looks better. Let's face it, it's not the same as having
thousands of direct colors available, like the real $$$$ color printers!
But then again, the 500C costs less than $700.
I'm going to be trying IP's 24bit printer routine with it in the next few
days. Will let you know how it looks if you want….
I also tried printing a seperation (CYMK) from it (in ADPro), and it looks
ok, but what do I do with it now? I was just curious how it worked.
–jp–seattle–
John,
How well do pictures of people look? I'm interested in scanning in a
picture of myself and merging it with a picture of Diamond Head. I then
want to print it out and paste it to the front of a postcard and send it to
my buddies back home. I have ADPro 2.0 so I'd probably print from there.
>>DonovaN
Soft-Logik has just released the second version of its DJ 500C driver for
PageStream 2.1/2.2. This driver is still in beta but we don't know of any
bugs in it at this time.
Mike Soft-Logik Tech Support