Cant print stripes?

Hi there,

I have the canon selphy 1300 (300ppi) and the epson surecolor 800 (1440ppi).

I am trying to print striped images: 1px horizontal red stripe, 1px horizontal green stripe, 1px horizontal yellow stripe, repeat.

On both printers the prints have „banding“? There are 3cm high blocks of the stripes in different shades. I tried the same with 3pixel high stripes, same effect.

Are printers not able to print stripes?

photo attached
 

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When you print colours on an inkjet printer, the image is made up of all available colours using a stipple pattern therefore you will always see some artifacts particularly when printing very thin lines. Printing a 1 or 3px line is never going to end well. Also the 1440dpi for the Epson is not a true 1440dpi, it's the total resolution of all the colours eg 360dpi x 4 colours = 1440dpi
 
Also the 1440dpi for the Epson is not a true 1440dpi, it's the total resolution of all the colours eg 360dpi x 4 colours = 1440dpi

Just being picky ... dpi is not resolution. It's addressability. I.e. the device can place 360 splats of ink over 1" on the substrate. It does not tell you the size of the splats of ink which is what is needed to determine resolution. I.e. two devices can both be 360dpi but have different resolving capability.
 
photo attached... so how can I determine the min height of a strip? does changing the resolution help?

As I wrote before - dpi is not resolution. You can change the dpi but you can’t change the resolution.
IMHO one thing you could consider doing is to better set customer (and your) expectations. A simple print out with lines of various thicknesses (e.g. hairline to 8pt) in positive and reverse out plus text from 1 pt to 24 pt in positive and reverse out would go a long way to showing your limitations.
E.g.
test.jpg
 
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When you print colours on an inkjet printer, the image is made up of all available colours using a stipple pattern therefore you will always see some artifacts particularly when printing very thin lines. Printing a 1 or 3px line is never going to end well. Also the 1440dpi for the Epson is not a true 1440dpi, it's the total resolution of all the colours eg 360dpi x 4 colours = 1440dpi
can you look at the photo - it is not artifacts I am getting, its a proper change in shade
 
As I wrote before - dpi is not resolution. You can change the dpi but you can’t change the resolution.
IMHO one thing you could consider doing is to better set customer (and your) expectations. A simple print out with lines of various thicknesses (e.g. hairline to 8pt) in positive and reverse out plus text from 1 pt to 24 pt in positive and reverse out would go a long way to showing your limitations.
did i say dpi anywhere?
yes, i could print out numerous images with gradually growing stripe size, but i would like to understand what is going on and what the problem is?
 
i would like to understand what is going on and what the problem is?

You wrote "I am trying to print striped images: 1px horizontal red stripe, 1px horizontal green stripe, 1px horizontal yellow stripe, repeat." But what I see are black lines.
I'm confused. :-(

Are you referring to the color change between the lines (pinkish vs yellowish)? Or?

stripes.jpg
 
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You wrote "I am trying to print striped images: 1px horizontal red stripe, 1px horizontal green stripe, 1px horizontal yellow stripe, repeat." But what I see are black lines.
I'm confused. :-(

Are you referring to the color change between the lines (pinkish vs yellowish)? Or?

View attachment 290149


hi there, i am trying to print striped images. The colors i mentioned as an example. the color of the strips does not seem to matter.

yes! i am referring to the color shade changes - do you have any idea what would cause that?
 
did i say dpi anywhere?
yes, i could print out numerous images with gradually growing stripe size, but i would like to understand what is going on and what the problem is?
No, you said ppi which we interpreted to mean dpi (dots per inch) since ppi relates to the pixels per inch of an image and is not a value used in the printing process.
 
No, you said ppi which we interpreted to mean dpi (dots per inch) since ppi relates to the pixels per inch of an image and is not a value used in the printing process.
right. so we agree, i did not say dpi. Are you interested in the dpi or do you still require this information to help me with the issue? At the moment it sounds like you confirm there is a problem with printing stripes regardless of the dpi or ppi values and I can only continue to try things out, correct?
 
I'm going with that it has something to do with "hinting". An old prepress term to describe the "decision" of a device as to whether or not to add a row of addressable-pixels when the image ends right in the middle of a row of addressable-pixels. In this case, with the printer's relatively low 360 resolution that is made up of multiple ink nozzles. I imagine that the width of the line you are trying to make does not require (interpret is not able) to put down a spot from all the ink nozzles in the nozzle-head but rather a subset of the ink nozzels That subset of ink nozzles probably is not evenly represented between the ink colors for the narrow width of the line. For crude example, if you have a CMYK printer, but only three nozzle droplets can fit in a given area, you might be using a different combination of three colors in different areas: CMY in some places, KCM in others... As the image tracks along, it eventually gets to an area where a different subset of the ink nozzles is used to create the image/color. OR maybe it is something like the number of orifices/openings/holes that will fit in the given area of your tiny/thin line might be maybe 8: maybe at the beginning 2Cyan nozzles 3Magenta nozzles 3Yellow nozzles fit for the line width for a while where the ink comes out, then further along 3C nozzles 2Magenta nozzles 3 yellow nozzles. Still 8 total nozzles, but different combination/ratio of CMY.
 
Increasing (Lpi) lines per inch may help increase fill. Also, an old printer's trick is to skew the whole job slightly. Output will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Last resort, convert to pixel art and re-output.
 

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