Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi,
I have been using Qimage Ultimate for several years now.
My old pc died, and so I started building it from scratch.
Everything in Qimage works as always, but one thing is weird.
I created a template with a black background. (hue=160, rest is 0) It always printed pitch black.
Now on my new windows 10 machine (on the same printer, with the same ICC), it prints a dirty faded gray as background.
When I select bright red, it comes out bright red.
Its just the black that is faded to a dirty gray.
The black in images print pitch black, its only the page background that fades.

What can I do to fix this?

Qimage has a built in Page Color Selector.
See screen snaps below.
I don't understand what you mean by HUE = 160. The rest = 0.
Does that refer to RGB values?
That will make a reddish black.

Try the built in page color button
Fred

Thank you for your quick reply.
The button you are referring to is the one I use.
On screen it looks perfect black. Hue fixed to 160, RGB=0
Only when I print the black page background, it comes out faded gray.

See attached photo
As you can see, it has perfect blacks in the image but not the background.

Something went wrong with 2nd attachment.
Here is the screenshot,

Try this experiment please.
Try a Print to FILE. See how the black page looks there.
If looks good, then the data sent to Printer is good.
Thumb of Print to File and snap of print to file image in queue.
Fred

I performed a windows 10 driver update, and even a risky firmware upgrade on my fully adobe RGB supported postscript printer.
All to no avail. (I tried both PCL6 and PS)
Do I understand it correctly that the printer first receives a command to print a black background and after that a command to print the image on top of that?

Please forgive me for not agreeing with your statement and suggested workaround process.
The fact that the conversion software understands the background command, does not mean that the printer receives the correct command for the black background. (Red background looks OK)

I must admit that I do not use a black background often, but when I do its usually 30-40 prints.
The last time was with the 2017 version. I am now on 2019.117p. (I am using QI since 2010, including the black background)
It worked before with win10 and the current printer. (Xerox Phaser 7100N using PostScript for best color gradient using Adobe RGB ICC)

What has changed in qimage that creates this anomaly?

I don't think Fred meant that print to file would to be a work around. It's a way of checking if the background data output from QU is correct.
Terry

Sir,
Terry has explained..... that I was not asking for a work around.
All I was trying to do was to get you to print to file, which if real black, would indicate the data being sent to the printer was pure. This would separate the problem to be either Qimage or the printer driver.
Just trying to help.
Fred
 

My sincere apologies if my reply sounded like a rant. It is certainly not meant that way.
BTW, i printed to TIFF and the black background was pitch black.

I am curious why it only happens with the black background.
And it only happens in QU  :(. (Which I always use for printing simply because it is the best)

Other colours are correctly printed on my postscript printer.
That is why I think something in the black definition is incorrect.

I am not a colour expert, but might it be hue or perhaps saturation?
The default black background setting is Hue=160, Sat=0, Lum=0, R-0, G=0, B=0.
Could a setting be negative (-0) which causes wrong interpretation in my printer?

When I change hue, nothing changes in the print.
Also when I change printer ICC (even when turning it off), the background is not black.
(just thinking out loud)

Thank you for the test.
Now we will turn the problem over to Mike. He has something to work with knowing the print to file was good.
Please pass along the make and model printer that produces the odd print.
Also the paper and the profile type.
Thank you
Fred

This proves that Qimage is sending RGB 0,0,0 to the driver.  After that, it's down to the driver as to where the problem is occurring.  Why would black in your prints come out black and the page background turns out gray?  It comes down to how the driver handles print commands.  When Qimage prints the page background color, it sends a command to the printer that tells it to print a black rectangle covering the entire printable area.  It does this by specifying the upper left corner of the rectangle, lower right corner, and RGB 0,0,0.  The driver is then supposed to fill that rectangle with the color black.  This is different than when you print a black image: in that case, Qimage sends the actual pixels inside the rectangle rather than just telling the driver "create a black rectangle".

My guess is your driver has a bug where it isn't rendering black properly if it is asked to print a black rectangle just by specifying its coordinates and the black 0,0,0 color.  A workaround would be to create a small all-black image: say a 1000x1000 pixel image with all RGB 0,0,0.  Then instead of selecting a black page background, add that all-black image to the page using "fit to page" sizing with crop turned on so the black print fills the page.  Then add your other prints on top of that black image using freehand placement mode.  If it works, you could create a layout that has the all-black image covering the page and some templates on top where you can drag images.  It's a workaround but probably the best I can do since I can't fix bugs in drivers.

Regards,
Mike

Thank you very much for your explanation Mike.

You guess that it is my printerdriver causing the problem.
If that is the case then please explain why it has worked perfectly for 7 years.
Its the same printer, the same driver (there is no other driver) that previously worked just fine.

This is the reason why it is so hard for me to accept that its the driver/printer.

Also...I tried to find a way to create a 2 layered template but cannot find it.
Could you please give me some hints ho to do this?

let me rephrase my question.
How can i place my current template (with coloured rectangles and text) on top of a black image?

This is what Mike is directing you to do

NO TEMPLATE NEEDED
Fred

You stole MY question.  ;)  The code that prints the page background hasn't changed in years and the changing variable here is the rebuilt PC.  We know QU is sending 0,0,0 to the driver because your print-to-tiff gave you true black.  When QU prints to file, it runs the exact same code as that which sends the data to the printer: it just reroutes the data to a file.  It's more likely that the driver isn't "happy" with something regarding your new PC build.

Mike

I create 8 new templates the way Mike suggests.
Its printing slower than before, but it works.
I created the templates in version 2019.117p.
I saw the upgrade to 118, and installed it.
 The result was a 'division by zero' error when opening my new template.
I uninstalled completely and removed all remains of previous installation, and installed again.
 Same error.
Then I noticed and installed 119, and received the same error.

I am now back on 117, and everything works fine again.

What was happening here?

The code in 117, 118, and 119 is identical for you since you are running a Xerox printer and the code changes in 117, 118, and 119 only get executed if you are running a Canon or Epson printer.

Because the same code is running in 117 and 119 but you are getting different results and the only difference is the memory address at which that code runs, I think we are down to two possibilities:

(1) The printer driver is loading at a slightly different address and not working properly.  Try using the PCL driver for your Xerox printer instead of the PS driver.  Windows uses PCL and at some point that PS data is going to have to be converted to PCL anyway.  I've seen some strange results when printing to Postscript drivers in Windows from other drivers so using the non-PS (PCL) driver instead may correct the problems you are seeing.  Postscript is an Adobe creation meant mostly for PDF's and vector graphics and sometimes doesn't mesh well with Windows and the raster graphics needed for photo printing.

(2) Your anti-virus software may be inferfering with normal operation.  Try temporarily disabling it to see if it fixes the problem.

Regards,
Mike

WOW, what a journey.
I removed my printer driver and QU.
Cleaned the registry from everything I could find on both.
Then installed QU 2019.119.
It worked, even with my new templates, although when printing to file it created a black file and a second file with a black vertical strip.
But...it did not crash.
Then i searched for the latest driver at xerox support site.
I found out I already had the latest (I did not trust).
After a long search I found out that Xerox merged with Fuji, so I searched on their site.
I found an older, Generic 64 bit PS driver, and thought what the heck it cannot get any worse.
Installed it with my fingers crossed.

Everything is working perfect now. (it cost me this entire afternoon, but it was worth it)

Thank you for sticking with this stubborn fellow.
I appreciate the time and effort you spent on me. Much kudos.