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Mike Chaney's Tech Corner > Mike's Software > Qimage > Qimage with 16bit printers
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Author Topic: Qimage with 16bit printers  (Read 18392 times)
PH Focal-Scape
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« on: July 10, 2009, 11:13:14 AM »
Mike,

I have just read your interesting article on 16 bit printers (Dec 2006). Very informative, thanks.

As a consequence I'm curious about compatibility. Does Qimage support 16 bit printers such as the Canon Pro 9500 Mark II? I realize that the appropriate 16 bit handling printer driver is used but will Qimage send the appropriate data to it?

PETER
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« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2009, 02:52:29 PM »
Qimage won't send 16 bit data because Windows drivers are not 16 bit: Windows has no way of sending 16 bit data to printers.  But if you read the article, my take on that is it really doesn't matter.  I've still yet to see a difference between sending 8 and 16 bit data to a printer.  Manufacturers sell 16 bit printers because 16 is larger than 8 and numbers sell.

Mike
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PH Focal-Scape
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« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2009, 10:01:40 PM »
Quote from: Mike Chaney on July 10, 2009, 02:52:29 PM
Qimage won't send 16 bit data because Windows drivers are not 16 bit: Windows has no way of sending 16 bit data to printers.  But if you read the article, my take on that is it really doesn't matter.  I've still yet to see a difference between sending 8 and 16 bit data to a printer.  Manufacturers sell 16 bit printers because 16 is larger than 8 and numbers sell.

Mike

Yes, I did read all of your article!

So, if I understand correctly the driver that comes with  the Canon Pro 9500 Mark II is actually 8 bit. Right?

Out of curiousity, I installed the Mark II driver and found that the standard Canon test page prints on my old 9500 but the text is about twice as wide. This probably gives a hint about how 16 bit is implemented.


PETER
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« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2009, 01:06:51 AM »
Quote from: pshrutpark on July 10, 2009, 10:01:40 PM
Yes, I did read all of your article!

So, if I understand correctly the driver that comes with  the Canon Pro 9500 Mark II is actually 8 bit. Right?

Out of curiousity, I installed the Mark II driver and found that the standard Canon test page prints on my old 9500 but the text is about twice as wide. This probably gives a hint about how 16 bit is implemented.


PETER


Right, all Windows drivers are 8 bit so every printer that comes with a Windows driver uses 8 bits per channel for that Windows driver.  That's why you have to print with special software or "plug ins" that bypass the Windows driver when you want to print 16 bits/channel.  Windows does not offer any facility that allows 16 bit data to be sent to a printer, although I think Windows 7 will change that.

Mike
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tomc
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« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2009, 01:29:29 AM »
Mike,

Apparently Windows does have 16 bit printing support. See this MSDN blog entry:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adrianford/archive/2008/10/22/16-bits-and-more-printing-on-windows.aspx

I just ran across this and don't know anything about it other than what I read there.


Tom
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« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2009, 04:26:27 PM »
Quote from: tomc on July 11, 2009, 01:29:29 AM
Mike,

Apparently Windows does have 16 bit printing support. See this MSDN blog entry:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adrianford/archive/2008/10/22/16-bits-and-more-printing-on-windows.aspx

I just ran across this and don't know anything about it other than what I read there.


Tom

No, Windows does not have 16 bit printing support.  XPS is not fully integrated into Windows and requires (1) special XPS drivers that are different from the standard Windows printer drivers and (2) software that is hard-coded to work with XPS.  Windows does not support XPS at this time because there is no API (third party) support.  That's why I said Windows 7 will offer 16 bit printing: because Windows 7 will be the first Windows OS to offer API support (true Windows support) for 16 bit printing.

Mike
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tomc
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« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2009, 07:14:06 PM »
Mike,

Looking into it a little more, it looks like XPS printing might be a .net thing.

When you say "no api" do you mean Win32 calls as opposed to .net? Is Windows 7 adding Win32 api calls for XPS?

So far I've had nothing to do with .net programming and would be happy to keep it that way.


Tom
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« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2009, 10:30:46 PM »
Yes, Windows 7 will include Win32 API support for XPS printing and that's what I'm looking for.  Once that's done then Windows will truly support 16 bit printing.

Mike
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