trying to get sharp grayscale graphics on Brother printer

[Cari_Ferraro@adobeforums.com]

Hello,

I am trying to print an InDesign file to my Brother HL 2040 laser printer. It has a placed Photoshop file, which is a 720 dpi bitmap grayscale file of some inked black letters, and some lighter gray peripheral markings. This file is placed in the InDesign document and text added with an Adobe Open Type font (Brioso). When I send it to the printer, the edges are quite fuzzy, on both the fonts and the graphics. I had assumed that as a laser printer it would print things sharp, but apparently not. So I fooled around with the settings, and instead of choosing my printer in the Print window, I chose PostScript file. This saved it as a Postscript file with the .ps name, which, when I went to open it, converted to a PDF, and then printed just fine on my Brother laser printer, nice sharp outlines on both the graphics and the font. But alas, I have not been able to repeat this with the other similar files, for some reason I cannot figure out. When I save it as a postcript file from the InDesign Print window, it saves, but then shows up as Zero KB on the desktop and shows an error when trying to open it as a PDF file. The other option, "printing" to Adobe PDF from the InDesign Print window, will give me a nice sharp looking print, but it reduces it just slightly, which I want to avoid. I'm lost in all this, and frustrated as I am working on a deadline. My old Apple laser printer was a postscript printer, and gave "camera-ready" copy with no fuss, but apparently this Brother laser printer is not a postscript device. Can anyone here shed any light on this problem for me? I would so appreciate it. Thanks,
Cari Ferraro

[tman@adobeforums.com]

if your printer is not a postscript device--then you'll need to make a PDF to get a good print. Try EXPORT as PDF from InDesign (High Quality Print setting-it's one of the available presets.

[Cari_Ferraro@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, that took care of the resolution just right. Much nicer image, and I found if I unchecked the scaling box in the Acrobat print window it would print at actual 100%.

Now, I am fiddling with trying to get the lighter gray peripheral marks to print grey. Brother has a choice in the Print Settings between its own Brother halftone pattern, which comes out a bit spotty and pixelated-looking, or a generic halftone pattern, which the printer prints almost black, no matter how light I make the color in the Photoshop original. It doesn't do when printing directly out of InDesign, only when I export it as High Quality PDF and print it using the generic halftone pattern. I prefer the resolution on the generic pattern, but can't get it to be light enough in the PDF. Any ideas why?

Thanks,

Cari

[tman@adobeforums.com]

hard to tell without seeing what you are calling 'lighter gray peripheral marks'(lighter gray is a value of black and as such is going to be rasterized-pixels). you will probably need to build a halftone screen in Photoshop as a bitmap tif--so it's just dots--perhaps a 'dithered' bitmap. then add it to your Indesign file or your existing photoshop file.