What you print is important, as we say. It brings your ideas to life. And life is better in vivid hues. Therefore, printing documents in colour can significantly amplify your marketing and sales. Even more: colour printing expresses your brand and the values behind it. Here are some colour printing best practices that will ensure you keep bringing your ideas to life in the best possible colour.
– Paper Quality
Not all paper is created equal. Lower quality paper may cause dullness of colour or bleed on documents. You can count on regular copier paper being inferior in quality, so it should be avoided for colour documents. Bond paper with cotton fibres or paper with ribbed, linen, or eggshell are also questionable for colour printing. On the other hand, not all recycled paper is of inferior quality.
– Printer Settings
The default printer settings are no one’s fault, except yours if you expect them to work precisely with the colour printing need of your office.
As an illustration, you can quickly increase the print resolution to maximum dpi option in the print dialog screen. Furthermore, some printers need to be changed to a CMYK colour mode in order to optimise colour printing. How you change this setting depends on the printer software, but a mere Google search will yield quick results.
– Printer cartridge quality
Like your printer paper, ink and toner vary in quality. This also means the quality of your colour printing could be compromised.
Does this mean you should only trust name-brand ink and toner (or OEM as it’s called in the industry)? Not at all – especially in a time when technology makes re-manufactured cartridges more reliable. As with any product, though, always do your homework.
