Color laser printers deliver sharp, impermeable text and stunning photos. Due to their high print capacity per toner cartridge, they are ideal for home offices and small enterprises. However, not every laser printer is capable of producing photos of good quality. The printer’s maximum resolution is one restriction. In comparison to devices with greater resolutions, low-resolution laser printers often create prints that are rougher and less realistic.
- Laser Printing Process
Laser printers fuse microscopic toner dots to the paper in order to print in colour or in black and white. These dots appear to mix together into smooth gradients when seen with the naked eye. In proportion, smaller dots create lighter shades of a hue, and larger dots create darker shades.
- Dots Per Inch
Manufacturers specify the resolution of laser printers in dots per inch, or dpi. Smaller dots appear on the page from a printer with a higher dpi than one with a lower dpi. This results in fewer angular-looking prints and smoother gradients. A complicated picture is typically shown by smaller dots. A page with extensive toner coverage could take longer to print on a high-resolution printer and may use more memory. However, the final print typically seems better than one from a printer with a lesser resolution.
- Standard Resolutions
There are a few common resolutions for laser printers. Many early printers could only print at 300 dpi, resulting in relatively grainy prints with visible dots. Hewlett-Packard reports that as of October 2011, printers have 1,200 dpi ratings. High-end printers designed for picture production may reach resolutions of up to 2,400 dpi. The highest resolution of the printer is indicated by this number. Your colour laser printer may output rougher pictures for proofreading if you put it in “draught” or “high-speed” mode.
- Considerations
High-resolution printers might not create as many visible dots as you anticipate. The printer has to employ around 256 dots for each pixel in the printed picture in order to render an 8-bit image completely. This lowers the printer’s apparent resolution, resulting in an effective resolution of around 75 pixels per inch, or ppi, for a printer rated at 1200 dpi. Actual resolution can also be influenced by the halftone frequency of the printer. Halftones, which are measured in lines per inch, are patterns of bigger or smaller dots used to create a shaded look. Although most laser printers have a resolution of 200 dpi or more, coarser halftones for copying can have a resolution as low as 85 dpi.
