When printing color pages, a user can choose one of several color modes, depending on the desired results. Each color mode has a palette associated with it. Simple Color Mode provides a palette of fully saturated colors whose colors are similar to those of a plotter’s pen colors. The palette is nonprogrammable, and is intended for simple printing of items such as bar and pie charts. For applications requiring different or more specific colors, the printer offers the PCL Imaging and HP-GL/2 Imaging Modes. The palette colors in these two modes can be modified to provide the desired result.

When choosing color for a particular application, the Color LaserJet printer provides device-dependentand device-independentcolor (the DeskJet 1200C and 1600C support only device-dependent color). Device-independentcolor provides accurate color matching based on an absolute color standard. It is preferred when users want a precise color to match the output from another device or to match the color on an existing page.

Besides providing device-independent color for precise color matching, the HP printers can modify color to compensate for various characteristics. The Color LaserJet printer supports the following methods of modifying color (the DeskJet 1200C and 1600C printers support halftone algorithms and gamma correction, but not color lookup tables or the Viewing Illuminant command).

Halftone render algorithms determine how colors are rendered using the printers available colors. Halftone algorithms can be used to change apparent resolution, change the texture of images, reduce the number of colors, and change a color image to monochrome.

Color lookup tables can remap colors to compensate for various differences in input data, such as unwanted color casts caused by unbalanced photographic light sources.

Gamma correction provides a way to adjust for color differences in display monitors so that the display more closely matches the printed output.

Since the appearance of colors changes under different viewing light sources, the Viewing Illuminant command allows the application to modify output color based on the light source used to view the printed page.

A-2 Color Printing Overview (Color LaserJet, 5, 5M, DeskJet)

EN

Page 188
Image 188
HP L 5 manual