The shadow areas look grainy but the rest of the print it OK
The effect, often referred to as ‘coalescence’, refers to the way in which the ink is absorbed into the media. Several things can be done to counter it, the most important is to choose the correct print mode in the printer driver. In general terms the highest quality settings available will give the best results. Choose the highest resolution possible, the finest drop size possible and the highest quality media.
The image appears speckled
‘Mottling’ is due to uneven ink density on the sheet and can be caused by: Poor paper formation, poor coating coverage or drying. When using pigmented inks improper ink absorption or binding can cause ‘rub off’.
The media takes too long to dry
The time taken for a print to dry depends on several factors, i.e. The printer, ink and ink coverage. The amount of ink printed which in turn depends on the density of the image. Photographic and graphical images use much more ink than text. Check your printer settings to avoid the use of to much ink for the image. The temperature and humidity of the room and the amount of air movement also play an important role in determining how long a print needs to dry. High humidity will slow down the drying process. Inkjet media is designed to work best in environmental conditions ranging from 20ºC to 28ºC and 30% to 70% humidity.
For the best results carefully remove the print from the printer once it had finished printing and place it flat in a warm dry environment with good air circulation.
Normally a print will dry in several minutes, however if you plan to print on the back it is advisable to wait a couple of hours.
Sheets stick together when they collect in the output tray of the printer.
Check you printer setting to avoid the use of too much ink, avoid having multiple prints landing on each other, remove the print once finished and place it elsewhere to dry for several minutes
The sheet is not flat after drying
Too much ink has been used causing curl, check you are using the correct material and if you have used the correct printer settings.
Unprinted material sticks together
Working or storage conditions for relative humidity are important. See your paper instructions for the optimum storage conditions.
Factors Influencing Image Quality
Properties | Key factors to achieving: |
Sharpness | Uniform and circular dots, exact placement, |
| controlled dot gain |
Contrast | Minimal ink penetration into substrate, |
| controlled dot gain |
Properties | Key factors to avoiding: |
Mottling | Homogeneous paper, uniform distribution of |
| fibres and fillers |
Ink bleed | Rapid drying through good and even ink |
| absorption |
The paper won’t load into the printer
Check that the driver is not set to manual loading. Ensure the paper is flat and not creased, that there is nothing obstructing the paper entering the printer such as tears etc. Ensure the paper is correctly positioned on the media tray. Try feeding the paper manually, one sheet at a time or using a different media tray.
It takes a long time before it prints
Photo and graphical images can be very large files and take longer to process, be patient and see if it works eventually. If it is just slow this might indicate that you need more memory, or are running low on disk space. Trying to do other tasks in parallel will slow the machine down. Shut down all other applications and try again.
My printer doesn’t print
Check that everything is turned on and that all cables are attached correctly, if possible use the driver to perform a communication test with the printer. Try printing a test page from the driver. If all of this works, try printing using a different application. E.g. a word- processing package to check the printer/computer communication. Finally, try printing a small image (most packages have tutorial or sample images which are small files), the image may be too complex for your computer and printer to handle. Try printing the document without the image to see if this is the case. If so, reduce the resolution of the graphics as the higher the resolution the more memory and time the process will take. If you are printing several graphical pages or pages with heavy formatting try to print just one or two pages at a time.
The printer loads more than one sheet at once
Try putting fewer sheets in the tray and fanning them before loading them, if this fails then try loading them manually one sheet at a time.
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