Expert: Glen Demers - 2/9/2011

Question
Glen,

 I saw Lisa wrote this response:
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Of course, if you're going to do something "to scale," you need to know what the finished size is expected to be, and work at a scale that is complementary. For instance, if the finished piece is supposed to be 12 inches wide, and you're working at a scale of 1/2, you'll need to do your work 6 inches wide. Then the file can be printed at twice its original size, in order to obtain the needed size.
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I'm using an HP laptop with Windows 7, and have an Epson Workforce 1100 printer using Pigment ink.

A customer asked me to print an image on a transfer. When I did it, it has Banding horizontal lines.

I read on another site that in the Printer Preference settings you can change the image output quality to Photo and the lines should go away.

Well I did, and the lines went away. Change it back to Normal and the lines come back.

Okay, here's my problem. When I change it to Photo quality the image shrinks to 1/4 of the 8.5 x 11 page. I need it to be a full page.

Is there anything in Photoshop or do you know anyway on my printer that I can resolve this output issue?

Thanks,

Paul

Answer
Hi Paul,

Apparently the printer is printing photo quality by spacing the printing dots closer together - reducing the image size.

In the page layout section of the print dialog box check the Reduce/Enlarge Printing box and select your paper size to force the printer to print to full 8.5 x 11. The banding may reappear when you do this.

You can also open the image in Photoshop and go to Image>Image Size... to open the Image Size dialog box. In the Document size section double the Resolution and make sure 'Resample Image' is checked and 'Bicubic (Best for smooth gradients)' is selected. This will increase you file size but should decrease the banding.

If the banding persists you can select that area of the image and add a small amount of Noise by going to Filter>Noise>Add Noise... This will add a little chaos to the gradient and hopefully break up the banding effect.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm