Printing not black, more like 70% grayscale

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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Thu Mar 15, 2018 5:49 pm

I've had dotty output exactly like gogreen's picture when ColorSync has been enabled in the print dialog. (For my HP printer's it's under "Color Matching".) When I select "in Printer" instead of "ColorSync", then I get good, strong, crisp output. Your printer driver may operate differently.

This affected PDFs, so that they looked fine on screen, but the printing was dotty.

When you "Save As PDF" from the Mac print menu, the selected printer's settings are a factor (somewhat belying the supposedly device independent nature of PDFs). You may find it useful to create a "printer" (print queue) of a Generic Mono PostScript printer, just for saving PDFs. Or use a Save-to-file print queue like CUPS-PDF.


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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:52 pm

I wonder: Does anyone else on a Mac with a Brother printer, laser or inkjet, experience this problem?
Art
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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:34 pm

Update: I've taken this concern to MakeMusic, and after going around and around with one of their "customer success representatives," here is the last word I received on this problem from MM:

I definitely will not say that what you are experiencing absolutely does not have any Finale involvement at all, this is certainly feasible, but at this point it's not possible to manipulate the software to accommodate for this particular piece of hardware. With all of the different third-party printers available it is not possible to test with all of them so it best to stick with being compliant to what the Apple requires for the macOS.

I am greatly disappointed because from this "explanation" I glean that the problem is too small for MM to worry about, so it's not being reported to the programmers as something worth fixing.
Art
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:35 pm

gogreen wrote:I am greatly disappointed because from this "explanation" I glean that the problem is too small for MM to worry about, so it's not being reported to the programmers as something worth fixing.
It's not that it's too small a problem. What they're saying is: whilst they can't rule out Finale's involvement, it's more likely to be an issue with the printer driver, or even Apple's print internals. Given that not everyone has this problem, compensating within Finale might make matters worse for everyone else.

Did you try any of my suggestions?

Vaughan
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Post by Vaughan » Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:36 pm

What happens if you print to PDF using the Graphics Tool? I use this all the time now, partly because it gives 100% black and partly because the files produced are considerably smaller (often a factor of 5 or more).
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:03 pm

If you print directly to the printer, the files are infinitely small, but that may be his best bet. Again, from what he posted, it looks like it's a question of raster versus vector, not grayscale.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect MM to obtain a particular model of Brother printer to get to the bottom of this, and otherwise, how would they solve it?

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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:12 pm

Thanks, Buontempi, but your suggestions are a bit over my head. Nevertheless, I deleted the printer several times and tried each of the suggestions MacOS offered. All printed the same--"grayscale," for lack of a better word.

@Vaughan and others: The only way for me to get solid black output is to use the graphics tool, export to PDF, and then print.

Eh. Things could be worse. Thanks again.
Art
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:47 pm

Are you sure you've explored all the printer options, including so-called advanced options? In particular, you want send graphics as vectors. There may also be options for font handling. Since things are better when you print from PDF, I suggest you look at all the printer options that have been set when you're about print the PDF from Adobe or whatever it is, and compare them to what the options are when you print from Finale. That may provide a clue.

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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:56 pm

Thanks, motet. I will continue to explore the printing options, although I think I've tried them all for my printer. I'll also contact Brother again and see if they can offer any solutions. I admit it is possible that my newness to MacOS is causing me to miss settings.
Art
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:08 am

gogreen wrote:I will continue to explore the printing options, although I think I've tried them all for my printer. I'll also contact Brother again and see if they can offer any solutions. I admit it is possible that my newness to MacOS is causing me to miss settings.
From what I can see from Brother help pages, there should be a "Color Matching" item in the drop-down menu, which should give you the settings to turn off ColorSync. That suggests it's the same as my HP, as you see here:
Screen Shot 1.png

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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:11 pm

I don't have that option, and I've tried the options in the dropdown menu in the attached.
Art
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Wed Mar 21, 2018 6:01 pm

I've done a bit of sleuthing, and here's something you may like to try:

1. In System Prefs > Printers, create a new Print queue for your printer. Add "Finale" to the name. When you print from Finale, this is the printer you will select.
2. Open ColorSync Utility. Click on the 'Devices' tab.
3. Select your new print queue. Where it says "Current Profile", click on the little Arrow, and select "Open".
4. In the Open file dialog, select /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Black & White.icc. (NB: Root Level /Library, not /User, not /System.)
Screen Shot 4.png
Now, see if the printing improves. Note that this print queue will only print Black - no shades of Grey! If you want grey, you use the original print queue.

If this doesn't change the result, then just delete the print queue from System Prefs.

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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Thu Mar 22, 2018 2:34 am

Thanks, Buontempi, for pointing me toward the profile options. I've been experimenting with many of the available combinations. The best one so far is a generic PCL printer with the Black & White.icc profile. I've examined my printing samples with a loupe, and even though this one isn't completely solid black, it's vastly improved. I'm going to continue to experiment with profiles. Thanks again.
Art
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Hector Pascal
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Post by Hector Pascal » Sun Apr 22, 2018 11:36 pm

Mac Sierra, Fin25, Brother HL-L5200DW

Just the other day, I finished a score and parts and then turned them into PDFs ( File>Print>PDF>Save as PDF). I put the PDF files on a USB stick and went to the local photocopying self-service outlet, inserted the USB into the photocopier and loaded one of the PDF files. The photocopier warning message came up: "This file appears to be greyscale. Do you want to print greyscale or do you want to print black and white?" I selected black and white.

In future, I plan to use Graphics Tool (Graphics>Export>PDF) to avoid this issue (and especially so that recipients of my files avoid the issue when they print my PDFs). I also think I should probably re-do all my archived PDFs in this manner so that my archives are better quality. That's a pretty big job.... Did the issue only start with Fin25? If so, I will only need to re-do my Fin25 files.

Cheers,
HP.

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:48 am

Hector Pascal wrote:… Did the issue only start with Fin25? If so, I will only need to re-do my Fin25 files …
No, the issue is much older.

I have some PDF files created in april 2006 (probably created with Finale 2006).
These PDF files, too, are greyscale instead of Black-and-White.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

Vaughan
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Post by Vaughan » Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:36 am

To solve this problem I used to run the PDFs through Apple's Color Sync, first running the B&W filter and then creating a generic PDF-X file. Nowadays I have a macro for calling up the export graphics window and making sure it's set for saving as PDF. I make almost all my PDFs this way, which has the added advantage of their being much smaller. I just made a PDF of a score using the print dialog and it turned out to be 9.3 MB. The same score printed to PDF using the graphics tool is 2.6 MB.
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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:25 pm

I noticed that, too. PDFs created with the graphics tool are much smaller. That does help. What kind of printer gave you this trouble?

This problem started for me with my using an iMac three months ago. The same printer (Brother MFC-L2740DW) worked just fine in Windows.

Also, if you print normally to PDF with this problem, when the document is printed on another system with a different printer, does that problem still appear?
Art
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gogreen
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Post by gogreen » Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:03 pm

What's frustrating about the problem is that MM blames Brother and Brother blames MM.
Art
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Simonstina
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Post by Simonstina » Sun Jul 19, 2020 1:14 pm

gogreen wrote:
Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:52 pm
I wonder: Does anyone else on a Mac with a Brother printer, laser or inkjet, experience this problem?
I don't have a Brother but I have this issue too.
I had a Laser-color-HP before, now I have a Laser-b/w-Canon. Print directly or via PDF from Finale -grayscale. When I send the notes to anyone, their prints also turn gray.

I read here that if I export via graphics to PDF it will work. It did! But I do not want to have to use that way. It must be possible to print the "normal" way.

In all other programs, internet, photo, whatever I print, the images are exactly as I see them on the screen.
It is only in FINALE that it becomes grayscale.

Printed some PDFs I created earlier:
Final 2007 - perfect.
Final 2014 - perfect.
Final V 25 - grayscale.
Finale V 26.3 - grayscale.

I do not think I should have to experiment with settings when printing, this must be something that is wrong after the upgrade to version 25 which is still hanging in. This is a question for those who develop the program. Do again – do right.

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