Printing not black, more like 70% grayscale

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Tue Mar 06, 2018 10:51 pm

When I print scores or parts in Finale, the ink coverage appears to be in grayscale with about 70% coverage when it should be solid black. The problem occurs with everything printed on the page. This problem occurs only in Finale, not other applications. I read an item from about a year ago, I think on the MM community, about this problem with Finale and Brother printers, so the problem obviously has not been fixed yet. I'm working on a 2017 iMac, High Sierra 10.13.3, with a Brother printer MFC-L2740DW.

The workaround I use is to export pages to PDF through the Graphics Tool.

Does anyone else have this problem, or is it only with Brother printers?

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 10:08 pm

Anyone? Please chime right in. Thanks.

miker · Post by **miker** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 11:27 pm

Go with the PDF. If I recall correctly, that’s a smaller file, as well.

motet · Post by **motet** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 12:05 am

If you're just printing, there's no file. I would explore all the printer options.

Hector Pascal · Post by **Hector Pascal** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 3:07 am

I have a Brother printer and i was getting output that looked grey, too! I am getting improved output now, and I think my solution was to discover that the print settings (which I hadn't finger poked) were set to a default that was economy or draft quality. Once I discovered that, I set it to best output instead. In addition to this, I am still not sure that I am completely satisfied as even on the best printout, I can actually see, for example, that the lines of the musical staves are comprised of dots. I can even see the space between these dots. When preparing my score pdf, I go print>save as PDF.

I wish you luck and hope to vicariously discover how to get better printouts!
Cheers,
Hector.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 3:52 pm

If you tell the printer to use only the black ink cartridge it will look more grayish then black. You need to tell the printer to use all the cartridges.

N Grossingink · Post by **N Grossingink** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 6:38 pm

ebiggs1 wrote:If you tell the printer to use only the black ink cartridge it will look more grayish then black. You need to tell the printer to use all the cartridges.

As far as I know, using all the cartridges will result in what's termed a "process black" or "CMYK black" or "rich black". Seems like a waste of ink, at least for the color cartridges. If this is what you use, you might want to see how to get a true black from the black cartridge alone. See if you can somehow contact your printer manufacturer - online user forum, something like that.

N.

motet · Post by **motet** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 7:08 pm

So the black ink is not black? I like the economy-mode theory.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:31 pm

I worked for Hallmark in the Graphic Arts Division for 40 years. We used every conceivable way known to man to put ink on paper.
It is impossible to get all 256 shades of grey with a single ink cartridge. That is why most, if not all, home printers use all the cartridges including the color tanks to print B&W.
However, when they do that, usually the black only tank can't do true black. That is why most home printers look like a slightly washed out black when just the black tank is employed.

jdpmus · Post by **jdpmus** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 12:07 am

Is you printer laser or inkjet? I have a Brother hl2340dw laser and it prints crisp notation. It's default setting is 600dpi and the high yield toner cartridge will last the better part of a year unless I'm writing more than one show (18 tunes, 35-pc orchestra). This is the 3rd Brother laser that I have owned (the others wore out or I wanted to upgrade to wireless) and I am always recommending it to friends for its low cost and reasonable cartridge prices.

I also own a Canon Pro 100 for large format printing (tabloid), but I would hate to think that it was my only printer at the cost of replacement ink. I can buy 2 Brother toner cartridges for the price of the 8 ink tanks for the Canon.

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:45 am

Are you printing to pdf or using the Print menu?

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 1:35 pm

My printer is only black. I'm getting the 70% grayscale output when I use the Print menu. DPI is set to 600, and I have no other draft or economy mode settings. The printer driver is up to date. Printing to PDF gives solid black results, either in the Print dialog box or exporting by way of the Graphics Tool. Printing to PDF through the Graphics Tool is my current workaround.

From what I've researched, this bug was reported and confirmed by MM a year. All I can think of is that this bug is still not fixed.

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 1:54 pm

The print adjustments I can make are in an "Advanced" option in the print dialog box. I've tried changing these settings to no avail. For instance, changing Graphics Quality" to "Text" makes no difference. Chaning other settings also makes no difference.

Never had a printing problem like this in Windows. Discovered this problems when I switched from Windows to Mac.

motet · Post by **motet** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:11 pm

gogreen wrote:From what I've researched, this bug was reported and confirmed by MM a year. All I can think of is that this bug is still not fixed.

If you mean "a year ago," I'm not surprised it's not fixed, so you may need to go through PDF. ("Economy Mode" = "Toner Save Mode", by the way.)

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 7:45 pm

so you may need to go through PDF.

Yup. Looks that way.

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 8:51 pm

Heads up. None of this applies to 25 on Windows, ok? Printing on the Mac changed quite a bit with 25.

The weird thing is that you say the print quality is the same whether you are printing to pdf or exporting through the Graphics tool. No one else seems to be experiencing that. Unlike 2014.5, with 25, Export/Graphics produces pure black and the other is dark greyscale.

Printing directly from the Finale menu gives me black on my Brother MFCJ6935 tabloid printer.
https://www.computershopper.com/printer ... fc-j6935dw

What driver are you using? Saying it’s up to date doesn’t mean a thing. With Brother, you have different options. I don’t like the one bundled with the Mac OS and downloaded the Brother GNU driver from their web site as recommended. Finding all the settings in either driver is not intuitive like, say, an HP or Epson, I’ll concede that.

Have you checked for firmware updates? My printer has had three since I got it last fall.

Mine doesn’t quite saturate the page like my HP c309a in Best setting. It’s something I notice only when I A/B the pages and printing from any notation app. I keep thinking there must be a setting that gives me a richer looking page but I have yet to find it if it exists. I should call tech support someday.

I’m ok with it considering the costs per page are quite a bit lower. A set of tanks costs $78 and I’m still on my first one after 5 months—I would have gone through 3 sets on my HP by now @ $125. My wife is a school teacher and burns through paper and ink.

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:10 am

My firmware is up to date. I downloaded the recommended driver package from the Brother website and tried it--same grayscale results. I then downloaded just the recommended printer driver from Brother, which includes the latest CUPS driver, and it, too, produced the same results.

Correction: When I print from Finale's PDF choice, print is still 70% grayscale. When I print to PDF via the Graphics Tool, print is black.

Here's my printer:
https://www.computershopper.com/printer ... fc-l2740dw

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:17 am

N Grossingink wrote:
ebiggs1 wrote:If you tell the printer to use only the black ink cartridge it will look more grayish then black. You need to tell the printer to use all the cartridges.
As far as I know, using all the cartridges will result in what's termed a "process black" or "CMYK black" or "rich black". Seems like a waste of ink, at least for the color cartridges. If this is what you use, you might want to see how to get a true black from the black cartridge alone. See if you can somehow contact your printer manufacturer - online user forum, something like that.

N.

His is a monochrome laser printer so that really doesn't apply.

My Brother is an inkjet printer and gets very good results printing directly selecting Best quality in Greyscale.

Brother 1.png

It's not quite as good as Export/Graphics but it's very close and no better than Best in Color (but a heck of a lot faster).

Brother 2.png

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:44 am

Correction: When I print from Finale's PDF choice, print is still 70% grayscale. When I print to PDF via the Graphics Tool, print is black.

OK, that makes sense. Only Export/Graphics is true black.

What I don't understand is your 70% gradient. Mine is closer to 95% — it looks a little 'off' and not as crisp as the true black of Export/Graphics. Here are screen shots. I also am posting Save as PDF but to Acrobat Pro instead of Preview—printed is about the same but takes a lot longer to compile

Export/Graphics

Brother 3.png

Save to .pdf

Brother 4.png

Save to Adobe Acrobat Pro instead of Preview

Brother 5.png

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:50 am

Again, I don't get what's going on. This is what mine looks like as I save to PDF. If I want to save to Acrobat Pro instead of Preview, I have to go to Save as Adobe PDF and a submenu opens from which I can select Acrobat Pro.

Brother 6.jpg

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:10 am

I can only guess that the Brother laser printer you are using is not very good at grey scale .pdf. I would ask their tech support for help in this. Perhaps they need another firmware update after you show this to them.

The reason I posted so many screen shots is in case there are similar menu items in your driver that might help you find a solution without going there. Also, this is a public forum and what doesn't apply to you may with someone else.

Like all Mac users, there is a difference with Finale 25 but, for most of us, it's nothing like what you are experiencing. At least Graphics/Export gives good results—unless Brother can find a solution...

Even though the ink saturation on my HP is a little denser than my Brother, I recommend mine highly. It has very low ink costs, rated at 1¢ per page B&W and I can't make the inks run even after soaking the paper in water (ahem, HP...). It's big and heavy—I keep mine on an AV cart to wheel into my wife's office when she has a major scanning or print job (let's hear it for wireless!).

Let us know what you find out.

gogreen · Post by **gogreen** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 3:25 am

Here are examples of what I mean.

bvstudios · Post by **bvstudios** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:38 am

My go-to printer is currently a Samsung M2020 laser, which set me back under $80 new. Cartridges run about $70 on sale if you watch the flyers, and for my purposes, I get about 3,000 sheets per cartridge. Works out to a little more than $0.02 per sheet...

From Finale or pdf, it's about as black as I can expect, though pdf may be a bit "crisper" in the curves.

BTW- I use the free pdf maker Cute PDF rather than the built-in one that came with Finale. Much sharper images.

motet · Post by **motet** » Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:57 pm

Art's "printed from Finale" looks like low-resolution raster graphics, whereas "printed from PDF" looks like vector graphics, rather than this being a grayscale issue. Since Finale is making some of the settings for you, my guess is that the trouble lies there. Saving your files as PDF is not a bad idea anyway, as insurance against Finale quitting working.

Ere Lievonen · Post by **Ere Lievonen** » Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:40 pm

Recently I received some music from a composer as PDF files. The music was engraved in Finale, and the PDFs looked great on screen.
However, when I printed the scores on my Lexmark laser printer, the results looked exactly like Art's "printed from Finale" image.

Note that this happened when I printed from PDF files. The grayscale printing problem can thus occur both when printing directly from Finale, and when printing from PDFs.

My hypothesis: Both when printing and when using Save as PDF, Finale doesn't produce 100% black color, but a dark grey color. The result looks fine and sharp on screen, but when printing on paper, the printer interprets the image as grayscale and rasterizes the image to produce a "dark grey" shade instead of black.

When exporting as PDF from the Graphics tool, Finale does produce true black.

Conclusion: I don't think the problem lies with the (Brother) printer at all, but with Finale.

However, it seems to be a Mac only problem. The composer I got the files from uses a Mac.

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