Printers That Can Add Color to Work

My holiday letter to family and friends this year featured a gaily decorated Christmas tree printed in pleasing tones of green, yellow, red and gray.

The design was clip art in Ami Pro 2.0’s word processing software, but what made it colorful was Hewlett Packard’s new DeskJet 500C color ink jet printer.

With a suggested retail price of $1,095 and street prices around $700, the DeskJet 500C is an alternative to a laser printer, offering the same high-quality 300-dot-per-inch resolution plus color.

It contrasts with H-P’s $995 PaintJet in offering higher resolution text printing, but its color capabilities are not quite as sophisticated.

The DeskJet 500C and its Macintosh-compatible twin, the DeskWriter C, cannot produce a true black when operating in color mode, while the PaintJet can. And they cannot produce the Pantone system’s color-matching hues of the PaintJet.

But the PaintJet, with its 180-dot-per-inch resolution, cannot yield the laser-sharp printing of the DeskJet.

Choosing between the two is fairly easy. If you work mostly with text, but sometimes want to dress up a report with a few color charts or maps, or you occasionally need to create overhead transparencies in color, the DeskJet is the best printer.

But if you work mostly with graphics software instead of word processing and spreadsheets, the PaintJet is better.

Neither model yields the color saturation and photo realism of more expensive thermal wax transfer or dye sublimation printers, however.

The DeskJet 500C operates just like its black-only DeskJet predecessor when you have the black ink jet cartridge in place. It becomes a color printer when you substitute the color ink cartridge, which contains three colors--cyan, magenta and yellow.

With the color cartridge in place, the printer creates black by printing all three colors on top of each other. The result isn’t really black. It’s dark gray and it’s a matter of personal choice whether you like it or not.

Because the print head must make three passes across the line to print composite black with the color cartridge in place, the printer is about three times slower printing plain text that way.

The two-page holiday letter with its 2 1/2-inch high Christmas tree at the top took five minutes to print in color, but a little less than 1 1/2 minutes with the black-only ink cartridge.

A full-page color picture printed with Windows Paintbrush software took more than 10 minutes, which is partly because of the software and partly because of the printer. Hewlett Packard says the 500C can print a full color page in four minutes, but actual performance depends on how dense the color is and the efficiency of the software being used.

The result, printed on special coated paper that Hewlett Packard recommends for best appearance, was pleasing. Colors were rich, with distinct shades of oranges and reds and blue gradations from indigo to purple.

Immediately after printing, the paper was damp from the ink, although the colors did not come off on my hands during routine handling. But even after the paper had dried, it was noticeably wrinkled where the ink had been applied.

In addition to coated paper, you can print on normal laser or copier paper, and on special transparency film for making overhead projection slides. The PaintJet, by comparison, cannot print on plain paper.

The three inks can combine into seven basic colors--cyan, blue, yellow, green, magenta, red and black. These are then blended in various ways controlled by your graphics software to yield a vast range of color.

When using an IBM-compatible computer, the best color printing is obtained with graphics software that runs under Windows. A special printer control program shipped with the DeskJet 500C allows Windows programs to print in color.

Printer drivers for a few DOS programs, including Harvard Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3, version 3.1 or later, and Applause II, are included. If you want to print color with word processing software, you’ll have to use Windows programs such as the latest versions of Ami Pro or Word for Windows.

A helpful booklet, “A Guide to Using Color,” comes with the printer and explains how color printing differs from color display on a computer monitor. The printer does have controls that enable it to try to match your screen colors on the printed page.

All in all, the DeskJet 500C is well worth its extra cost compared to a regular DeskJet and is a good dual-purpose printer. With color monitors now standard equipment on newer computers, it’s nice to be able to do more with color than just look at it on the screen.

Computer File welcomes reader comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.