 | EasyCopy uses the normal Windows printer drivers. The Printer Setup Dialog is unique for each printer as it is a part of the printer driver. It is therefore not documented here. Refer to your Windows or printer documentation. |
 | The information provided below applies to the UNIX versions of EasyCopy. |
The Printer Setup dialog is used to set printer specific options. The available options are not the same for all printers. The options, their possible values, and constraints between choices are defined in the printer description file by which the printer is supported. Options are divided into three groups:
The dialog is divided into three "tabs" that correspond to this classification of options.
 | The System Administrator has a fourth tab for modification of Installable Options. |
Only one of these groups is visible at a time. You switch to a given group by pressing its "tab".
The buttons in the bottom of the dialog are common for all three tabs:
If you have enabled Save Settings Automatically in the Preferences dialog the selected options are saved in your initialization file and will apply as default next time you start EasyCopy. Otherwise, the selected options only apply for the current session of EasyCopy, unless you press Save.
If you press Save and then Cancel your defaults have been changed, but your current settings remain unchanged.
The button is dimmed if you have enabled Save Settings Automatically in the Preferences dialog. In this case options are are always saved when you press OK.
 | This option defines the dimensions of the media itself. The maximum printable area is smaller. The absolute margins that limit the printable area for a given page size are shown in the Layout dialog. |
If the printer supports custom definition of the page size you can choose Custom in the Page Size menu. This will open the Custom Page Size dialog.
| Some printers combine the choice of input tray and media type in the Source option. |
Maximum Added Saturation (100) means that the saturation is as correct as possible. On printers with a poor gamut range this is obtained at the expense of the hue of highly saturated colors. Minimum (0) means that the hue is as correct as possible. Depending on the printer's gamut range this obtrudes poorly saturated (pale) colors. On most printers the default (50) results in a fair compromise between correct hue and correct saturation.
Decrease Added Saturation to compensate for dot gain on a printer with high resolution and good gamut. This gives a better reproduction of photographic images.
Increase Added Saturation if you print drawings and charts, especially if your printer has low resolution.
Blue is the most difficult color to reproduce correctly on a printer. It may happen that identical printers produce different blue colors from the same input. It may also happen, that the blue changes dramatically after you have replaced the ink or dye supply. In a few cases a printer can be so sensitive, that one image may print with fine colors and another one, almost identically, may print with all blue shades tilted towards green or purple.
The gamma value refers to the monitor's response curve. The image you see on the screen is affected by the non-linear response curve. This must be taken into account when a similar image should be printed.
The default is 2.20, except on Silicon Graphics workstations, where it is 1.70. These values reflect the most common system defaults.
You may need to adjust the value when you exchange image files between platforms.
| A few printers use different printer description files for different resolutions. EasyCopy will consider this as two (or more) different printers. |
This menu is used to set specific combinations of other quality options to produce either Presentation or Draft quality. The menu is present if such combinations are defined in the printer description file. Normally, these quality settings refer to Shading Method and Scaling Method.
Choose Presentation to obtain the best quality. This is normally also the most time consuming printing method.
Choose Draft to obtain the fastest printing method.
Choose Customized if you want to set your own combination of quality options.
The scaling methods are Replication, Interpolation, and Averaging. These are described in the topic Image Scaling.
You can choose scaling method only if Customized Print Quality is selected. With Draft or Presentation it is chosen automatically.
If scaling is done locally in the printer (PostScript printers) this option is not present.
You can choose shading method and matrix only if Customized Print Quality is selected. With Draft or Presentation it is chosen automatically.
The available methods are described in the topic Image Shading.
The LZW option is on by default, unless the printer is connected via TCP/IP (this connection is usually so fast, that the overhead induced by compression and subsequent decompression in the print engine exceeds the gain in download speed).
 | Prints are corrupted if Predictor is enabled and the printer does not support it. It may happen that EasyCopy's method to detect predictor support fails. In this case you must force No Predictor to get correct results. |
JPEG compression employs DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) encoding. This is a lossy compression method, in which the maximum compression is achieved, but with a possible compromise in image quality. It normally yields a higher compression than LZW, which is a lossless compression.
| You may select both LZW and JPEG Compression, but LZW only improves the compression marginally, or even cause the resulting file to expand slightly, compared to selecting only JPEG Compression. The same may happen if LZW Compression is specified for a file that is already compressed, for example a PostScript file containing a compressed image. |
JPEG compression operates on continuous-tone images with one or three components (gray level or color). Indexed images are automatically expanded to RGB before JPEG compression. The grade of compression is controlled with the Quality slider.
The maximum compression is achieved but with a possible compromise in image quality.
The size of the file and the image quality are traded off. The slider can be set between 1 and 20. A quality of 1 (leftmost slider position) gives the highest compression at the expense of image quality. A quality of 20 (rightmost slider position) gives the highest image quality and a lower compression.
The compression ratio depends on the contents and size of the original image. Results in the range from approximately 50 : 1 (low quality) to 10 : 1 (high quality) can normally be expected.