Filter
Top Products
A-14 Color Printing Overview (Color LaserJet, 5, 5M, DeskJet) EN
Processing Color Documents
To process a color page, PCL provides ways of specifying and
modifying color so that the printed result appears as the user desires.
This section provides a conceptual overview of the process.
Non-Raster Color vs. Raster Color
All color portions of a page consist of either:
• Page Marking Primitives (non-raster data)
• Color Raster Data
Page Marking Primitives
Non-raster data consists of HP-GL/2 and PCL page marking
primitives such as glyphs, rules, polygons, circles, and vectors. Page
marking primitives contain no color information about the image. They
merely mark the page with attributes assigned to the current working
environment (for example, colors, patterns, logical operation modes,
etc.). Page marking primitives act as stencils through which color
“paint” is poured, forming a homogeneous pattern.
Page marking primitives print in the currently specified color, which is
specified using the Foreground Color command. For example, if you
specify the color blue using the Foreground Color command, and then
send some text to the printer, the text will be printed blue.
Color Raster Data
Unlike page marking primitives, each pixel of a color raster image
contains color information. A color raster pixel may be defined by
either:
• Palette Entry Indices
• Direct Color Specifications
User-defined color patterns are a form of color raster, but each pixel
of a user-defined color pattern can be defined only by palette entry
indices, not by direct color specifications.