Windows: Color Printing • 145
Color Printing _________________
The printer drivers supplied with this printer provide several controls
for changing the color output of your printer. For general use the
Auto settings will suffice, providing reasonable default settings that
will produce good results for most documents.
Many applications have their own color settings, and these may
override the settings in the printer driver. Please refer to the
documentation for your software application for details on how that
particular program’s color management functions.
General Information
Factors That Affect the Appearance of Printed
Documents
If you wish to manually adjust the color settings in your printer driver,
please be aware that color reproduction is a complex topic, and
there are many factors to take into consideration. Some of the most
important factors are listed below.
Differences between the Range of Colors a Monitor
or Printer Can Reproduce
• Neither a printer nor a monitor is capable of reproducing the full
range of colors visible to the human eye. Each device is restricted to
a certain range of colors. In addition to this, a printer cannot
reproduce all of the colors displayed on a monitor, and vice versa.
• Both devices use very different technologies to represent color. A
monitor uses Red, Green and Blue (RGB) phosphors (or LCDs), a
printer uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) toner or ink.
• A monitor can display very vivid colors such as intense reds and
blues and these cannot be easily produced on any printer using
toner or ink. Similarly, there are certain colors, (some yellows for
example), that can be printed, but cannot be displayed accurately on
a monitor. This disparity between monitors and printers is often the
main reason that printed colors do not match the colors displayed on
screen.