Ticket Options

Question Profile

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Poor quality when printing via network

tigrr - Jan 18, 2007 - 10:13 am

I have a PC and a Mac, and to share my ADSL broadband internet connection I bought a router which also included a USB printer-server. It allows me to share the printer as well.
Printout is perfect from the PC (an installation CD came with the router, but was for PCs only), but from the Mac, although it prints, quality is very poor.
However, printing is perfect if I connect the same printer directly to the Mac via USB!

The printer is a Canon S-500, and the router (with built-in printer-server) is a Surecom EP-4904AX (http://www.surecom-net.com/pd-internet-4904ax_sx.htm).
The manufacturer has a forum where I've asked for help (http://forums.surecom.com.tw:8001/au...661&highlight=), but have received no solution to my problem.

From somewhere else I've been told that in order to print from a network I can't use the driver the Canon supplies as it only works with a direct USB connection, so instead I downloaded and installed "CUPS/Gutenprint 5.0" (http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3)


This is how I set up the Canon S-500 printer for network printing:

1) opened up the "System preferences" - "Print & Fax" control panel, then clicked on the "+" (left hand side) to add a new printer.

2) Protocol: HP Jet Direct -socket
Address : 192.168.1.1
Queue :
Name : S-500 (via network)
Location: at home
Print using: Canon S500 -CUPS+Guteprint v5.0.0


I've tried numerous settings in each applications' "print" dialog in order to try to improve the print quality, but no matter what I do, all I get is a grainy, draft like (very bad draft at that) result. It does the printer no justice at all.
Like I said, the same connection from the PC results in an equal quality printout as with a direct USB connection from that same PC.

gsahli - Jan 18, 2007 - 10:45 am

It's because of the Gimp-Print driver. I think the Gimp-Print driver is capable of better quality, but you will have to experiment with all the settings in the Copies & Pages pull-down menu.

There is a better CUPS driver available:
www.printfab.net

tigrr - Jan 18, 2007 - 11:52 am

Wow!

I did a little test, printing out the same web-page using the CUPS/Gutenprint driver, and the PrintFab driver. The PrintFab driver resulted in a MUCH better printout than the CUPS/Gutenprint, so you're absolutely right.
Too bad it's not free though.

I hope you're right about the settings in CUPS/Gutenprint, because the "out of the box" quality is appaling.
Do you have any suggestions as to what I should change. I've tried changing the most obvious things, but it really made no difference.

I have to add that I've had just the same results when I installed and used Linux on the PC. Printing was always terrible. In Windows it was great.

I think I heard somewhere that printer manufacturers keep their printer-drivers a secret, meaning that alternative drivers have to be reverse-engineered in order to work, and may not yield the same results. Any truth to this?

gsahli - Jan 18, 2007 - 5:04 pm

I don't have experience with the GutenPrint drivers other than to get them to work - you'll just have to experiment.

I'm pretty sure that the proprietary nature of the drivers means they are a secret, and the guys who bring us the third-party drivers are mostly guessing!!!.

tigrr - Jan 18, 2007 - 5:13 pm

You may be right about the guessing part.
I found a forum for Gutenprint (http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=1537) where I've just asked if there's a solution to the bad quality. It'll be interesting to hear what they say.

gsahli - Jan 18, 2007 - 8:33 pm

Good luck.

tigrr - Jan 19, 2007 - 10:47 am

Thanks :-)
Hold on here for a few days before closing the question in case I get any useful replies from that Gutenprint/GIMP-print forum.

(Might come in handy if someone else has the same problem and asks you for a solution).

tigrr - Jan 22, 2007 - 3:13 am

Unfortunately I haven't received any response yet from the various Mac printing and Gutenprint specific forums. Hopefully someone will have an answer though as I can't believe the Gutenprint driver can be of such unacceptable quality.

tigrr - Jan 24, 2007 - 7:50 am

Absolutely no response from any of my postings in the various Mac-printer and Gutenprint related forums :-(

Does anyone there at MacOSX.com know about any Gutenprint/CUPS settings that could be tried out in order to get a better result?

gsahli - Jan 24, 2007 - 8:34 am

No one I know of has guidelines for Gutenprint. Sorry.