THESE SOLID INK PHASER PRINTERS HAVE BEEN RETIRED AND ARE NO LONGER AVAILABL E. IGNORE THIS PAGE.

The Computer Center maintains two Xerox Phaser color solid ink PostScript printers for use by department members. For a list of their features, please see the overview web page.

Remember, fourthcolor is a Phaser 8200DP and fifthcolor is a Phaser 8400DP.
To print in color, select any of the Color Correction options other than Black and White.

• Specifying these printers - on your computer
• Printer-Specific Settings - selecting color quality etc
• General Tips
• Information for Macintosh users
• Information for Windows PC users
• Command-Line Options for UNIX users
• fourthcolor - Check its current status
• fifthcolor - Check its current status
• Phaser 8200 Knowledge Base -- on-line troubleshooting documentation
• Phaser 8200 Users guides (PDF) -- loading paper, clearing jams, troubleshooting, font tips
• Phaser 8400 Knowledge Base -- on-line manuals, troubleshooting tips
• Troubleshooting Tips

Specifying This Printer

1. send PostScript print jobs to
2. host or "printer" name ccprint.pha.jhu.edu and to the
3. printer queue name fourthcolor or fifthcolor.

The details on doing this for Windows and Macintoshes are found elsewhere in this document. UNIX users need to work with their printer configuration tools to specify the printer and the queue name to use. If you need a PPD for the printer, copy the appropriate model-specific file from the directory eta.pha.jhu.edu:/opt/Xerox/xpxx/ppd/. We do not think that you need to install the Xerox CentreWare printer driver software on UNIX computers. (We installed it on ccprint, and we think that that is the only computer which needs it.)

Printer-Specific Settings

• PRINT QUALITY
  Set the resolution (DPI = Dots Per Inch) to the appropriate quality level. This option does NOT control whether the output is in color or in black and white.
  

  Mode	Resolution	Max Speed (8200/8400)	Uses
  FastColor	600x600 DPI	16 / 24 PPM	Saves ink, prints most quickly
  Standard	600x600 DPI	10 / 18 PPM	General purpose
  Enhanced	unknown	6 / 12 PPM	For high-resolution color printing Smoothest & brightest large-area fills Increases color saturation compared to Standard mode.
  Photo	1200x600 (8200) 2400 DPI (8400)	3.5 / 7 PPM	For high-resolution color printing with the smoothest color transitions Makes very fine lines, sharp edges, and small text sharper

• COLOR CORRECTION
  Select the color correction process suited to your needs.

  Mode	Uses/Comments	Default?
  Automatic	For general office printing. Optimizes the color for each elements (text, photos and graphics) on each page	On fourthcolor
  Black and White	Converts colors to black and shades of gray.	On fifthcolor
  sRGB Display	Printed colors simulate those displayed on a computer monitor
  sRGBVivid	(on 8400 only) Printed colors simulate those displayed on a computer monitor, but brighter and more saturated than plain sRGB.
  Vivid	(on 8200 only) Printed colors are brighter and more saturated than when Automatic is used.
  None	Turns off all color corrections
  (many others) Printing press	Colors simulate various printing press standards See the printer manual for the various types.

  Accurate and consistent representation of colors can be a very complicated and frustrating problem! Graphics professionals, such as advertising artists, spend large amounts of time trying to ensure that the colors they work with on computer screens look the same when printed on color printers. You may have the same difficulties when working with scientific images.

• DARKEN TEXT
  (Only applies on the Phaser 8200DP, and when printing in FastColor mode.) This feature directs the printer add a small amount of color ink to the black text to make it darker and sharper.
• IMAGE SMOOTHING
  This option blends adjacent colors in low-resolution (less than 150dpi) documents for smoother color transitions. For example, use Image Smoothing to improve the appearance of an image downloaded from a web site (many are typically saved in low resolution format so they download quickly). It is not recommended for 300dpi or higher images.
• PAPER SOURCE/MEDIA TYPE
  On both printers, tray two is the default. On fourthcolor, when tray two empties, the job continues with tray one, since it is also plain letter- sized paper. On fifthcolor, tray one is usually loaded with A4 sized paper.

  See the manual for information on using the Manual Feed tray. There is a five minute time-out period for manually fed jobs. (You should consider sending manually-fed jobs from a workstation located close to the printer so you can attend to it promptly.)

• SPECIAL PAPER TYPES
  The printer has a Manual Feed tray on the front. This can be used to feed paper types not found in one of the other trays, such as letterhead, coated paper (i.e. glossy paper), heavier stock or legal paper. Please consult the printer manual for the acceptable types of paper.

  Any transparency media you use in this printer MUST BE approved Xerox media for these models of solid ink printers! Do NOT use paper-backed transparencies on this printer!!! See this Xerox web page for the correct part numbers.

  Please DO NOT print on any other special paper types such as envelopes or adhesive labels. We want to avoid possible damage to a heavily-used public resource by labels or glue sticking to the internal rollers. Also, it is difficult to control who is printing when, so your special papers may very well wind up being used by someone else who sends a job before you are ready.

  To use the Manual Feed tray:

  • Send your print job, specifying Manual Feed tray as the input tray.
  • Wait for the printer console to request the paper.
  • Place the blank media in the tray (in the correct orientation).

Command-Line Options for UNIX users

Print jobs destined for these Phaser printers are ultimately feed into some Xerox-provided programs on ccprint.pha.jhu.edu (they are customized for our specific printer models).

Some of the lp options you will want to use are unique to each model of printer. We have listed the main ones below.

To see all of the Xerox Phaser 8200 or 8400 printer command line options, send a special job to the right printer with a special argument. The specified file won't be printed, but a list of the possible arguments will be printed instead:
lp -d fourthcolor -o Options filename1
or
lp -d fifthcolor -o Options filename1

You can cancel a job (if you move quickly enough) with the UNIX cancel command (see the manual page). If it has already been processed by ccprint and fed to the printer, your only recourse is to press the cancel button on the printer's console.

LP OPTIONS

CAPITALIZATION MATTERS.

When specifying multiple options, each one must be prefaced with a -o. You may put a space between the -o and the option. For example,
lp -d fourthcolor -o Photo -o sRGB filename1 filename2

Information for Macintosh users

All Mac users will need to download a printer driver installation program from the Xerox web site. Go to the printer's home page (fourthcolor or (fifthcolor) and follow the link called Install Printer Drivers. You can also go directly to Xerox's driver download page.

Single-sided printing is the default setting on Macintoshes. If you change anything about your settings, please change to duplex!! On the Phaser 8400, the default is also to print in Enhanced quality mode instead of the desired default Standard mode (which saves a lot of ink). Please change that setting as well unless you know that a particular document needs to be of a higher quality. Thank you.

Define the printer

• Install the printer driver using the Xerox program you downloaded.
• (On Mac OS X 10.2.x) Run the Print Center utility from the Applications/Utilities folder.
• (On Mac OS X 10.3.x) Run the Printer Setup Utility program from the Applications/Utilities folder.
• Click on the Add button at the top of the utility's toolbar.
• Configure all of the fields as shown here for fourthcolor and here for fifthcolor fifthcolor THESE GRAPHICS SHOW THE IMPORTANT INFO!
• Then press the Add button.
• For the Phaser 8200, select the printer, choose Show Info from the Printers menu. Then Click on the pop-up menu, choose Installable Options and set the options shown here. Press the Apply Changes button.
• Quit the printer setup utility program.

Apple's standard Mac OS X Print dialog box is deceptively simple looking. Many people do not realize that they are looking at a lot of pop-up menus, whose contents are revealed only when you click with your mouse on them, and hold down the button long enough to scroll around.

There are many settings lurking under those pop-up menus! They change depending on which printer model you are using at the moment! Here are some images of the settings for the Phaser 8200 printer.

• The primary list of configuration options is shown here. The selected option shown is the one that contains printer-model-specific choices.
• There are three sub-menus within the Printer Features menu. Here is the first one. It contains the Print Quality and the Color Correction choices.
• Here is the second sub-menu, Advanced Media Handling within the Printer Features menu.
• You should look at the choices under the other menu options. Specifically, visit Duplex and turn it on -- it is off by default. Also check out the Paper Feed menu if you are going to feed in any unusual media. Which we would appreciate if you did not do.

Information for Windows PC users

Define the printer

• Click on the Start button, and select Printers and Faxes (in Windows 2000, select Settings, then Printers and Faxes).
• On the left side of the window, under Printer Tasks, click on Add Printer. This will start the Add Printer Wizard. Click Next.
• Select the network printer option in Local or Network Printer dialog. Click Next.
• In the Specify a Printer dialog, select Connect to this printer (or to browse for a printer, select this option and click Next). Specify \\ccsamba.pha.jhu.edu\fourthcolor or \\ccsamba.pha.jhu.edu\fifthcolor in the Name text box.
• When you click Next, you may see this error. It's safe to ignore - just click Yes in the dialog.
• Select whether or not you want the printer to be your default printer in the Default Printer dialog, then click Next.
• Finally, click Finish in the last dialog.

To change your your printing preferences, click on Start, then select Printers and Faxes. Right click on the appropriate printer and select Printing Preferences.... The two sub-menus you're most likely to use are Layout and Paper/Quality. The Layout sub-menu allows you to control duplex settings. You can control color saturation (and quality) in the Paper/Quality sub-menu by sliding the bar in the lower right corner back and forth. FastColor is the setting to the far left. As you slide the bar to the right, it will cycle through Standard, Enhanced, and Photo modes.

The color correction settings are located in the TekColor sub-menu. To print in color, change the color correction from Black and White to Automatic.

Tips

• To cancel a job that has started printing, press the Exit button on the printer console. You may not cancel every page, but you will reduce the page count if you are fast enough. This printer has so much memory that it can accept the print job from ccprint very quickly. When that happens, you lose the ability to cancel the print job from ccprint and must rely on the front panel approach.
• fourthcolor is a PostScript printer. You cannot send plain text to it! You must convert plain text to PostScript with gnuenscript or some other program.
• Specify that your output should be of the latest version of PostScript. The language has gone through several revisions. The newest version is version 3.
• Print just one page when printing a new type of image or using a new type of software. Check the output before sending many pages to the printer.
• If the output does not match your expectations no matter which options you select, consider whether you are using the latest version of the software to create the PostScript file. The translation of your document into PostScript is one of those things which is often flawed in early versions of any brand of software.
• Delete or compress your PostScript files when you are not using them. Color PostScript files tend to be large. But they are composed of ASCII text instead of binary data, so if you must keep them around, compress them. Plain text compresses very well, saving 50% or more of disk space.
• Consider using acid-free paper for important images that you want to last a long time. You cannot control how the toner may fade, but you can prevent the pages from yellowing.

Troubleshooting Tips

A very important thing to keep in mind is that some of these option choices are embedded in the file when you create it but that others are specified at the time of printing. Some embedded choices can have the same effect as the print job dispatch parameters. For example, if you set the paper size in your software program to be legal, the resulting PostScript file *should* include that information, and the printer *should* select legal paper automatically. Note that the results of specifying conflicting options within the file and in the print job parameters may be unexpected.

For maximum control, you should install a printer model specific driver program on your Mac or PC. For example, you may not be able to specify color quality settings without such a driver. See the Mac and PC sections below for more information.

The safest thing to do overall is to pay close attention to the choices available in your software program when configuring and saving the file, then specify as much as you can when you actually send the job. In other words, over-specify to raise the odds that it comes out in the form you desire.

Some examples of embedded information:

• The document's orientation setting (either portrait or landscape).
• The document's page size setting (such as letter or legal).
• An image that you chose to save from your software at a low resolution (such as 72dpi (dots per inch)). This will probably look WORSE when printed at a high resolution (like 1200dpi) than at a lower one (like 600dpi). You might also want to specify Image Smoothing when sending such an image (see below).
• The number of colors your software uses in manipulating, saving and printing an image. If it uses 8 bits to specify color information, then the most colors it can describe is 256. Such an image may look worse than a 24-bit image (which can have millions of colors).

Some examples of options chosen when sending the print job (see the UNIX tips section below for the command-line options to use):