I have an Epson 4000 and hope to finally receive a Z3100 next week. On my 4000 I use bidirectional printing (the high speed setting) on photo papers. I have tried photo papers with high speed on and off, and see no difference. (With expensive cotton rag papers I turn high speed off just to be safe.)

The Z3100 doesn't explicitly include a setting for bidirectional printing or even say if it is possible. It has a slider for quality versus speed. The manual doesn't say what happens at the extremes of the slider.

There are also settings for Best, Normal, and Fast -- but again, the manual doesn't explain what happens at those settings.

What settings allow for a printing resolution of 1200x1200 with bidirectional printing?

(With regards to rendering and printing resolution, the manual does say on page 168 that to get 1200 x 1200, you have to use "best" with "maximum detail" turned on and "extra passes" turned off. If you turn extra passes on, you can get 2400x1200 but only for glossy media.)

Thanks for any responses.

Marty,
You'll want to stick with the best setting. Depending on what media you have selected the printer will vary the number of passes. Basically the printer is always going to use 1200X1200 dpi (unless you use "max detail" on glossy paper). I think that it almost always is using uni-directional at the best setting as well. I think the manual is unclear because the settings vary depending on the media type chosen.

Julian Mussi
www.spectraflow.com

Hi Marty,

There is a new HP "Technical Newsletter" document (March 26) that I've just seen that gives a whole bunch of paper presets and includes many of these points (per paper). Things like: carriage height, rendering resolution, printing resolution, # of passes, bi- or uni-directional, et al. The document could be of interest to you. It's called " Working with Custom Media". I'm guessing that it's available on the HP site in the Knowledge Center, but for some reason, I can't seem to locate those Technical Newsletters there (ANYONE SEE THEM? GOT A LINK?)

Adding to what Julian says, in general, talking to the HP engineers and from my Z experience, my understanding is:
* Because of multiple resolution variables, while "Max Detail" renders at a higher resolution, it offers no real print benefits except for text. Suggest just use "Best" in virtually all photo-image situations (or test it yourself).
* The default for # of passes varies depending on paper preset. In Best mode, it's either 8 or 16. Not sure if increase in passes is double the default number that's one guess.

Harald Johnson

P.S. MARTY: I see a message to me. Where is it in the forum???

Here is the link to "Working with Custom Media":

https://h41186.www4.hp.com/hpp/Data/printin...?pageseq=716726

--John

Thanks to Harald and John for their responses.

Here's another link -- this for all of the technical guides and newsletters. Some of us had no idea where to download them, so one HP mystery is solved:

http://h30267.www3.hp.com/country/us/en/de...3100&product=13

As the tech paper explains, almost all of the settings are bidirectional.

For reasons I can't explain, the custom "best" setting (even when you don't check "extra passes" or "max detail") is slower than the slider on "quality." So I just use the slider on quality rather than clicking on the custom tab for "best."

The "quality" position on the slider also always uses the gloss enhancer in full page mode, which I prefer. I can see difference even with Epson Luster paper. It is a significant innovation on the part of HP.

You also check out the tech paper on "print mode information" as it supplements the other tech newsletter that was just released.

Hey, this is great. Thanks, Marty. I have not been able to find an easy grouping of these. I still think the Technical Newsletters for Z printers could be grouped better (and maybe they're there... somewhere), so I'll see what I can find out from HP.

Harald

You're right of course. The link I provided is for all of the publications, but at least it appears to include all of the tech newsletters.