[pastusza]

I have an HP LaserJet 4200 at home that I am using with a Mac mini, a MacBook and a Windows and Linux laptop. This is an older B&W laser printer.

When I print from the Windows or Linux laptops, the images, text and lines on the page are nice crisp and clear, with rich black colors. When I print from either Mac, the the blacks aren't nearly as dark or crisp.

My initial thought was PCL6 vs PostScript drivers, but I don't know if that's it. Has anyone else seen something like this and know how to get the Mac to print better.

On the Mac I have it set ti print ProRes, 1200 dpi and Enhanced levels of grey Doesn't any difference.

[OreoCookie]

I've had the larger brother (a LaserJet 4250) at work for many years, I think I remember setting the resolution to 600 dpi. If you do that, does that work?

[shifuimam]

There's also an economy mode on those printers, which prints text with a black outline and a gray fill. It's possible that's still enabled.

I have a LaserJet 2100 that I use with all my machines, including Macs running both OS X and OS 9, and the printout is fine. Unfortunately it's not hooked up right now, so I can't take a look at my settings to see what might be different.

[olePigeon]

That's what I would check, if it's on economy mode.

[pastusza]

It does not appear to be in Economy Mode.

The Windows laptop suffers the same problem. The Linux machine, however, prints gorgeous blacks.

I installed Gimp-Print on the Mac and set up a CUPS PCL driver and the text and lines look nice and crisp now. But the images are way too dark. I tried to scan in the pages to show the difference, but it's too subtle for the Mac to pick up. I'll try a color scan instead of b&w. That may pick up the differences.

[OreoCookie]

Again, I remember having this problem with a similar model, and the problems went away after switching to 600 dpi instead of 1200 dpi. Have you tried that?