Print Media Considerations

Your printer uses different techniques for printing on different media. You can specify the print media by using the Windows printer driver property sheet.

Monitor Considerations

No printer can exactly reproduce color the way you see it on your monitor. Monitors generate light, while printed materials reflect light; the two methods of creating colors can never give identical results. In addition, different monitors display colors differently. The same document may look quite different on different systems. Another consideration is that most monitors cannot display all 16.7 million colors that the unit can print. Colors that look the same on your monitor may print differently—especially if you are not using the Color Adjustment printing option. Even if you have a black-and-white monitor, you can still print in color. It’s just difficult to tell what your document will look like until you print it.

Application Considerations

The range of colors you can print in a document depends upon the colors that you can specify in your application. Some applications, such as many word processing packages, give you relatively limited color options. Many presentation, desktop publishing, and graphics packages give you virtually unlimited custom color options as explained in the Color Introduction.