HP Color LaserJet 4550 printer family - Software Technical Reference

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HP Color LaserJet 4550 Software Technical Reference 211
The PANTONE®* MATCHING SYSTEM is widely used by the printing industry to specify the color of objects. By
using PANTONE®* certified colors and palettes, you can be assured of getting the closest color match possible
when a file is printed on the HP Color LaserJet 4550 printer.
The Automatic PANTONE®* Calibration feature lets the printer substitute the best simulation obtainable on this
printer when a PANTONE®* color name is found in the PS code sent by an application. For PCL printing and
other situations where the name is not sent to the printer, application specific palettes are available and can be
used to color the objects in a document with the best PANTONE®* color simulation for the HP 4550. In addition,
the HP 4550 RGB and CMYK values for to each PANTONE®* color are available by printing an .eps, .tif or .ps
file or by finding the value in a text lookup table.
2.1 AUTOMATIC PANTONE®* CALIBRATION (PS driver only)
Automatic PANTONE®* Calibration is the default setting for HP Color LaserJet printers. This feature
automatically converts PANTONE®* colors to optimal color values for the printer by recognizing the PANTONE®*
color name or number in the data stream sent to the printer. The feature is activated when printing colors that
were chosen using the PANTONE®* Color picker in supported graphics applications.
Applications known to generate PS files with graphic objects preserving the PANTONE®* name are listed below:
• Adobe Illustrator 7 & 8
• Adobe PageMaker 6.5
• CorelDRAW 7, 8 & 9
• Deneba Canvas 5 (see note below)
• Macromedia Freehand 7 & 8
• Micrografx Designer
• Quark Xpress 3 & 4
Note:
Deneba Canvas versions 6 and 7 are not compatible with the Automatic PANTONE®* Calibration feature
The Automatic PANTONE Calibration feature only applies to graphic objects, not picture (raster) data such as
scanned images and TIFF files. Adobe Photoshop, for example, being a raster image editor, is not on the above
list of applications that support the Automatic PANTONE®* calibration feature.
Some applications substitute CMYK values to the printer if they cannot provide PANTONE®* names. If your
application does not pass the PANTONE®* names to the printer, the application will substitute default CMYK
values to be printed for each color. In this case, the accuracy of color matching will depend on the ink emulation
selected - FAST, SWOP, Euro standard, or DIC (Dainippon). If your application does not pass the PANTONE®*
names to the printer, the custom CMYK values created by PANTONE®* for this printer are available in the
manual PANTONE®* palettes described next.
Enabling PANTONE®* support in the printer driver
The printer is PANTONE®* ready in its default configuration. To turn off Automatic PANTONE®* Calibration in
the printer driver, go to Properties, Advanced, and then Printer Features. Note that this feature must be
disabled when printing color separations (one grayscale page per colorant) from many applications.
2.2 PRINTING NON-AUTOMATIC PANTONE®* COLORS
The PANTONE®* calibration data for each printer are provided for situations where the Automatic PANTONE®*
Calibration is not available. The Automatic PANTONE®* Calibration feature only applies to graphic objects, not