Printing quality poor

[Mattybryan92]

Hi, 

I have recently had the idea to create custom star maps, I know its popular. 

But for some reason when printing the document it seems to come out washed out, and blurry, nothing like it looks on screen. 

I open a new document which is set to 300DPI. 

With the blank background I put a border, and then create an eclipse where I will make the chart. In the eclipse is just a radial filter using blue to black to create the look of night sky. 

To create the stars I am using a soft brush set to white to paint in the stars. 

Then using a pen tool and brush stroke to paint in the constellations.

With this I then add an outer glow. 

I have tried printing through photoshop and lightroom, and also tried both A3 and A4 sizes just to make sure it wasn't because it had been compressed down. Both programs I use the original photoshop file too. 

Is it something I'm doing wrong, or something I should be doing as it looks pin sharp on my monitor, unfortunately the same can't be said when its on paper. 

Many Thanks 

[Abdallah Beraida]

Hi Mattybryan92, 

Try to export file to PDF Format and print it again 

If  you have some troubles, let's we know more about it by screening printing options

Regards,

Abdallah Beraida

[Mattybryan92]

These are the settings from PDF and on the right is what I am doing through lightroom, similar settings used if doing through photoshop. I think it may be the colour of the background as that is the blurriest part of the image, Not sure if having the outer glow is causing it also just not happy with the finish. 

Thanks

[Abdallah Beraida]

Hi again, 

The printing options seems correct (for me at least), but I see that you have low ink on your printer

Check to see if a particular color's ink tank is not empty.

If the document is not printed correctly though ink is sufficient, perform the Print Head Cleaning and try printing the document again.

Regards,

Abdallah Beraida

[Mattybryan92]

Yeah, 

I was meant to mention that before I had posted, as it only told me it was low afterwards so when I was showing you the settings, so should have been fine on the print that happened previously. 

Will just play around with the colours, and see if I can get something to work, I'm sure I will get there in the end! 

Thanks for the help.

[davescm]

A couple of things, but the first is the most likely cause.

1. Check your original at 100% zoom. Zoomed out you are looking at a preview built with 8 bit softened layers, 100% uses the full image pixels and full bit depth. Usually there is little difference, but small points of light such as starfields can differ considerably. It is the 100% zoom view that will be rendered to your print.

2. If using Epson inkjet, try 360 PPI. With Canon or HPI the 300 is OK. This stops any scaling in the print driver.

Dave