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This category is for information on printing at Carleton, particularly printing in the labs. Carleton does not currently offer support for non-lab printers.
All computer labs have at least one black and white laser printer. Additionally, there is a color printer located in the SCIC, which can be printed to from any of the labs on the ground floor of the CMC. Currently there is a limit of 5 color copies per document, due to the cost of color ink. If you wish to make more copies, or if you want a higher-quality print-out, you should contact Printing and Mailing.
For technical reasons, Carleton does not allow printing to the lab printers from non-lab computers. It is recommended that you use your Home folder to store documents that you create, or simply e-mail them to yourself, and then print these documents from the labs.
This is a list of common problems with printing at Carleton. If these do not answer your question, contact the SCIC.
There is a color printer behind the circulation desk on the fourth floor. It is currently not included in the standard lab build, so it has to be manually added if you want to print from it, because it gets removed when the computer restarts. It's an HP Color LaserJet 8550, and the IP address is 137.22.11.48. The instructions below apply to this printer:
For Windows: Go to the Add a Printer wizard in the left pane of the "Printers and Faxes" window, which can be found in the Control Panel. Press Next, and then check the “Local Printer Attached to this Computer” box, and uncheck the "Automatically Detect and Install my Plug and Play Printer" box. Then check “Create a New Port” and in the “Type of Port,” choose “Standard TCP/IP Port.” Type the IP address in the space provided (137.22.11.48). If necessary, install the correct printer driver, Hewlett-Packard HP8550 PCL. If you have any questions or don't understand something, please ask the SCIC worker at the library reference desk.
For Mac OS X: Open Printer Setup Utility. Click add. Change protocol to "Line Printer Daemon (LPD). Give the address 137.22.11.48. Leave the remaining fields blank and click add. After doing this, you can print from any application by selecting it from the printer list in printing options.
Note: This solution is known to work in OS X 10.4.1, but has not been tested in previous versions. It should work in lower versions of OS X, but let the SCIC know one way or the other.
Printer "A" is located in the LibeMacLab, on the third level. Printers "B" and "C" are located near the reference desk on the fourth level LibeLab. Printer "Libe 306" is located in the LibePCLab.
First make sure you have chosen the correct printer from the choser menu on you conputer. Then check to be sure that the desired printer is turned on. Does the printer just say “ready,” or is there an error message? If there is an error message please contact the SCIC. Is it out of, or low on, toner, paper? If so please contact the SCIC. If you are a SCIC worker, try to fix it and if you cannot, please place an out of order sign on the printer, turn it off, and HEAT it.
File --> Print --> Properties --> Flip on Long Edge
If you want to default to duplex, go to settings and right click on the printer icon’s properties and go to installable options and make sure that duplexing is chosen. Then, in printing preferences, choose Flip to Long End under the duplex section of the menu.
This message should be disregarded, unless print quality has noticeably decreased, in which case the toner cartridge should be replaced.
Only SCIC workers should replace the toner cartridges in the labs. The process is as follows:
- Try shaking the cartridge, then putting it back in and printing a test page. This can often extend the cartridge's life by a matter of days, thus saving money.
- If the test page still shows unacceptable print quality, open the packaging for the new toner cartridge, pull the tab on the side back, and remove it. Then slide the new cartridge into the printer.
- Try shaking the cartridge, then putting it back in and printing a test page. This can often extend the cartridge's life by a matter of days, thus saving money.
- If the test page still shows unacceptable print quality, open the packaging for the new toner cartridge, pull the tab on the side back, and remove it. Then slide the new cartridge into the printer. The color toner cartridges are in the back cabinets in the SCIC, you can replace them if the printer says "toner out" for one of the colors. If you don't know how, ask a co-worker or Kevin.
The two standard sizes of paper most often print from Photoshop are 8.5 x 11 (letter size, used for papers), and 11 x 17 (“tabloid” size, used for posters). To make things easy for yourself, you should select one of these sizes when you start a new image. To do this, go to File -> New. A menu will pop up asking you to provide an image size. Click on the drop-down menu labeled Preset Sizes and select either Letter or Tabloid. Notice that Photoshop sets the Resolution to 300 pixels/inch (also known as “dpi”) unless you tell it otherwise. For faster printouts with slightly lower print quality, change this number to 120.
If you are opening an already created image, or if you want to change the image size of an image you created, you can check the image size by going to Image->Image Size.
As Photoshop warns when you print the document, some clipping may occur. This means that the edges of your image will be cut off by the printer, which can’t print all the way to the edges of the paper. In order to prevent this, go to the Image Size menu again and decrease the height by 1 inch (thus also reducing the width). When printed, the image will be centered on the paper. You can also choose “Scale to Fit Media” In Page Setup.
Make sure none of the toner in a color printer is running low. If it is, tell the SCIC so they can replace the toner.
If an image doesn’t look quite the same color-wise as the one on the screen, you should remember that monitors and printers handle color differently. Monitors use different wavelengths of light to create color, and printers use inks with pigments. You will never be able to exactly match a print out to a computer screen for this reason, but there are some steps you can take to try and decrease the disparity. Depending on the model of printer, you may be able to set the Color Profile of your printer settings to match the system and monitor you are using. Consult your printer Manuel for instructions on how to do this.
Printers with this error can be made happy by restarting them. Troy says it is caused by the formatting of documents such as the weird stuff used in the article databases people use for research. So we are to try to find out what people are printing that keeps crashing the printers. :)
Error Offending command: stack-mark means that there was something in the document the printer didn’t recognize. One document failed to print where the user had accidentally typed a triple length dash. It was changed to a regular dash (two hyphens, not three) and the document printed fine. Check over your document and make sure there aren’t any glitches like this.
Why can’t I print from PageMaker?
To print from PageMaker hold down the option key on a mac while selecting Print. This only works if you start holding down Option before you select Print from the file menu. Keep it held down until you have pressed Print and the computer starts sending the job. If that doesn’t work, do the same thing, click on Setup, change page attributes to “postscript options,” and de-select anything that’s selected. Holding down the option key forces PageMaker to use Mac printing instead of its own (bad) printing system. Thus, if you have changed any page settings like paper size, you’ll have to change those settings again from the print dialog box while you’re holding down the option key.
Printing to the labs from dorm rooms is not permitted, but you can use fonts from your personal computer in the public labs if you need to print with them. Copy the desired fonts to your Home account or a zip disk and install them on a public lab machine in one of the following ways: On a Mac: Before you can install the fonts, you will need to ask a SCIC worker to turn off the security settings for you. Then you can copy them to the Fonts folder (Macintosh HD>>System>>Fonts). You will need to restart the application you’re working in for the change to take effect. On a PC: On a Windows machine, you will need to copy the fonts to C:/Windows/Fonts. Restart the application you’re working in for the changes to take effect.
Go to the Printer Setup control panel and check the “Local printer attached to this computer” and uncheck automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer. Check “Create a new port” and in the “Type of port,” choose “Standard TCP/IP port.” Type the IP address in the space provided (get info by printing configuration sheet). If necessary, install the correct printer driver. Print a test page. For some printers, you have to set up printer properties (e.g. Does the printer have an extra tray and a duplexing unit?)
Recycle old cartridges in the cabinet in the SCIC lobby.
Why do the two PC's near the ResearchITDesk print to Generic/Text?
These two PCs are not the standard lab build and occasionally the default printer gets set to Generic/Text instead of to one of the printers in the libe. If someone asks about printing from them, just help them reset the default to a libe printer. Eric H. knows about this problem.
-- KristinPartlo - 13 Apr 2005
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